Warning: bringing a legally-available sports magazine to school could get you in hot water.

Justin Reyes, 12, was suspended for three days after he brought the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to his public school.
A teacher confiscated the magazine and officials recommended time at an alternative school.

Huh?

Other sources suggest that the suspension came because he refused the alternative school time.

Superintendent Tim Swarr says Reyes was suspended for defiance of authority after refusing to go to alternative school as a punishment.
Swarr says the pictures inside the magazine are a violation of school policy as set in the school handbook.

Ah. He wasn't suspended as a punishment for bringing the magazine, he was suspended for not going to alternative school as a punishment for bringing the magazine. Well, that makes everything clear --

Oh, give me a break.

Let us posit that school policy forbids the bringing of Sports Illustrated (the swimsuit issue in particular) to school.

As a former teacher, the correct course of action seems clear:

1. Confiscate the magazine.
2. Sit the kid's ass down in the school office for some period of time.
3. Explain sitch to kid, advise him that a repeat will lead to repercussions.

Alternative school doesn't even enter into it. Yeesh.

Other stories provide more details:

Justin Reyes had the magazine in the gymnasium at Belpre Middle School before classes Feb. 18, and Principal Kathy Garrison cited him for violating school’s policy on nonverbal harassment and possession of lewd or suggestive material

I can imagine a situation where it could be considered "nonverbal harassment," but I suspect this is just a CYA term. As for SI being "suggestive," well, yes, that's sort of the point -- but that's probably going to be true for any number of magazine and magazine ads, even apart from the Swimsuit Issue.

She ordered the 12-year-old boy to spend two days at an alternative school where students from several area districts are sent when they get into trouble.

Good Lord. Do they sing re-education camp songs and grow sustenance crops out back for the school cafeteria?

But Superintendent Tim Swarr said Justin and his mother, Nicole Reyes, refused to accept the punishment, so the penalty was increased to three days of out-of-school suspension. “Last time I checked, we were in charge of running the schools,” Swarr said.

Swarr then started rolling some large ball bearings in his hands in a noisy and irritating fashion.

Now, again, we don't know what the conversation was like between the Reyeses and Swarr. Both seem, from quotes, not the most compromising of individuals.

Then, of course, there's this gem:

[Swarr] said he had never seen SI’s swimsuit edition before. “I was shocked,” he said. “It doesn’t belong in public schools.”

I am not someone who buys the annual swimsuit edition (and, had it been available when I was in sixth grade, I probably couldn't have afforded it), but, jeez, I've at least looked at it. (Yawn. Bored now.) I find it -- incredible, in the underlying sense of the word, that Swarr has never seen it before.

Do I think the SISE is, in fact, appropriate fare for middle school? Maybe not. But, again, the punishment is, you confiscate the thing and impose some immediate, short-term punishment -- picking up trash out in the yard, sitting in the principal's office, staying after school. You don't shuffle the kid off the the Big House, or, when you get into pissing matches with his mom, suspend him for three days. Nobody wins in that case -- except the media.

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Oh it gets better...did you see the posting I put up about how Asimov's SF magazine was "exposed" for being an "adult magazine"?

I recall that when I was in high school we had subscriptions to the following: Galaxy (well, we had back issues, it was not being published then), Analog (thanks to me), F&SF (thanks to me), Sky & Telescope (ditto) and Sports Illustrated (thanks to some other guy).

So now...let's see...Galaxy (by association), F&SF (which I've found to be more "adult" than Asimov's, so ban it), Analog (by proxy, same publisher as Asimov's) would be banned. So would SI. Heck, let's ban S&T to be safe.

Well...for some reason, the first time I commented I got the following error message:

An error occurred:

No entry_id

Go figure.

What I tried to say was:

Did you see my posting about how Asimov's SF magazine has been found to be an "adult" magazine?

When I was in high school we had SI. We also had back issues of Galaxy (no longer published at that point), Analog (I got them to get a sub), F&SF (ditto), and Sky & Telescope (ditto).

So according to the "expose" about Asimov's and this story, I guess we'd ban Galaxy (guilt by association), F&SF (more mature than Asimov's, so ban it), Analog (same publisher, so ban it), SI (for the reasons you gave), and S&T (what the heck, may as well).

As my daughter approaches kindergarten, I get more and more frightened by what she's facing in terms of a quality education.

Considering the hullabaloo over Janet Jackson's 18 frames of tit exposure, this fits right in. The country is in a weird-ass mood, freaking out over nothing.