Ian Urbina

NEWARK, Del. -- Zachary Christie, 6, was so excited about joining the Cub Scouts that he brought a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school to use at lunch.

School officials concluded he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary faces 45 days in the district's reform school.

Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.

But, based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first-grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, "regardless of possessor's intent," knives are banned.

Critics contend that zero-tolerance policies like those in the district have led to sharp increases in suspensions and expulsions, often putting children on the streets or in other places where their behavior only worsens, and that the policies undermine the use of common sense by school officials in handling minor infractions.

For Delaware, Zachary's case is especially frustrating because last year state lawmakers tried to make disciplinary rules more flexible by giving local boards authority to, "on a case-by-case basis, modify the terms of the expulsion."

The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother sent a birthday cake to school, and a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal -- but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.

Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that blacks were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.

Other school districts are also trying to address problems they say have stemmed in part from overly strict zero-tolerance policies.

In Baltimore, around 10,000 students, roughly 12 percent of enrollment, were suspended during the 2006-07 school year, mostly for disruption and insubordination, according to a report by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. School officials there are rewriting the disciplinary code, to route students to counseling rather than suspension.

In Milwaukee, where school officials reported that 40 percent of ninth-graders had been suspended in the 2006-07 school year, the superintendent has encouraged teachers not to overreact to student misconduct.