A third-grade girl's sweet tooth landed her in a sour spot at school this week.

Amber Brazda, the mother of 10-year-old Leighann Adair, said her daughter came home from Brazos Elementary School in tears on Monday after getting punished for having a Jolly Rancher at lunch. The friend who gave her the hard candy also got in trouble.

To Jack Ellis, superintendent of the Brazos Independent School District, the story is simple: The district prohibits students from having candy and gum on campus, and the third-graders broke the rules. Ellis defended Principal Jeanne Young's decision to give the girls five days of detention, which they served during recess and lunch.

“It's made to seem like we took the children and put them in a room for five days and locked the door,” Ellis said, explaining that the girls were in a classroom with staff there to help them with reading assignments.

He said the school has tried giving other students fewer days of detention for having candy, but that didn't keep the sticky sweet stuff from showing up.

To Brazda, the school's response to her daughter was, put simply, “ridiculous.”

“The punishment is harsher than the crime,” she said. ”They're little kids.”

The small school district, which has three campuses in Orchard and Wallis, bans gum and candy because, according to Ellis, “It creates a mess. It's all over your furniture and your floors.”

Ellis admits, though, that not all candy is treated equally. “If we had a kid whose mom slipped a couple of candy kisses in their lunch, we don't mess with that,” he said. “It's basically the hard candy and gum that we don't want. Hard candy, when dropped, it's the messiest to clean up.”

The superintendent also mentioned that the state's school nutrition policy bans certain foods of minimal nutritional value, including candy and gum.

That policy, however, does not apply to lunches that students bring from home or to a candy swap between friends, said Bryan Black, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Agriculture.

“Let me just stress, there is absolutely no prohibition in the nutrition policy that stops a student from sharing small amounts of food at the lunch table,” he said. “If a student wants to share a Jolly Rancher with a friend, that is not a violation of the school nutrition policy and we would not issue a negative finding to a school district.”

School has own policy

Still, Ellis said that Brazos Elementary spelled out its own policy and punishment in its “Parent Survival Guide.”

But the wording isn't as simple as, “No candy allowed.”

Specifically, the guide says, “The elementary campus has food of minimal nutritional value that is restricted to students during the school day including soda water, water ices, chewing gum, certain candies including hard candy, jellies and gums, marshmallow candies, fondant, licorice, spun candy, and candy-coated popcorn.”

Brazda said she plans to attend the next school board meeting to protest the rule.

“Who would think that a kid would get a week's detention for having a piece of candy at lunch?” she asked.

“She didn't even eat it. The teacher took it away.”

ericka.mellon@chron.com