Another nutty no tolerance story. Remember the old days when you hired good people (principals and superintendents in this case) and they were expected to make sound decisions based on a framework of rules and the particulars of individual cases.

American society is so litigious that policies have been set in place to protect the district and no one is allowed to deviate from those policies. If the school principal were do deviate from the "no tolerance" policy he or she would likely be subject to termination regardless of how intelligent and well reasoned their actions were.

IIRC there were a couple of young grade schoolers that were suspended a couple of years ago for chasing each other around the school yard pointing the fingers at each other and yelling "bang". Another zero tolerance "weapons" policy in action.