This Week's Public School Idiocy

Brought to you by Greene County, Georgia...

Marine Corps Sgt. Zach Richardson visited Carson Middle School in Greensboro, Georgia expecting to meet some of the students who had been writing letters to him and his fellow marines in Iraq. When Richardson appeared at the school the week before Memorial Day, Principal Ulrica Corbett ordered him removed from school grounds.

Sgt. Richardson is a college roommate of one of the teachers at Carson, Matthew Lund. Lund had given his language arts students an assignment: write a letter to Richardson, who was serving in Iraq. They wrote, he wrote back, and soon other classes were writing letters to Richardson and other troops in Iraq.

Lund wanted to bring Richardson in to meet the students he'd been corresponding with, and filed the proper paper work to bring in Richardson as a school guest. Principal Corbett refused to even look at the request. Lund decided to go ahead with the scheduled visit without the principal's acknowledgement. She refused to address the request at all. Corbett is saying that the teacher didn't follow protocol. The newspaper has signed and dated copies of the documentation submitted by Lund.

When Richardson was kicked off school grounds, the local newspaper picked up on the story. Since then it's gotten big and ugly. Media from across the country has picked this up, as have the bloggers. Just another embarrassing story from here in the Peach State.