Suspended From Public School For Having Kombucha Tea

An advocate of traditional foods and a Chapter Leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation, Pope explains in a recent blog posting that the young boy got into trouble when school officials at the Newport-Mesa Unified School District learned that he had kombucha tea stored in a typical glass container in his lunch box. Even though the bottle was safely tucked into a protective foam sleeve by the boy’s mother to avoid breakage, school administrators apparently took issue with the fact that it was glass, and decided to confiscate it.The next morning, the boy was called into the Vice Principal’s office where he was interrogated by administrators about the contents of the beverage and where he got it. According to Pope’s account of the incident, an on-site police officer specifically tasked with handling school district matters was called into the office as well, where he proceeded to tell the boy that kombucha is “illegal,” and that it could be “very dangerous” if he drinks it in conjunction with pharmaceutical drugs.

School officials try to enroll student in alcoholics class for drinking kombucha

Besides having been forced to spend nearly his entire day in the Vice Principal’s office being badgered, the young boy was also told that he may have to be transferred to another school for bringing kombucha to school, and the Vice Principal even reportedly tried to enroll him in an alcoholics class for teenagers — kombucha tea can sometimes contain trace levels of alcohol due to fermentation. But the icing on the cake was when school administrators told the boy he would have to be suspended from school for five days due to allegedly violating the school’s drug and alcohol policy.

At no point throughout the ridiculous fiasco did school officials ever once attempt to verify the contents of the kombucha bottle, nor did they bother testing it to see whether or not their outrageous claims of its alcohol held any merit. Instead, they basically went into panic mode right from the start and proceeded to make irrational accusations and take inappropriate disciplinary actions, all without contacting the child’s parents or giving him an adequate opportunity to properly defend himself against the attack.

After learning about the incident, Pope says she called the school to talk to the Vice Principal, who quickly backtracked and tried to claim that the situation was minor and had already been resolved, and that the unjustified suspension had already been lifted. A subsequent school district rebuttal, which was sent to Pope the day after her initial blog post on the incident was published, also tried to backtrack on the matter and spin it for the purpose of damage control.

You can read the school’s rebuttal here: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com