'We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child,' Jack Sheard, Grand Island Public Schools spokesperson, said.A school district has demanded a three-year-old deaf student named Hunter use a different hand sign for his name as the current gesture resembles a gun, his parents have claimed.
The Grand Island, Nebraska district reportedly has a policy forbidding children from bringing 'any instrument that looks like a weapon' to school.
School administrators claim Hunter Spanjer's name sign, which he makes by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then shaking his hands, violates that policy, his parents said.
While it is perhaps unsurprising that the sign for the name Hunter resembles a gun, supporters of the family have argued that it is not something the little boy will be aware of.
'Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way,' the boy's grandmother, Janet Logue, told KOLN.
'His name sign, they say, is a violation of their weapons policy,' his father, Brian Spanjer, added. 'It's a registered sign through S.E.E.' - which stands for Signing Exact English, a sign language system.
The boy has slightly modified the S.E.E. sign by crossing his fingers, which his family claims makes it personal to the youngster.
Grand Island resident Fredda Bartenbach added: 'I find it very difficult to believe that the sign language that shows his name resembles a gun in any way would even enter a child's mind.'
Speaking to KOLN, the school district was not forthcoming with details into the incident.
'We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child,' Jack Sheard, Grand Island Public Schools spokesperson, said.
Yet he later claimed the issue was a 'misunderstanding' which had nothing to do with weapons.
It was 'not an appropriate thing to do in school' but Hunter was being asked to spell his name out by letters rather than using the sign, Sheard told the New York Daily News.
'We want to do what is best for every student in our district, and we care more about that than everything else,' he said. 'We are working with the parents to find the best solution we can.'
Hunter's parents have set up a Facebook group for support and said that lawyers from the National Association of the Deaf could become involved to make sure their son can keep his name.
Howard Rosenblum, CEO of the association, told the Huffington Post it would be help the Spanjers with legal action if necessary.
I've got a solution! Why not take every "adult" who was involved in making this decision around the back of the bike sheds, and beat some sense into them?
