6-Year-Old Boy Suspended Over Gun Gesture - NBC Right Now/KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA |

WASHINGTONPOST.COM - The parents of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy are fighting the first-grader's suspension from a Montgomery County public school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow," an incident school officials characterized in a disciplinary letter as a threat "to shoot a student."

The first-grader was suspended for one day, Dec. 21. The family's attorney filed an appeal Wednesday, asking that the incident be expunged from the boy's school record amid concerns of long-term fallout.

The boy "had no intention to shoot anyone," said attorney Robin Ficker, who described the child as soft-spoken, with no propensity for violence. "He's skinny and meek. In his words, he was playing."

The suspension came in a week when the nation was reeling from the massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — and left elected leaders, educators and parents debating how best to keep schools safe.

But it also comes as leaders in Maryland and a growing number of states are working to reduce out-of-school suspensions, which have increased greatly in the past several decades and are linked in studies to lower achievement and students dropping out of school.

Ficker attributed some of the reaction by school officials to the widespread alarm that followed the Newtown shootings. But he contended that the school system's portrayal of the episode could be damaging to the boy. The Washington Post generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes or other wrongdoing.

"They took the worst possible interpretation of this little child's actions, and five years from now, if he gets into a tussle, they're going to look back and say, ‘This is one bad little kid,' " Ficker said.

Montgomery schools spokesman Dana Tofig said he could not discuss individual students for privacy reasons. But in a written statement, Tofig said the suspension "was not a kneejerk reaction to a single incident."