Break the American teachers' unions.

Because it's thanks to them that idiocy like this has become policy:

A 16-year-old boy has been expelled from his far northwest suburban high school for doodling what school officials say is a gang symbol in his notebook.

Members of the McHenry Community High School District 156 school board voted Tuesday to expel student Derek Kelly from McHenry East Campus High School for the rest of the school year, according to Derek's mother, Kathy Kelly.

The sketch showed the letters "D.L.K" in the middle of a cross with a spider web in one corner and a crown on top. School officials allegedly told Kathy Kelly the letters stood for "Disciples Latin King," referring to the Latin Kings and Latin Disciples street gangs.

But Kelly said those are also the initials of her son, whose full name is Derek Leon Kelly.

I don't know a lot about gang culture, but isn't the whole point of being in a gang that you're not in any of the other gangs? If the Latin Kings and Latin Disciples are two different gangs, would any of their members draw signs containing the words "Disciples Latin King"? My point being that, even without the kid's intitials being what they are, this would still be stupid.

Crap like this is beginning to seep across the Atlantic, depressingly. No doubt zero-tolerance policies will still be all the rage in Britain twenty years after they've been discredited and abandoned in the US.