AMHERST — For Amherst Steele High School freshman Mike McGannon, one little white pill was enough to get him expelled — even though he insists it was just a Tylenol.

But school officials apparently thought it was something else, and the 14-year-old contends the school’s assistant principal coerced him into to sign a false statement saying the pill was Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

Exactly what the pill is remains unclear — Amherst police haven’t sent it out to be analyzed, but Lt. Joseph Kucirek said there are no charges pending against Mike.

But school officials punished Mike anyway. He was given a 10-day suspension initially, and then expelled for 80 days. He won’t be allowed back in class until Oct. 15.

That’s long enough, said his father, also named Mike McGannon, to seriously hurt his son’s education. Mike gets A’s and B’s and was a wide receiver on the freshman football team in the fall, his father said.

He had planned to try out for the school’s baseball team this spring before the incident, McGannon said.

McGannon is challenging the expulsion, and he said school officials forced his son to confess to something he didn’t do.

“They’re going on a witch hunt for my boy and all they have is an aspirin,” McGannon said.

Amherst Superintendent Robert Boynton refused to comment specifically on his decision to expel Mike, but he said Friday that the school has a strict anti-drug policy.

“Under the code of conduct, a student can be disciplined for drugs,” Boynton said. “They can be look-alike drugs or they can be actual drugs.”

In his March 14 letter of expulsion, Boynton wrote that he was sorry that he had to expel the boy, but he had little choice.

“Michael behaved in a manner that cannot be tolerated by the school system,” Boynton wrote.

Mike said his problems began in his second period gym class on March 4, when he complained about a headache to a fellow student.

“I had a headache and he just said ‘Here, take a Tylenol,’ ” Mike said.

Mike said he put the pill in his pocket, intending to take it after class, but before he could, he was confronted by Principal Mike Gillam, who took him to the school’s office and forced him to turn out his pockets.

That’s when Mike turned over the pill and told Gillam it was a Tylenol. But Mike said neither Gillam nor Assistant Principal Jeanne Kornick believed him.

Gillam finally left the room, leaving him alone with Kornick, Mike said.

For more than an hour, he said he kept insisting it was Tylenol — which he admits having in violation of school rules that require a parent to dispense any drugs — but Kornick didn’t believe him, and she wouldn’t let him leave the office until he admitted he did drugs at school.

And so finally, he wrote out a confession — one in which he wrote that he and other students brought pills to school and had been told by older students to crush them and snort them. He also wrote that he had brought Xanax to school, and he wrote that he and another student snorted pills

“Stupid,’’ is how he now describes that decision.

But he also noted in the written statement that he got the pill from another student, whose name was redacted in a copy provided to The Chronicle by McGannon, and that the student told him it was Tylenol.

Zachary Simonoff, McGannon family attorney, said he isn’t surprised that Mike told Kornick what she wanted to hear, particularly after she promised him he would face minimal punishment if he admitted using drugs on school property.

“That’s the definition of coerced,” he said.

The 15-year-old boy who Mike said gave him the pill was arrested that same day after police reported finding him with cigarettes and Seroquel, a drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

McGannon said police told him his son had nothing to worry about from them.

In the meantime, Simonoff said he plans to ask a county judge to issue an order allowing Mike to return to school while the family asks the Amherst School Board to overturn the expulsion.

The only other option, Simonoff said, would be to take an offer from Boynton that would allow Mike to return to school in June, but only if he subjects himself to random drug tests and undergoes drug and alcohol counseling.

“You’d think he was snorting crack on the front steps of the school with all those requirements,” Simonoff said.

McGannon said he’s not inclined to take the offer because the district overreacted and is taking its zero-tolerance policy too far.

Mike said he’s never done drugs, and that his education is important to him as well as his father.

“I just want to go back to school,” he said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147  or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

 

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