Bad kids at Cortez Middle School get to spend the day at the ball park for their disruptive behavior — except it’s not as fun as it sounds.

According to CMS assistant principal Tom Burris, students with whom the administration has exhausted all disciplinary measures, short of expulsion, have the option of sitting on a bucket on the school’s baseball infield for "time-out."

After the child’s parent is made aware of the action, Burris said, the student is taken from the classroom setting, given a wide-brimmed hat and orange vest, sent outside and instructed to do homework or read a book.

However, some critics say the punishment is extreme and humiliating. One woman complained to the Journal that her grandson was outside so long that he was badly sunburned and dehydrated because he didn’t have a water bottle.

CMS Principal Byron Wiehe refuted the contention and said the child was never in harm’s way.

"That’s not the case at all. That’s why we have that hat. If there’s going to be any physical harm to a kid going out there, then they’re not going out there — period. This is not a physical deprivation of them. It has nothing to even do with that."

A child on the bucket Thurs-day was wearing an orange hard hat and said he had been allowed inside once, at lunchtime, for water and a bathroom break. The boy claimed that motorists were honking their horns and cursing at him.

Wiehe did not dismiss the student’s account but said that the child was no more a target of harassment than any other student on the campus because of the school’s proximity to the highway.

"We have PE classes out there. They’ve got recess out there. I would bet that that happens periodically with any person out there."

The costume is not meant to be a form of humiliation, but a visibility aid, Burris said.

"The hat is part of it because it keeps them from getting any sunburn," Burris said. "The vest was actually given to me by a kid that sat out there at one time. He said, ‘This way you can see me out there,’ and I thought that was a pretty good idea. We can glance out there from the office and see that everything’s fine and dandy and he’s still there."

The time a student spends in time-out varies considerably but students are periodically allowed to come in to use the restroom and get water as well as go in for lunch, administrators say.

Burris did say that giving the offender a water bottle and sunscreen might be a good idea.

"We’ve had kids out there for just one period before, but usually it’s a half-day or so," Burris said. "Sometimes they’ll do a full day. It just kind of depends on when things happen with them."

Wiehe and Burris said they feel the punishment is both appropriate and effective and prefer it to expulsion or out-of-school suspension, where often the students are unsupervised.

"People don’t understand what is going on," Wiehe said. "They think that a kid screws up in the hallway and all of a sudden they’re sitting out on the bucket. That’s not the case.

"A gamut of interventions has been exhausted. If we put them in our most restrictive areas — in detention, in our CAP room, in study hall — that’s where most of the kids will finally get back on track. Certain kids go in there and totally disrupt the situation."

Wiehe explained that the outside time-out is a last resort in a "stair-step" disciplinary process.

"You take the least consequence to help this kid change his behavior. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you go to the next and you keep going down the line and it goes all the way to expulsion."

Wiehe said the disruptive students sometimes have to be removed from the classroom because they are hindering the learning of others.

"We’re to the point with those students that we’ve got to think of 800 other students who come here to learn. That’s what parents expect us to do is provide a learning environment."

So far this year, two students have been sent to the field for discipline — both just recently, in part because of the hospitable weather but also because of a year-long accumulation of disciplinary referrals.

"These kids started the year out and a multitude of interventions have been tried. We’re getting down to the point where it’s time to make a decision if we want to expel these kids or not," Wiehe said.

Wiehe said the students who are subject to the discipline action have disciplinary referrals beyond reason.

"We have kids with 35 referrals here. They are truly a habitually disruptive student and detrimental to the educational process of this school."

Wiehe said parents have expressed many different opinions to school administrators about the disciplinary tactic, both supportive of it and not.

"We have parents who encourage us to do it. We have parents that encourage us to do things that we’re not allowed to do to kids — that we wouldn’t think of doing in this day and age. Then we’ve got parents that would not want us to discipline their kids even if they’re fighting."

State law also plays into the administrators’ decisions, often limiting their ability to do their jobs, he said.

"Creative discipline that falls within the legal realms of today’s education has limited educators to be able to promote academic learning in schools to the degree that we have the problems that we have. Ultimately you’re trying to get kids to behave, go to class, learn, and be successful."

Wiehe said he believes that anyone who had experienced dealing with discipline in a middle school would agree that making a child sit on a bucket in the infield is reasonable and effective.