Sacramento, California, This Could Be One of the Biggest Common Core Stories Yet

Officials at a California grade school have suspended the mother of a 12-year-old boy over her – and his – criticism of the Common Core Standards Initiative.

The mother is Katherine Duran, reports local ABC affiliate KXTV. Her 12-year-old son, Christopher Duran, attends Mark Twain Elementary School in Sacramento.

A police officer delivered a form labeled “withdrawal of consent” to the Duran home, legally banning Katherine Duran from the premises of Mark Twain Elementary for 14 days.

What was the mother’s crime? Well, school administrators and Sacramento school district officials have had tremendous difficulty getting their story straight on that one.

Last week, school district spokesman Gabe Ross told KXTV that she was disrupting school activities by “distributing information to children directly.” The information showed students and parents how to opt out of Common Core testing.

Turns out Ross got his facts wrong, though. He was later forced to admit his mistake.

In reality, it was 12-year-old Christopher Duran who was handing out the Common Core opt-out forms to his classmates.

School officials said this action was disruptive

To blame me and say that I had personally handed a child that information on school property during school hours and disrupting the school—no, none of that is true,” the boy’s mother told the ABC affiliate.

The real reason the activist mother was suspended, she claims, is because the principal got mad when she dropped by to ask why her son’s opt-out forms had been confiscated. Duran claims that the principal snapped at her and called the opt-out forms inappropriate.

Duran said she then tried to take the forms home but the petty principal initially wouldn’t allow it.

“She slammed her hand down on top of those letters and said, no they’re not yours anymore; you left them here,” Duran told KXTV.

According to the website of the Sacramento Unified School District, the principal of Mark Twain Elementary is Rosario Guillen.

It seems almost certain that Katherine Duran must have had at least some influence on her son’s decision to take the forms to school. Nevertheless, Christopher Duran insists that his role as form distributor was voluntary.

“I wanted to pass out these forms so that the students could give them to their parents,” he told the station.

He said he was “outraged” when his mother was suspended from his school—and when the police showed up at his house.

On the other hand, Katherine Duran took the lemons of the police visit and made lemonade—by sending the officer who dropped by her home away with a few opt-out forms for his children.