Rubber band bracelets, known popularly among kids as Rainbow Loom bracelets, have been banned from two Orange County schools, according to a report by the Orlando Sentinel.
According to school officials, they have banned the rubber band bracelets because they are disrupting class.
Lake Silver Elementary, a school for Orlando's College Park, and StarChikd Academy, a private school near Wekiwa Springs Park, told their students not to bring the rubber band bracelets to class.
"Children are in the classroom playing with them, having them in their desks, throwing them around the room, exchanging them. They're more than just a bracelet," Cindy Zimmermann, owner of the StarChild, told the Orlando Sentinel. Zimmerman has students in kindergarten to grade five.
"The little rubber bands are a pain in the butt when you find them all over the floor, and you have to vacuum," Caryn Oxley Sommersdorf admits that the rubber band bracelets create a mess, to the Orlando Sentinel. "And my cat eats them."
However, Sommersdorf finds the decision of the school to ban the rubber band bracelets perplexing. Sommersdorf's daughters are first- and third graders at Lake Silver.
"I think they've gone a little overboard," she told the Orlando Sentinel.
Distric officials of Orange County told the Orlando Sentinel that they were not aware of any other schools that banned the rubber band bracelets.
A ban precedence took place a few years ago. Silly Bandz, rubber bands that are shaped like Rainbow Loom jewelry, was banned a few years ago. However, an attempt at voluntary compliance with regard to Rainbow Loom jewelry was unsuccessful. Students still bring rubber band bracelets, but school authorities they will confiscate rubber band bracelets if they see them.
"They're kind of bummed," April Stringer, a Lake Silver parent whose second- and fifth-grade daughters can spend hours assembling the bands, told the Orlando Sentinel. "If they want to wear a rubber-band bracelet, I don't see the problem with it. It seems to be a bit much."
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