What is up with today's discipline system?

My wonderful, generally well-behaved son has been threatened with ISS twice in two weeks. Mind you, with his class discipline card still on green. Here's how it works: Cards start off white and everytime you do something wrong they change, to green, then yellow, then orange, then red. When you hit red you are sent to the principle's office. Tanner is white/green kind of kid. (and honestly green is only maybe once a week, if that)
Week before last he got in trouble because he was sitting around with two other boys giggling under their breath and singing the words to the "I like big butts and I cannot lie" song. One of the boys had the words written down (and not all the correct words mind you - an 8 year old interpretation). Mrs. Adkins made Tanner copy them and bring them home to me. When confronted he didn't even know most of the words and he certainly didn't understand the undertone of the song. To him it was just a song about big butts and that was funny. Well, of course it's funny! He's 8, it has a catchy tune, and it's a song about big butts. Duh. Appropriate, no. Funny for an 8 year old, yeah. Mrs. Adkins said if he sang it again it would land him in ISS.
Then Tuesday he comes home with a discipinary note (his card was on green for the day still) that said he had been asked several times lately by the teacher supervising recess not to run down the slide. His excuse was just that he couldn't remember (which is a sorry excuse). She said if he did it again maybe a trip to ISS would jog his memory. What? Really? That's an appropriate punishment for that? I realize running down the slide is not acceptable behavior, and that when given instructions by a teacher he should follow them, period. But really, ISS is the right solution for that? What happened to losing your recess for a couple of days, and doing something really sucky like cleaning the chalk boards, or scrubbing the floor, or something?
I just don't get it. Maybe some of my teacher friends can give me some insight. My memory of ISS when I was in school was that only the "really bad" kids went there. I mean you had to be throwing punches or something, and honestly I don't even remember there being ISS in elementary school. A good friend said to me, "if that's what you throw at them for minor stuff, what do you do when they really do something bad? What is there for them to be afraid of?" That's all I'm saying.

Then this morning I saw this posted on a friend from Indiana's FB:
"saw the best thing ever today! There was a middle school-aged child holding a sign on the side of the road that said "I am a THIEF! I stole rings and $130 from my MOTHER!" What looked to be his dad was standing a few feet away. This was on the side of Raceway Rd during rush hour. I thought it was awesome!"

What ever happened to stuff like this? I'm sure that this made much more of an impact on this kid than corporal punishment, or grounding, or taking his favorite things would have. Who knows, those things might have come in conjunction with that, but all I'm saying is that is classic! We need more of stuff like that!

I've been struggling with whether I should call his teacher and let her know that this has really been bothering me or just let it go. It's almost the end of the school year and I know he won't do it again. Hmmm.

Frazzled

Seriously, can't keep up. I feel like I'm about to be in the middle of a complete emotional meltdown but I'm trying to hang on. CJ is equally as frazzled as me. We have GOT to sell our house. The contract with our current realtor was up today. We decided not to relist with him and I'm going to go on a search for a new realtor this week. I have taken several hundred pictures over the last couple of weeks and don't have a minute to upload them. I've been very busy with the mowing business. Switching schedules around. Calling people to confirm. Trying to figure out how exactly to pay a real employee because now we have one. (I have to figure that out by thursday.)
The kids baseball schedule is about to kill me and CJ both. CJ desperately needs to work a normal day but 3 or 4 days a week he has to quit at 4:00 to be at practice or a game. The work load is piling up. People are getting frustrated.
Last week Grace was home Tuesday and Wednesday with a mystery fever. Thursday both kids had practice. Friday I was running errands in Forth Worth and they called wanting to show the house. Can you say, "um, no." Why? Because it's a disaster! I have 3 kids and a very busy life. I can run around like a mad woman and make it presentable in 2 hours, but you can't call me at 11:45 and want to show it at 1:00!! I can't even get back home in that amount of time. And, I don't care what anybody says. There is no way possible I can live my life in such a manner that would demand that my house be spotless 100% of the time before I walk out the door to go do anything. Can't do it. Feel really bad that I had to say no, but I guess they didn't want to see it that bad. I told them they could come after 4:00 or anytime over the weekend but they never called back. We desperately need to move but oh well. It's all I can do.
Friday night Tanner had a game down in Glen Rose. We scored 5 runs in the first inning and then lost 11-6. Can you guess how mad CJ was?!?! Smokin'. Not because we lost. Because we lost because they were playing like 4 year olds. Seriously, some of the kids on Grace's team could field the ball and throw it to first base better than they were doing it. It was ugly. Saturday we spent 5 hours at the ballpark for two games. Tanner's team lost again but they played much better. I have no idea if Grace's team won or lost. Is that sad? It doesn't matter. It's tee-ball. I love tee-ball. They're all so cute.
After Grace's game we headed to Becky and Otis's house to help them build a covered deck area for their pool. Had a sleep over and finished it on sunday. Glad we got started on saturday or it would be incomplete at this point. It's super cute though and I can't wait to help her hold it down this summer!
Did I mention that sometime saturday evening my allergies kicked into high gear? Today I feel exhausted, achy, stuffy, and just plain miserable. Oh, and instead of resting tomorrow I get to go to the Zoo with Grace's kindergarten class and then to Tanner's baseball game tomorrow night. Ugh.
I hate that I feel like this. I am generally an almost annoyingly optimistic, happy person. I just can't find my happy place right now.