The principal’s action was the result of a new state law that had gone into effect just months earlier, heightening penalties for students who make threats at school. Passed after a former student shot and killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville, the law requires students to be expelled for at least a year if they threaten mass violence on school property, making it a zero-tolerance offense.
Tennessee lawmakers claimed that ramping up punishments for threats would help prevent serious acts of violence. “What we’re really doing is sending a message that says ‘Hey, this is not a joke, this is not a joking matter, so don’t do this,’” state Sen. Jon Lundberg, a co-sponsor of the legislation, told a Chattanooga news station a week and a half after the law went into effect.
Tennessee school officials have used the law to expel students for mildly disruptive behavior, according to advocates and lawyers across the state who spoke with ProPublica. (In Tennessee and a number of other states, expulsions aren’t necessarily permanent.) Some students have been expelled even when officials themselves determined that the threat was not credible. Lawmakers did put a new fix in place in May that limits expulsions to students who make “valid” threats of mass violence. But that still leaves it up to administrators to determine which threats are valid.
In some cases last school year, administrators handed off the responsibility of dealing with minor incidents to law enforcement. As a result, the type of misbehavior that would normally result in a scolding or brief suspension has led to children being not just expelled but also arrested, charged and placed in juvenile detention, according to juvenile defense lawyers and a recent lawsuit.
Do these freaks really not remember what it was like to be a kid? Kids do crazy shit, it’s how we all learn about ourselves, our boundaries, our values. Punishing a kid for playing around like this will not help anyone, it will simply make it more likely that this kid acts out later because their sense of what’s socially acceptable and what’s not will be completely skewed by these absurd rules.
I played finger guns in school all the time (before active-shooter drills were a thing, to be fair), and it’s part of how I figured out that I hate guns and violence. Punishment first has never been effective, we need to trust ourselves and our kids a little more.
the real solution is for the parents to get all the kids to make finger guns
and when that happens, sue the school for not taking the exact same action
Nicely done 😁
Not the most effective law but it’s interesting to see a state like Tennessee implementing any laws against gun violence in schools.
laws against gun violence in schools.
Not really. They’re laws that increase lifelong rates of criminality in impacted students.
Yeah that’s gonna stop the next school shooter from mowing down whatever class they’re going for. They are afraid of school expulsion for sure.
🎵“I’m gonna finger bang, bang you every night”🎶
To kids who hate school, being able to not go for a year might be a reward.
It sets them back a year so I doubt they’d be happy about redoing a grade.
Gonna be a lot of 21 year old seniors buying booze for their classmate’s parties in about 10 - 15 years
At 10, they probably won’t even think of that until the next year. And that’s assuming that they actually make them do the grade instead of skip. A lot of schools think it is more important to stay with your age group. And they are probably not wrong.
School refusal is real.
Oh no, I think you’re missing the real goal here.
Clearly, these children yearn for the mines.
Who peed in your cornflakes this morning?
That I think choosing to make such egregious punishment is intended to increase the rate of dropouts, and more relaxed child labor laws?
I mean, this isn’t new. Its a republican goal, just look at Arkansas and Iowa.
School Administrators: “If only we could kick out the students we don’t like, but the law states that every kid gets an education”
School shooting -> New law
“Hey, I know just how to selectively abuse this!”
Let the kids learn to use weapons before their old enough to walk, but don’t you fucking DARE use a finger gun 👉
Go play insert any game with guns.
Cause 10 year Olds are known to be up on current laws and to think about the consequences of thier actions when they are mad, or really anytime.
One year seems too long.
Wow, sounds like the idea of “At Will” for the workplace has spread elsewhere. Making a vague generic rule that can be used to get rid of anyone you feel is a problem. I wonder how many “messages” will have to be sent to keep these kids in line from doing anything kid-related.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/tennessee-school-threats-expulsions
Wow, ok, gee, american will literally do anything and everything other than control and limit their gun sales.
Adults have the right to bear arms, but kids don’t have the right to bear hands? Yup, we live in a dystopia…
The kid was angry, but you are only making it worse with this punishment. The appropriate thing to do would be to send him to a competent guidance counselor and work through his feelings then send him on a path forward. Not really even a "punishment " but a correction. Before reading what happened I would have said that even that would be too much, but having read it, I don’t think it would hurt to counsel him though his feelings. I doubt Tennessee has many competent guidance counselors though.
My five year old got a week out of school suspension and made to go to the kids psych ward because she pretended to shoot someone on the playground as part of a game. The other kid narced on her and it turned into a big fucking thing.
Fuck this bullshit country.
The psych ward doctors said “this is the stupidest thing we’ve ever dealt with”
I had a kid in elementary school claim they had a gun in their backpack and were going to shot them with.
The child reported the threat to their parents after school so the school didn’t have a chance to search the backpack.
This was a problem child so this was hardly his first run in with stepping out of line. All that happened was that I got a phone call.
Not all school districts are insane.
Also of note, she has diagnosed adhd and THAT turned into a big ordeal. To the point my wife called the diocese (it’s a catholic school, despite us being atheist) and got the principal shitcanned because of how they were treating our kid.
The new principal was bad at first but worked with us and we came up with a plan and system for the adhd.
