Listened to a story on
This American Life this am about a school in TX that sentenced a 13-year-old girl to spend the remainder of her 8th grade year...73 days...at the district alternative school where they send students who are violent or who bring banned items to school or sell drugs or who make "terroristic threats".
Her crime? She overheard a student tell one of his classmates, "Don't come to school tomorrow". She didn't think much of it at first but became more concerned as the day went on. After school she texted friends - as middle-schoolers will - to see if they thought she should be concerned. She decided to tell her mother to see what could be done but before her mother had a chance to call authorities, mom got a call from the school telling her they knew about the story from the other students the girl had texted with. They were going to handle it. Mom was relieved, of course.
The boy was investigated and no threat was found. The girl - an honor student and cheerleader with no previous disciplinary issues - was called into the principal's office the next day and told she was being kicked out of school because the student code of conduct says students can't "make false accusations or perpetrate hoaxes regarding school safety." That the boy admitted he said it didn't matter. That the girl wasn't acting with ANY malice didn't matter. She was out for the rest of the year.
FTR, an actual "terroristic threat" merits
30 days of alternative placement in another district. Also FTR, the admin team at the school was all-white and the student was a 5'7" black girl hoping to get into the same prestigious high school program her brother and sister had attended. Again FTR, the district is 13% black but blacks make up a third of the students at the alternative school and you have to wonder, after hearing this story, how many of them are there for the same kind of bullshit "race obsessed idiot" reasoning.
Lastly FTR, an appeal to the school admin got the alternative placement reduced to 30 days but an appeal to the district was successful. The girl returned to her middle school after missing three weeks (her mother refused to take her to the alternative school). Her record was cleared and she's now a freshman in the prestigious program she wanted. The middle school principal's actions were investigated, she was placed on administrative leave, and eventually resigned.