All Students With Guns to Be Expelled : Education: Earlier school board policy allowed discretion in penalizing those under 16. A dissenter questions whether campuses will be safer.

In the wake of an accidental classroom shooting that killed one student and wounded another, the Los Angeles Board of Education toughened its weapons policy Monday, mandating that any student caught with a gun on campus be expelled from the district for at least two semesters.

“We can now put a sign up, ‘Use a gun, be expelled,’ and it will be true,” said board member Roberta Weintraub, who sponsored the motion that will eliminate provisions allowing students under 16 years of age to escape expulsion.

The district’s former policy gave the committee overseeing student discipline the discretion to recommend reassignment to alternative schools within the district for students younger than 16 who are caught with guns on campus.

The new policy will require that committee--made up of a school principal, a counselor and a psychologist--to recommend expulsion in every case. The school board will retain its authority to override the recommendation.

The action follows the decision last week by Supt. Sid Thompson to begin using hand-held metal detectors to randomly search students for weapons at the district’s 49 high schools.

In the past, the board has been divided over whether younger students should be expelled outright or merely removed from regular campuses, because those students were considered more amenable to rehabilitation and had few educational options outside the district.

But on Monday, the board voted 6 to 1 for the more drastic policy, saying the problem of guns on campus was severe enough to warrant it.

“It is extremely difficult to think about what will happen to the small number of students” left without educational options, said board President Leticia Quezada. “But the needs of the overwhelming majority of our students will be the first choice to me.”

Only board member Jeff Horton--who represents the Fairfax district where last month’s shooting occurred--disagreed.

“In our desire to make a neat, clean, 15-second statement, we’re going to be putting on the street the very kids that our students are afraid of,” he said. “I think the best policy is to find a supervised place where these kids are accounted for. This policy may grab another headline . . . but will it make the general level of safety on our campuses greater?”

But board member Mark Slavkin called the new policy “a basic statement of values . . . that sends a message loud and clear that we have a zero tolerance for guns in our schools.”

Under the new policy, students caught with guns--including air guns, stun guns and realistic replicas--will be recommended for expulsion for the balance of the school semester as well as the entire next semester.

Students may apply for readmittance to the district after that and must show that they have been making satisfactory academic progress in an alternative setting during their expulsion period.

In the last school year, 95 students were expelled for bringing guns on campus, Madrigal said.