Students Who Bring Guns to School

I work in a school district in which students who were once expelled for the offense of bringing a gun to school can be reinstated and returned to the traditional comprehensive setting. Last week I was notified that I would soon be getting one of those students again. This student committed the act of bringing a pellet gun to school when he was 12 years old. He is now 15 and recently was caught with a gun again. This time it was a loaded firearm.

Where is the rehabilitation and lesson in all of this? A person whose nonconformance to society’s rules and laws can essentially go ignored is returned to the norm. Must the ultimate occur (death or serious injury) for our society to see that our current laws are not working? As a teacher, I wonder just how long our futile system will remain. Perhaps it will change before I leave the classroom within the next six or seven years. Those who are considering the teaching profession should think twice, unless they do not mind entering a battleground.

Karen Garner

Rancho Cucamonga