Back-to-School: Cutting, Cuffs and Inciting Riots

Tonight was Back-to-School Night! Last year, we planned way far in advance, organized a potluck, invited our Award-Winning student Mariachi group, showed slides of activities and I think I met with over 20 parents, which is about 20% of the parents, and a high percentage compared to what we usually get. This year, we weren't notified that this event was on the schedule until Tuesday, our student Leadership sold cold pizza and warm soft drinks (but not many!) and the police showed up to arrest one of our students and talk to the parents of three other students they arrested on Tueesday....oh, and I only met with 4 parents.

Remember DJ, who was reported to have been cutting herself? She was sequestered in our office this afternoon and evening until the Police hauled her off in handcuffs. Due to confidentiality rights, I don't know the charges, but I do know she's been stuck like glue to one of our female Security Supervisors for the past two days explaining some difficult situation she got herself involved in. By the way, I finally saw the cuts on her arms...she wears sleeveless shirts everyday and uses pen to outline the scars and fresh wounds. I don't know how I missed them the first time I looked, they're at her wrists and further up her arm. We've gotten help for her, but apparently, it's too little too late.

Yesterday our Assistant Principal called an Assembly at which she addressed the students. Citing confidentiality issues she said she could not talk about specifics of "the incident" but that how the students reacted on the bus was unhelpful and in appropriate and that she was proud of them for sticking up for each other. Confused? So were most of the kids and I. Turns out that Tuesday afternoon, as one of our buses pulled up to the main campus to unload our kids, the driver of the next bus observed a lit "firecracker" being thrown from the bus. An officer boarded the bus and removed the student reported to have done it. (That student was one of the students who was a recipient of a generous holiday donation I previously wrote about.) The other students on the bus were all trying to tell the officer that he was throwing the burning object back out of the bus after it was thrown into the bus from a car that had been following the bus. (Apparently this car had followed the bus before and its passengers threw rocks at the bus and the students, but no one had reported it.) In the confusion, one of my students began having a panic attack, so one of my former students helped him off the bus and sat on the curb trying to calm him down. At this point, the story goes, another officer told them to reboard the bus and when they refused and tried to explain, they were shoved by the officer, so they shoved back (not the brightest response!) and then they were thrown up against a car and cuffed. These two students were charged with felony "inciting a riot" and the first student was arrested on felony charges also (the exact nature of these charges isn't clear). All three spent the entire evening at the Police station in custody and were suspended from school for 3 days. The next day when the other students on the bus began talking with each other, word spread that the Police Officers did not have an accurate picture of what happened, so one of our English teachers asked the students to go see our Assistant Principal and write down what they witnessed....So, four Police Officers showed up to our Back-to-School Night (with their sidearms!) and interviewed lots of people. Our AP spent most of the past two days trying to have our students heard, and apparently tonight the Police were listening.

So, all of this kind of put a damper on BTS Night. Two unexpected happyish notes: one of the students' written statement as so incomprehensible that it led to a referral for learning disorder testing...and today in Biology we focused on the difference between observation and inference, and my students described how in the situation on the bus, different people made different observations and made different inferences! Exactly!