A Virginia school suspended one of its students for taking too long to report that a fellow pupil had a bullet.
An 11-year-old sixth-grader was suspended for a day and a half at St John the Apostle Catholic School in Virginia Beach after he waited two hours before reporting that his friend had shown him a bullet, attorney Tim Anderson said, according to The Washington Post.
Anderson represents the student and his mother, Rachel Wigand.
The school faced threats of violence last week after the news of the suspension. St John’s was closed down for two days and a man in North Carolina was arrested.
Officials at the school pointed to the recent school shooting in Winder, Georgia at Apalachee High School, in which four people were killed and nine were injured, when defending their punishment, saying that the delay could have had disastrous consequences.
“The message it sends is, instead of ‘See something, say something,’ the kids are better off not saying anything,” Anderson told the paper.
“It’s creating a more dangerous environment,” he added.
St John’s is part of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which told The Post that “The school’s culture of safety requires that students and adults alike report potential threats as quickly as they are made aware of them; in a real emergency, gaps in reporting time — especially hours-long gaps — could have major consequences for school safety.”
Wigand’s son was shown a bullet by a classmate on the morning of September 5, adding that the boy had found it in his parent’s coin jar. Her son didn’t see it as a threat.
The mother said her son waited until he could make an anonymous report, taking a math test for an hour and a half before going to an art class alongside the boy who had shown him the bullet.
Anderson said that during a fire drill, the boy went to the school interim principal to report the bullet. The attorney said police eventually found the bullet in the pupil’s bag.
The lawyer said both students were suspended for a day and a half.
“There’s no way somebody would suspend you for reporting something,” Wigand told The Post. “I couldn’t believe it.”
After reviewing the school handbook, she noted to school officials that it stated nothing about reporting anything apart from sexual harassment.
Anderson said that the principal remained “adamant” that the 11-year-old be punished.
Wigand emailed Catholic and school officials threatening legal action if the school didn’t reverse its decision, but a lawyer for the diocese responded that they would not back down.
The lawyer wrote that the sixth-grader placed himself and others in danger by not reporting the bullet earlier.
“Failure to report a safety concern affects the safety of everyone in the school,” diocese attorney Leslie Winneberger wrote, according to The Post.
“The school cannot, and will not, take chances when it comes to student safety, especially true in light of the school shooting in Georgia this past week,” the lawyer added.
The school was closed on Thursday and Friday after getting an email threat because of the punishment of the 11-year-old. A man was arrested in North Carolina on Friday for allegedly making the threats.
Temporary private security has been hired to patrol the school premises, Superintendent Michael Riley told parents on Friday.
Wigand said she has spoken to school officials on several occasions about removing the suspension from her son’s record but that her calls and emails have gone unanswered.
“He’s upset because one of the things he didn’t want was to be bullied and didn’t want to be labeled a ‘snitch,’” Wigand told the paper.
She added: “I told him to stay strong and he did right. Let others know, if you see something that’s unsafe, you need to report it.”