On a recent morning in a Campbell Middle School classroom, a student saw a video of somebody else threatening to shoot up several other Cobb County schools, he told school administrators.
The student said the threat mentioned the school the eighth grader went to last year — where his best friends still go — and his sister’s school.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
This was Sept. 6, two days after four people were shot to death at Apalachee High School. The worst school shooting in Georgia’s history happened an hour away from Campbell Middle. In the days that followed, copycat threats flooded social media — spreading fear that any school could be next. To G.D., a 13-year-old with autism who’s been through lockdowns and active shooter drills, the threat he saw felt very real.
“He legitimately thought that person was going to follow up on those threats,” his father said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
So G.D. messaged two friends, warning them not to go to lunch that day because there could be a shooting.
He didn’t know his effort to alert his friends would lead to his expulsion from school; to having to temporarily live with a grandparent; to conversations with lawyers and to an appeal process that could take months.
“This is a case about a kid warning his friend because he had a natural and reasonable fear response to what he believed might be a true threat,” said Michael Tafelski, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing the family. “Kids are already terrified to go to school. They shouldn’t also be terrified to get kicked out of school for how they react when they’re scared.”
The AJC agreed to refer to the student by his initials, G.D., and agreed not to identify his parents at their request. The AJC reviewed statements from G.D., a school district police officer and a recording of a disciplinary hearing about the expulsion. A district spokesperson denied a request from the AJC to interview Campbell Middle School Principal LaEla Mitchell.
In the two weeks after the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High School, more than 100 students in Georgia faced criminal charges related to threatening violence at school, according to records examined by the AJC. Cobb, the state’s second-largest school district, said in a statement it has investigated more than 75 “false threats” in the two months after the shooting. Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced at a school board meeting a few weeks ago it is working with a company to detect threats on campus, but wouldn’t publicly provide details about the company or how much the district is spending.
At the disciplinary hearing, Mitchell agreed that G.D. did not make a threat himself. But she and an attorney for the district made the case that by sending the message to another student, which was then shared, G.D. disrupted the school day and improperly used a district device.
“Any time we have something that happens that takes us away from the normal operations of the school, involving the majority of the school, it’s considered a whole school disruption,” Mitchell said during the hearing.
She said the message caused a lockdown at the school, stoked fear among students and prompted parents to pick their children up early and kept them home from school the following Monday.
“I did not know all of this was going to happen, and I’m very sorry,” G.D. wrote in a statement on Sept. 6.
He was suspended from school until Oct. 18, when the hearing officer agreed with the principal’s recommendation to expel G.D. for the remainder of the school year.
G.D.’s attorney, Claire Sherburne also from the Southern Poverty Law Center, argued that the school had no way to know if the reaction at the school was caused specifically by G.D.’s message to his friend, and that G.D. did not intentionally disrupt the school day. She also argued that expulsion, which is the harshest punishment allowable in the district’s code of conduct, is too extreme.
“Was it the perfect way to handle it? Probably not. Does it merit a nine-month expulsion from school? It does not,” Sherburne said at the hearing. “This is a 13-year-old kid doing the best he can do deal with something that he shouldn’t have to deal with in the first place.”
The Cobb County School District declined to comment on G.D.’s case and whether it sets a precedent for other students who may share information about threats.
“Students and parents should know that making threats to schools and spreading threats to schools will have both disciplinary and legal consequences,” read an emailed statement from the district. Even “hoax threats” take extensive resources to investigate and lead to upticks in student absences, the statement said. Cobb asks that students and parents report any safety-related rumors through the district’s tip line.
After speaking with G.D. and reviewing the messages, a school police officer found “there was no threat to the school district and that the conversation, although inappropriate for school, was not illegal,” according to a signed statement from the officer.
That’s part of why the expulsion didn’t make sense to G.D.’s family.
“It felt like you couldn’t possibly expel him. Like, there’s no way,” his dad said. “This is really, really unreasonable. It doesn’t make sense.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The expulsion has generated some discussion among parents on social media. Some understand the district’s position while others disagree.
Delores Jones-Brown, a professor emerita at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, said the school’s response was an “overreaction.”
“The fact that he was trying to warn his classmates without there being any indication that he was involved in the threat is legally problematic, and sort of morally and ethically problematic,” said Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor.
“His intention was to safeguard his friends, which is not the same thing as the intention to disrupt the school day,” she added.
The family and their attorneys appealed the decision to the Cobb County Board of Education, which upheld the expulsion. The family will now appeal that decision to the Georgia Board of Education.
In the meantime, G.D. has been out of school for more time than he was in school this year. He’s living with his grandmother rather than at home with his parents, because he can’t stay home alone all day while both his parents work. His family is trying to enroll him in an alternative education program, and arrange with the school for him to receive some of the services he is entitled to as a student with special needs.
“They did my baby wrong,” his mom said. “They absolutely failed him.”
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