Don’T Throw Student Away With The Gun

Public schools open their doors a few weeks from now, but the doors no longer open automatically. Any student who brings a gun will experience something that used to be almost unheard-of: Expulsion. As in, you’re outta here, kid, and don’t come back.

New state and federal laws require the penalty and schools are enforcing it. This has stunned some of the affected students and parents. It also leaves a deep impression on young people who have seen acquaintances permanently disappear from their peer group. Good. That’s better than disappearance by fatal gunshot wound.

Say what they will to complain about school, most youngsters do value their opportunity to be present - for the social life, if nothing else. The majority value the education, too.

So expulsion is a powerful deterrent, a painful punishment and an effective way to remove a threat.

Given the menace guns pose, the penalty is necessary and appropriate. As a fringe benefit it adds a needed measure of credibility to the school system’s disciplinarians.

What happens, however, after expulsion? Should it bring an offender’s education to an end, for life? What then? A career in crime? Even most murderers get a second chance from our society; after a stay in prison they’re back on the street.

Here’s the challenge: How can the education system maintain the credibility of expulsion while allowing another chance to kids who make, as kids are known to do, a terrible mistake?

Here in Spokane, and elsewhere, educators are finding a way and they seem to be doing a decent job of it. The law gives them discretion to accept expelled students at another school, after a period of time and with appropriate strings attached.

Some legislators have said they find that upsetting. Some want to dictate conditions to be met before a student can be readmitted. They ought to leave micromanaging to those who know enough to do it well. Educators need discretion, and they have ample incentive to use it to make schools safer.

Not all gun violations are identical, and not every offender poses the same danger. School administrators should be trusted to examine each case and devise a way, if the student wants one, for the student eventually to get back on the road to an education. It shouldn’t be easy, but it should be possible.