School Works Through Threat Incident

Threats by students cannot be treated as a black-and-white matter. And that, explained a West Valley school official, is why a seventh-grade student at Centennial Middle School who threatened to kill another student was not suspended in the closing days of school.

“There’s nothing cut and dried about these situations,” said Gene Sementi, assistant principal. “If you try to make it black and white, and you throw them all out, well, that may be easy to defend, but it’s not necessarily best for families and kids.”

The situation at Centennial involved a girl who had been harassed by a boy, Sementi said. The boy had been told to stay away from her, but about a month later he’d begun to tease her again. In retaliation, Sementi said, the girl threatened to kill the boy.

Word of the threat traveled to other students, and finally surfaced when another girl told her parents she was scared to attend school with the girl who had made the threat.

Those parents, Richard and Jeannie Jackson, alerted school officials.

“Thankfully. If they hadn’t then we never would have caught on to it,” Sementi said.

Investigation of the incident was delayed because the girl who made the threat was absent from school for several days. Once she returned, both students involved in the friction met with Sementi and he explained the seriousness of both offenses: harassment and making threats. By that time, only three days of the school year remained. The boy and girl were separated during the final days of school. Teachers were alerted.

“Ninety-five percent of the time, a threat like that would have meant immediate suspension,” Sementi said.

Asked if reaction to the threat was milder because the student was a girl, Sementi said, “It’s not a gender issue. It’s a kid-by-kid issue.”