Ever since the horrors at Columbine, and with each incident in the recent two years involving school shootings, measures have been enacted to absolutely ridiculous heights in order to protect us.

One of the stories I hear again and again is that a student, usually around 5 years of age, has been removed from school on an “emergency expulsion,” here’s LWSD’s verbatim definition:

“Emergency Expulsion” is the immediate exclusion from school or campus when the student’s presence imposes an immediate and continuing danger to the student, other students, or school personnel, or an immediate and continuing threat of substantial disruption to the educational process.

Because the tyke was doing some silly kid thing, like using their hand in formation of a gun. Ripped completely out of context, well-meaning adults forget that little kids play with Nerf guns, water guns, heck even the old plastic guns used in the old Nintendo games; saw someone else do it, etc. etc… the reasons are endless and innocent.

So, basically the parents are informed that this kid is some sort of imminent danger to himself and everyone around him and must first be analyzed and questioned to be sure they aren’t actually out to be the next Green River murderer in order to get back into school. (Dare I mention that these evaluations are paid for by the parents to the tune of about $300?)

Ridiculous, right? But it’s happening, ridiculous or not.

So if the LWSD is treating everyone the same, what the heck is the deal with these monster teenagers who gang-assaulted a special-needs student at JHS? I’m absolutely astounded and horrified by the lack of information that we are receiving about this! My child was set to attend JHS next year, but after all I’ve heard and read over the years, too much has happened there. I decided to file for a variance for him, but now I see that it would seem these extremely troubled teens are just being refiltered into the school system, so how am I supposed to protect my kids?

We deserve to know.

Jodi de Vries, Kirkland