A 13-year-old Texas student was suspended after she overheard a classmate talking to another student and became concerned about school shootings.
The eighth grader currently attends Lakeview Middle School in Lewisville.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the student overheard a classmate telling another student in gym class, “Don’t come to school tomorrow” and didn’t think much about it. However, as time passed, she became concerned, wondering if the comment was a threat due to the number of mass school shootings in the country. She messaged several friends in a group chat and noted her fear.
She wrote, “this is genuinely scaring the s–t out of me.” Another text followed that read, “lets see if i can tell my mom without crying.”
After she got home from school, the student told her mother, Lisa Youngblood, about the comment she overheard. As the student told her mother what happened, they received a phone call from the assistant principal. The parents of the student’s friends on the group chat had called the school to inquire.
The assistant principal told Youngblood that an investigation was conducted on Jan. 26 and found that the boy who made the comments had no access to a gun and there was no threat.
Youngblood said that her daughter was relieved to return to school the next day but was called into the office during the first period and told she was being suspended for three days. She was also told that she would spend the remaining 73 days of the school year in an alternative school, despite never having gotten into trouble at school and taking honors classes.
The student cried as the school administrator called Youngblood, who refused to put her daughter into the alternative school and home-schooled her as she appealed the school administration’s decision.
“One thing I’m not going to do is send my child to the prison pipeline,” she said.
As the appeal dragged on, the eighth-grader…
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