Speak Out 11/17/14

Flagged for

poor conduct

The front page article in the Sunday, Nov. 9th newspaper was unbelievable regarding the soccer players being allowed to play a match on Saturday after being suspended from school on Friday. I assume these are the teens that were throwing full 12 oz. water bottles from the back of a truck at students leaving high school, walking down the Harper Street hill. It is truly a miracle that one of these students was not seriously injured or even killed.

I do not personally have a child in school there, but I was livid when reading this article. I applaud the principal and superintendent for following through by suspending these teens for such a deplorable, UNSPORTSMAN LIKE act. But it sounds like parents, or should I say irresponsible parents, of these soccer players, apparently called school board members and pressured them to reverse this suspension. And we wonder why school kids bring guns to school to get revenge on fellow students that have been pushing them around. Our school board should be ashamed of valuing a soccer game more than students' safety. The proper thing for them to have done would have been to let the soccer players cause the forfeit of the game if necessary. There should have been no bending of the rules. How would the board members who "voted" for this reversal of this suspension feel if they were the ones hit by full water bottles thrown from a moving pickup truck? And some of them were even hit in the head!!

Hopefully all the students who were hit will file police reports so these out of control teens will at least have a visit from the police department. And maybe their parents will understand the gravity of the situation and start to parent their children instead of trying to be their buddy. The community should remember how this incident was handled by the school board when it come election time again. Maybe it's time to find someone to serve that actually has some values.