Progressive Policies Put Schools at Risk

Amidst the media-orchestrated hysteria emanating from those who believe gun control will solve America’s mass shooting problem, one of the principal questions being asked is whether children have the right to attend school without fearing for their lives. Tragically, for a nation that has abided progressive ideology for far too long, it’s the wrong question. The more accurate question: How much danger is one willing to put one’s child in to satisfy progressive orthodoxy?

As the Miami Herald reveals, the Florida killer had widely recognized behavioral problems. “Teachers and other students said he kicked doors, cursed at teachers, fought with and threatened classmates and brought a backpack with bullets to school,” the paper reported. “He collected a string of discipline for profanity, disobedience, insubordination, and disruption.”

How did the system handle him? In 2014, administrators transferred him to a school for children with emotional disabilities. Two years later, they changed course and put him back in Marjory Stoneman Douglas. A year later, he was banished again for disciplinary reasons, and ended up being “toggled between three other alternative placements,” as the Herald puts it.

Notice the missing element here — he was never expelled. “Under federal law, [he] had a right to a ‘free and appropriate’ education at a public school near him,” the paper explains. “His classmates had a right to an education free of fear. Their rights often collided.”

Does this mean expulsion no longer exists?