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THIS SUCKS. 13 YR OLD STUDENT FINDS GUN AT SCHOOL & TURNS IT IN. GETS EXPELLED FOR POSSESSION.
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Student ordered to be home schooled
Parents say boy was doing the right thing by turning in pellet gun
December 14, 2006
By Ken O'Brien STAFF WRITER
JOLIET – The school board for an elementary district has chosen to have a student home schooled instead of expelling him in response to a possession of a gun incident.
The board at Troy Elementary School District made that decision Wednesday night after administrators recommended an expulsion. On Nov. 15, the boy found a pellet gun and turned it over to an official at Troy Middle School, which educates 7th and 8th graders, in Shorewood, officials said.
The school board, in a statement released after the meeting, declined to name the boy, saying that it would comply with the confidentiality of student records as mandated by state law.
However, the parents of Ryan Morgan notified Chicago area media, including television stations, about the board’s consideration of the issue at its monthly meeting. They also discussed the situation with television reporters.
Ryan Morgan said that he and another student heard that a gun had been stashed in a boys bathroom and they went there, finding it in a garbage can. Morgan reportedly handed the gun over to an assistant principal soon afterwards.
The district administration investigated the incident, but the board’s lawyer, John M. Izzzo, declined to say what happened to the student who brought the gun to the school. A Chicago television station, Ch. 7, reported that the other boy was criminally charged. Asked if the Joliet police department was called, Izzo declined to comment.
Morgan’s parents, Roy and Audrey, asked the board to give their son a 10-day suspension. They opposed the option of sending the 13-year-old boy to an alternative school.
The board spent nearly three hours in closed session and then returned to consider the issue. Izzo said administrators were bound by state law to bring an expulsion recommendation to the board.
But the board had several options under state law, including the choice of home schooling or offering a placement in an alternative school, Izzo said.
“I think the decision wasn’t the best decision,” Ryan Morgan said as his family left the board meeting at the Troy Middle School. He said he was doing “the right thing” by giving the weapon to an adult.
“The situation wasn’t investigated thoroughly and justice wasn’t made,” Roy Morgan added. “The justice that was made was too harsh.”
Roy Morgan declined to say what he would do next, other than to talk to his wife, his attorney and possibly his pastor. He told a Chicago television station that he was “not accepting what they want to do to my son.”
After the meeting, board members and Superintendent Larry Wiers declined to discuss the case. In the statement, district officials said that “purposeful possession of weapons is one of the most serious offenses a student can commit and requires close consideration by the administration.”
Afterwards, Izzo said that district officials decided that “it would be in the best interest of the student and the school to continue provide this student with educational opportunities through home bound study.” The board considered mitigating factors in its decision, he said.
The board was able to consider several factors, such as grade point average and involvement at the school, Izzo said. The Illinois school provides that the possession of a weapon will result in a student being expelled for at least a year and possibly up to two years, he said.
But the superintendent, under the state provision, must present an expulsion recommendation to the board, Izzo said. However, the board can modify the punishment.
He declined to discuss the specifics of the recommendation and the length of the suggested expulsion. In this case, the board decision will affect Morgan for the rest of the first semester, covering roughly a month of classes, and for all of the second semester, Izzo said.
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