The problem is we've normalized deviant behavior in schools.

Kids can wander around in the elementary school classrooms and they are not disciplined. During serious infractions (chair throwing etc) the behaved students are disciplined in that they have to exit the classroom and lose instruction time.

There is huge pressure at the high school level not to suspend students or get police involved due to Restorative Justice. Stats are kept by school and by district of suspensions and police involvement. It is supposed to be a good thing not to suspend students for misbehavior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems there are many public school bureaucrats in this thread trying to divert liability away from the school. “They were scared of a lawsuit”?! Well, now children are dead, 2,000 children are scared for life, and they’re fixin’ to lose a lawsuit that’s infinitely larger than anything this family could have ever sued them for.

The lawsuit is happening regardless of what DCUM thinks.

This. And the school district will settle long before they ever go to court. They dropped the ball in a tragic, irreparable way. At a minimum, multiple people at the school level need to lose their jobs. Not saying they will, but they should. Whoever the highest ranking person is who knew, didn’t alert anyone higher up or police, and sent the kid back to class.

The latest WaPo reporting on that letter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/05/oxford-shooting-school-investigation-ethan-crumbley/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

They also hired prominent lawyers for themselves but left him with a public defender.

I've wondered about this the entire time. I'd love to hear their lawyer's assessment of this.

Most likely their lawyers are being funded by an organization tied to gun rights.The org. did not offer to represent their son. It’s a boutique law office, no way they could afford this on their own

This. The benefactors don’t care about the son - they know his case isn’t winnable.

WaPo now reporting the letter sent by the superintendent yesterday to parents outlining the chronology of events with this kid at the school. Apparently, the report by the teacher and meeting with parents that day all stayed at the guidance counselor level. The principal and VP were never looped in. Wow.

Anonymous wrote:Seems there are many public school bureaucrats in this thread trying to divert liability away from the school. “They were scared of a lawsuit”?! Well, now children are dead, 2,000 children are scared for life, and they’re fixin’ to lose a lawsuit that’s infinitely larger than anything this family could have ever sued them for.

The lawsuit is happening regardless of what DCUM thinks.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, every rationale possible is being used by the PPs in this thread to excuse the gun owners and their kid (the shooter) passing the blame to anyone else.

Not true. I blame:

The kid
The parents (maybe even more than the kid)
The school admin (for not calling police/searching the bag/sending the kid home)
The laws for giving this kid more rights than his fellow students.

I can blame many things at once. An absolutely tragedy that could have been prevented so many ways.

Tell me what rights this kid has that other kids do not. Name one.

You can't because this kid has no more rights than anyone else.

This kid has no more rights than any other kid. You sound like one of those insane anti-public school LCPS haters nutjobs. You are ignorant and don't understand the laws related to education. BTW if you are the same poster blaming IDEA and FAPE, YOU ARE AN IDIOT. FAPE AND IDEA have nothing to do with what happened with this kid and would not stop the school from sending the kid home.

So much ignorance posted here.

The push for the rights of troubled kids absolutely are the reason this kid was not told to go home with his parents. It’s the reason they were allowed to “decline” to take him home. And why the school didn’t search him. Schools searched lockers and bags all the time when we were kids. All they needed was an anonymous tip.

NP. How, precisely, is a school administrator supposed to force a parent to take a child home if that parent declines. Please explain with precision how that works both legally and logistically.

Suspend him for the safety of the student body and if they leave without him, he’s trespassing. Call. The. Police.

Are you really this simple?

What bizarre fantasy world are you living in? This never happened, not even in whatever imaginary world you think used to exist.

Stick to reality, please.

There was a different power dynamic. The school had the power and authority. Principals in the 70s did not play. If the parents wouldn’t take the kid. They would have had them escorted from campus. The litigious nature of our society and changes in law have made is such that schools are wary about exercising authority in situations such as this which is what got us here. It is my hope that this will help bring more balance back to the schools and recognize that kids that aren’t troubled have rights and need protection and care as well.

x100000

EXACTLY THIS.

PP is either obtuse or one of those parents (who wants to see how much the other parents know).

My kids have never been called to the principal's office, and are teens about to go to good colleges. But I think you are imagining an idealized 70s that didn't exist. Or you are just okay with the rampant discrimination that existed.

Do you really think a white boy who wasn't poor would have been treated the way you are imagining? Yes, they'd just escort the Black teens off (even if they'd done nothing wrong), but I flat-out don't believe your fantasies with respect to kids like Crumbley.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

They also hired prominent lawyers for themselves but left him with a public defender.

I've wondered about this the entire time. I'd love to hear their lawyer's assessment of this.

Most likely their lawyers are being funded by an organization tied to gun rights.The org. did not offer to represent their son. It’s a boutique law office, no way they could afford this on their own

Seems there are many public school bureaucrats in this thread trying to divert liability away from the school. “They were scared of a lawsuit”?! Well, now children are dead, 2,000 children are scared for life, and they’re fixin’ to lose a lawsuit that’s infinitely larger than anything this family could have ever sued them for.

I'm tempted to blame the school at least in part. But as other PPs have pointed out, it isn't necessarily as easy to force a kid to leave the school these days as it once was (or should be.)

Here's a case in point: I have a kid at BCC, where a classmate recently assaulted another student (younger and much smaller) with a chair, so badly that the victim was hospitalized and required stitches. Within minutes of the news of this attack circulating around the school, as kids were being held in their classrooms rather than rotating to the next class as scheduled, tons of kids including my own were texting one another that it must be a particular kid. And it was. The kid who committed the assaulted another BCC student was well-known as violent and 'a little off' to quote my kid. He had been 'expelled' or moved from Westland MS and at least one other HS. And by the way, after the assault, he or his friends then apparently circulated rumors of an attack (rumors are either bombs or guns) on the school.

In this case, everyone was lucky, relatively speaking - there was only one person hurt in this latest incident, and the wider bomb/gun threat to the school was a hoax. Still, this kid was known to be violent from previous incidents stretching back more than 4 years, and he was still moved around the MCPS system all throughout that time.

Will schools be more cautious in the future? I hope so. At minimum school administrators have to assume - even here in the liberal DMV - that every violent kid poses a risk of a mass shooting. Because even if that worst case doesn't happen, it could have been your kid or mine who was beaten with a chair by a student that everyone knew was a threat.

In this day and age in the US, there is really very few (isolated) people who are actually hunting for survival. Everyone else is hunting for sport or in some areas for population control. There could really be a cap on how many guns are actually needed in a permitted setting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

They also hired prominent lawyers for themselves but left him with a public defender.

I've wondered about this the entire time. I'd love to hear their lawyer's assessment of this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

They also hired prominent lawyers for themselves but left him with a public defender.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

You’re thinking like a sane, rational, concerned, loving parent. That’s not who these people are. Their motto is “don’t get caught,” so they were foolishly trying to run. They don’t have the brains or other resources for that, but again, they’re not rational people.

I don't think they are irrational or mentally ill or anything else people are throwing out. I think they are like a lot of parents these days, selfish and entitled. Once again take a look at the parenting forum and the number of posts where teenagers are engaging in unhealthy behaviors and the majority of posters always reply, it's no big deal, so hovering over your kid, you are going to ruin your relationship with them if you set any sort of limits.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of shocking aspects of this story. But for me the most painful/unbelievable/horrible is how a child wrote “help me” on a note, and the parents didn’t help or react or anything. As a parent, I just don’t get it.

x1000000

People like this are not parents, or even human, they are selfish animals.

Agree. Their child was in crisis and they didn’t even respond. Maybe they could have saved their son from throwing his life away. I don’t know how they are still living with themselves. Aside from the culpability to the victims’, they failed their own child.

There must be such disconnect between these parents and Ethan. The fact that they would go on the run when he's in prison even further emphasizes it.

You’re thinking like a sane, rational, concerned, loving parent. That’s not who these people are. Their motto is “don’t get caught,” so they were foolishly trying to run. They don’t have the brains or other resources for that, but again, they’re not rational people.

HAve they been or can they be charged with child neglect and/or contributing to a delquincy of a minor or similar charges?