opinion

Lacey students received five-day, in-school suspension: Letter

I am a senior at Lacey Township High School. My two friends, the two who posted a photo on Instagram of themselves at a firearms training session, did receive discipline, and a harsh one at that.

I am in class with both of them. They are AP students and STEM students. They were missing from my classes for three days because of ISD, or in-school detention. They were forced to sit in a room for six hours a day for five days to think about what they had done, meanwhile missing valuable work.

They initially were suspended for five days, but after the school district was threatened with a lawsuit from a gun organization, the in-school detention was rescinded and erased from the students' records, making it look like the three days they served in detention never happened

The superintendent would not say anything about how the student was disciplined because the school board lawyer, Chris Supsie, told him and the others not to say anything. The videos of Monday's school board meeting showed just three of the 25-plus people who spoke that made valuable points. What you don’t see in the video is what Board of Education members were doing the entire time. They were on their phones, not paying attention to the issue at hand.

Bergmann: It was the gun advocates who overreacted in Lacey

Supsie also decided it was professional to call the citizens of Lacey, “the chicken gallery.” He was very disrespectful to the concerned citizens of the town, and should have never insulted us. Most of the citizens were very peaceful, claiming they just wanted answers. The board of education and its lawyer were very unprofessional, showing a clear disconnect between the administration, and the students and their parents.

Matthew Perrone

Lacey