An eighth grade student at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto was immediately suspended last week after he was caught with a gun at school, and now faces expulsion for the rest of the school year.
Irv Rollins, director of education support services for the Palo Alto Unified School District, said the 13-year-old boy brought an unloaded .22 caliber pistol to school Dec. 11 and told other students he was looking to buy ammunition for the gun.
The other students were upset enough to tell teachers, and the student was then confronted by school administrators. The gun was confiscated and the student was suspended, Rollins said. Since the boy is a juvenile, his name was withheld.
Under a new state law passed last year, expulsion is a mandatory recommendation when students are caught with weapons on campus.
"The student must be recommended for expulsion," Rollins said.
The disciplinary case will be heard "as soon as possible" by a three-person administrative hearing panel, which will then make a recommendation to the Palo Alto School Board. The school board is the only body that can expel a student, Rollins said.
Because the student is an eighth-grader, he would not return to Jordan after his pending expulsion. But he would be eligible to apply to reenter Palo Alto schools at the high school level next fall, Rollins said.
In the meantime, the boy's parents are seeking schooling alternatives, including home teaching and enrollment in a school jointly run by the county and the juvenile probation department for students who are expelled from their schools.
The incident came to light because other students were upset when they saw the gun, Rollins said.
"There are no secrets at middle schools," Rollins said. "Some students were appropriately troubled and concerned."
A letter was sent home last week to parents of all Jordan students informing them of the incident. "The school did a job job of informing all students that this is forbidden behavior," Rollins said.
He added that he doesn't believe that the student has a juvenile criminal record.
Rollins also added that the boy's family has been "very cooperative" throughout the process. It is believed that the boy found the gun at home, he added, although school officials are uncertain why he brought it to school or wanted to find ammunition for it.
Finding weapons at Palo Alto schools is very unusual. Rollins recalled an incident "four or five years ago" when a high school student was found to have an air gun on campus and was disciplined, even though the air gun didn't work.
--Don Kazak
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