Wow. That’s a lot of money. It’s gotta be tough for the victim — too bad plastic safety glasses weren’t provided as part of the experiment just like the Mythbusters guys used to do.

It stands to reason that our middle school math teachers would allow this to happen. Risk analysis? Error analysis? Growth analysis? Any analysis? All missing...

Write the big checks and and feel like a big-dogs, district admins! Greatest school district in the country!

Two things not covered in the article.

Is the potato gun lesson still continuing, but with safety glasses? Were there safety glasses at the time and if so why did the student not have them on at the time?

This is the type of lesson that makes school and learning memorable. I hope that our students are able to continue to do things like this but with all the safety measures in place.

@Resident,
Sadly, our school district employee and administrative culture is such that they confuse safety with coddling kids. They deliberately confuse family ties with coddling kids in order to avoid having anything to do with parents in high school or any working with families (especially over special needs), and it starts in earnest in middle school.

I totally get why the student is not longer in the district, not because of the incident but because there's no way the student would have avoided the kind of institutional abuse all students whose families try to fix things, hold them accountable, or be treated equitably experience.

That said, I applaud the district for settling and not dragging the family through more. In the past, they would have paid lawyers more than trying to make things right with this injured child, and added insult to injury.

Good luck to the student and his family.

Potatos can be dangerous...even more so when used in conjunction with an old strip of inner tube as in a giant slingshot.

Russets hurt the most & leave unusual shaped bruises while red potatoes are the most practical in terms of consistant size and portability.

Going to a hobby shop & using those model rocket motors to expel grains of rice stored in a packing tube is like shrapnel.

Fun stuff to do when a kid since BB guns are not practical for neighborhood warfare...too many parked cars and residential windows to mar.

More fun than being glued to a smartphone all day or after hours.

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I guess this potato gun experience is really a thing nowadays:

Google( potato gun picture diagram )

I wonder, though, if anybody is bothering to calculate the momentum of their projectile. Looking at some of these potato weapons, I'm not surprised by the eye damage and orbital fracture.

My heart goes out to the young victim and his or her family. It's amazing to see all these ignorant comments about the money (only $50,000 PAUSD) and the experiment, but not one comment about how sad it is that this child was injured and will have to deal with the consequences of this experiment for a lifetime. The dollars can't really compensate him or her for the loss of vision and whatever other damage was done by the skull fracture. By the way, with a structured settlement like this, adjusting for the time value of money greatly reduces the true cost to the insurer.

Instead of using potatoes, switch to styro-foam balls & reduce the velocity...DUH.

OR water balloons.

Then again, some personal injury attorney will probably find fault with harmless projectiles as well.

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks the use of guns is unacceptable. And certainly does not belong in a school.

Don't care what it is made of, clearly it is capable of injuring people.
Boys and violence, and men teaching violence, a danger to us all.

^ Gravity should be illegal. Clearly it is capable of injuring people.