I was catching up on reading blogging from a very good newspaper friend of mine in Morris. He worked for the Morris Sun Tribune newspaper from the 1970s through 2006.
He posted information about two serious incidents that took place recently at Yellow Medicine East high school in Granite Falls as well as Lac qui Parle Valley high school in rural Madison. Click to read that (short link): https://bit.ly/2tH8mFC.
A parting thought. At B-B-E, I want to see more parents encourage their children to look out for one another. Our kids already do a fantastic job about caring for one another in Jaguar Country. However, we are all human - and there is always room for improvement with our own personal behavior and how we interact with one another. We have a small, rural school. We fully have the ability to look out for one another, whether it's fellow parents who are in difficult situations or if it's from a student's perspective, and a fellow student is having a bad day or just needs a kind word or a smile to cheer them up. This can make great strides towards diffusing bad situations that can turn into tragedies.
The two students who were at the center of those two incidents at YME and LQPV (sounds like one was a threatening message of some sort, the other an actual bomb threat) ...clearly are troubled and need help. What a FAILURE of those around them to not notice that something was wrong. It should never get to the point where a kid causes that type of a disturbance at a school. That's a failure of everyone around them.
Should the student suffer consequences? Absolutely. But that does not absolve everyone in that kid's life of sharing part of the blame.
End rant.
