As a teacher, I could write you a long informed letter about this one, but to try to be to the point: School admininstrators have one rule above all others, which is never to admit that anything might be wrong on their watch, and to respond to any crisis with feigned ignorance. There is a school here in Columbia, SC (the state capital, metropolitan area about 250,000 people) that is supposed to be the "best" because it has mostly upper income kids. There is a commons area right outside the school office door where a gang of drug dealers in "gangsta" regalia pursue free enterprise daily. All the students know about it, all the teachers know, but if you ask the administration they've never heard of such a thing, and if teachers bring it up they are troublemakers and in no uncertain danger of losing their jobs. I'm sorry but you can bet it's the same at schools whereever you are. There are already laws to deal with the situation that bbc describes. Sue the crap out of the school. Name each admininstrator, from the bottom to the state superintendant, as defendants. They deliberately pick on the innocent because they are easier to pick on. Make them show the court why they shouldn't be held accountable. I think you'll find that most teachers would be delighted to be subpoenaed as witnesses. Similar advice goes to the parents of victims. I teach at the schools in the SC Department of Juvenile Justice. Our administrators are exactly the same. I see kids sent home every week, kids with very long violent records and having had nothing that could be described as rehabilitation, and come Monday morning they will be sitting next to your children in class. In my strongest opinion, when, and hopefully before, school violence occurs, administrators should be forced to say what realistic and effective plans they have implemented to deal with students who have DEMONSTRATED the willingness to do violence. The situation in Colorado in which you had a UNIFORMED gang that picked fights and preached racism was not an accident waiting to happen, it was a sure thing. Every administrator should be a defendant. If you're thinking that a school principal would never set him/herself up for that kind of liability, all I can say is that you would truly be amazed. They have reason to believe, as long as nobody holds them accountable as I have suggested, that a few dead students will not keep them from an overpaid retirement, free from care. Contrary to somehow popular opinion, most teachers I know are weary to death of this situation, and many are leaving the profession because of it. We don't have to think too hard about who loses in that instance.

Angrily, Chet W.