The Shoreline Unified School District took the middle road last week when considering the punishment for the eleventh grader who brought two hunting rifles to school in September. In a vote of four to one, the board expelled the student for the rest of the semester, but granted a suspended expulsion for the following semester, allowing him to return to school in January.
Over the past two months, the incident has shaken up the district, with some students, teachers and parents raising concerns that the board’s treatment of the white student has been more forgiving than past punishments for his Latino peers. Others have urged the board to protect the future of a young man who they argue made an honest mistake.
The trustees heard this full range of input from speakers before they recessed to closed session at last Thursday’s board meeting. They went into that session guided by the recommendation of an administrative panel, which had convened two administrators from outside the district as well as the principal of Tomales Elementary School on Nov. 9, following the close of a sheriff’s investigation.
Ultimately, the board adopted the panel’s recommendation. The board’s chair, Jill Manning-Sartori, was the lone dissenter, and trustee Jane Healy was absent.
The board’s seventh seat was vacated by the student’s mother, Clarette McDonald, who resigned after the incident, in October. The one person who applied for the seat, which represents Bodega, Bodega Bay, Dillon Beach and Valley Ford, withdrew his application.
Under California’s education code, administrators must recommend expulsion, typically a one-year punishment, for students who bring a firearm to school, though it was also within the board’s purview to suspend the expulsion.
After the meeting, district superintendent Bob Raines said the student’s suspended expulsion for next semester is dependent on several conditions. The student must complete an independent study for the current term, not drive his truck to school for two months following his return, and work with administrators and school counselors to complete a “restorative process,” which will include various forms of community service.
Before trustees cast their votes, community members expressed skepticism that they would take strong enough action. Their concern was fueled by the fact that the district had allowed the student to stay in school after a five-day suspension, four days of which he spent at school under special supervision, while the district awaited information from the Sheriff’s Office.
Many on Thursday highlighted what they perceive as a race divide.
“What would you do if he was any other ethnicity besides Anglo?” asked Maria Imelda Macias, a mother of five children, including three in the district now and two graduates. Ms. Macias said she was afraid to send her son to the high school “because of his security.”
Matt Nagle, the former principal of West Marin School whom the board demoted to a first- and second-grade teaching position this year, also spoke to the issue. “I’ve been in the room of expulsion hearings, and the tone of my colleagues—including the four or five superintendents I have worked with—has never been respectful really at the same level for a white person and a Mexican person,” he said. “It is horrific in there.”
Mr. Nagle continued, “I’m half white; I get it. If you’re white, you get to say, ‘Hey, don’t ruin this young man’s life.’ But if you are Mexican American, that respect is rarely given.”
Erin Montoya, a Spanish teacher at West Marin School, acknowledged the different cultural lenses through which people might view the situation. Yet, she emphasized, for Latino students, “the long-term ramifications for how this situation is handled is incredibly sensitive. It has caused division.”
Several others who spoke expressed safety concerns. “I can’t believe that in this day and age, where mass shootings are the norm, that anyone thinks that a gun, loaded or unloaded, is okay to be on a school campus,” said Kristin Sheehan, a mother of a graduate and one student still in the district. “And if that is really how the district feels, as much as I have championed these schools—my daughter graduated as valedictorian—I can’t imagine sending my 11-year-old to Tomales High School.”
But one student, who read a letter signed by nearly 40 peers in favor of the boy who was expelled, painted an entirely different picture of the incident—and of the school.
She said her peer had unintentionally left the rifles in his car, unloaded, with no intention of hurting anyone. “He has been nothing but a good son, brother and friend to his peers, which only makes this situation even more shocking and aggravating than it already is,” she said.
The students’ letter went further, explaining that, counter to opinions voiced in the wake of the incident, the circumstances were not tied to race.
“We are the students who attend Tomales High School every day, and from our perspective there is not a race problem. There is no segregation between the students or special treatment by the staff and administration due to the students’ race. We play on sports teams together, take classes together and hang out on the weekends,” she said. “Dragging a teenager into a race argument is unfair and completely astray from the original issue.”
Juan Abalos, a graduate of Tomales High who identified as a first-generation immigrant from Mexico, backed up these sentiments. He said he had gotten in trouble with the law and that the community had helped him get back on his feet. “Being Mexican, going to Tomales, I never once felt any racism toward me,” he said.
The race conversation was punctuated by a letter published in this newspaper on Nov. 1 written by a graduate from the district, Adrian Vega, who said the school had a “race problem.”
Last week, the superintendent, Ms. Manning-Sartori and Adam Jennings, the principal of Tomales High, responded in a letter that described the actions the district has taken to bring more equity to their practices, policies and approach to discipline.
“The example Mr. Vega and others point to as disparate disciplinary treatment of brown and white students in fact reflects a conscious recognition at Shoreline that discipline should be meted out in a way that is restorative and educational, not solely punitive,” they wrote. “History shows that suspension and expulsion of students does more harm than good, pushing students out of the school system and leading to a greater level of dropout and harmful learning environments.”