A geography teacher found the note on his desk Wednesday and brought it to administrators, who had received a much less menacing note the previous day.
According to the police blotter, Wednesday’s note said, “This school is about to blow. There is … bomb … I’m tired of the way people treat me! I want to say goodbye … I will be happy if you leave $300 (sic) in the locker room by 4 o’clock or I will let the bomb blow.
“You’re lucky it didn’t go off yesterday. Leave the $300 (sic) and don’t call police or else. The bomb is ticking away…”
The note in fact asked for $3,000, said Virginia Stewart, director of the Tracy Learning Center that houses Primary and Discovery Charter and Millennium High on Beverly Place.
She said the boy who was arrested Wednesday brought her a note on Tuesday that simply said, “This is a threat.” The note had a “happy face” on it, she said, and she called police who told her it warranted little concern.
The boy told Stewart he found Tuesday’s note in a bathroom, and she thanked him and told him he did the right thing by bringing it to her, but that it was a very serious matter.
When Wednesday’s note was discovered, the school was evacuated with a fire drill-like exercise, and the boy was brought to the office, where detectives were waiting for him. They compared the handwriting on the note with that in one of his school notebooks, Stewart said, and it matched.
After a few minutes, Stewart said the boy confessed and apologized in writing that he wrote Wednesday’s note, but was emphatic that it was a joke.
Officials found nothing funny about it, though, and he was taken away in handcuffs.
“We never would have been able to narrow it down to the one student without the note the day before,” Stewart said.
The kid has been suspended for two weeks and Stewart is recommending his expulsion.
One employee at the school who asked not to be identified said the boy is an honor student, and Stewart described him as “a nice boy” who had some difficulties at the school he attended before he went to Millennium High.
“The day before he should have realized it was not a joke to do a second time,” she said.
I enjoyed your last two comments, particularly the "stripped butt naked" one.
My attacking your education was indeed rather petty.
I was over-reacting to your comments: "What planet are you from?" "I can see this is beyond your mental grasp." "In your myopic view of the world," etc. Your omission of these put-downs made the last two statements much more palatable for me than the earlier ones.
By the way, if you are as good at catching everyone else's spelling/typing errors as you are at catching mine, you should go to work as a copy editor somewhere.
As someone probably my age and as a professional retired teacher, I would have though that you of all people would refrain from attacking a person’s education or way of thinking in order to save face. You might want to pay a little attention to that wee problem before you continue to follow your line of dialoging with people.
Here is what I am talking about. “My favoite error is his statement, "They have all went along with zero tolerance" instead of, "They have all gone along with zero tolerance." Misuse of irregular verbs is one of the most obvious signs of a poor education. I hope he didn't go to school in Tracy.”
As a light poke in your ribs, you misspelled the word favorite. See what I mean here?
Stop trying the “I am better than you” type of posturing and come down to the level of the rest of humanity and you will be much better accepted.
Don’t feel bad, I have done this to myself many times.
I am sorry I didn’t comment on this earlier but just stumbled across it at this time or I would have said something about it.
If anything, hopefully this as adequately demonstrated to you that I am not the uneducated rube that you obviously think that I am.
Things are not always what they first seem to be.
In my long years of experience with dealin with people I have learned that sometimes ya have to sort of rudely rub their noses in the dirt before they can clearly see the problem and make corrective action.
Ya see, despite my age and rather uncouth demeanor, I have an advantage that you don’t have. Yall get it some day but it only comes from havin lived life and payin attention to the things around ya. These are all things ya can’t really learn from a book and just have to experience. Some people call it wisdom. Myself, I think that’s somewhat of a stretch.
So here’s a short true story that happened before most of you were born or even payin much attention to the world around ya.
Some years ago an upcoming valedictorian at Tracy High, doin the right thing, got himself bounced outa school because of zero tolerance.
What the young man did was to take a knife away from a middle school student that was squarin off against another middle school student over in Lincoln park.
Doin the right thing, he put the thing in his backpack and beat feet back to the Tracy High office to turn it in. Unfortunate for him a person with his shorts rapped around his head to tight saw the incident from the school bleachers, met him at the door and, because of zero tolerance, got the student bounced outa school. No excuse! Ya know, zero tolerance.
Now ya can see what zero tolerance can really do ta people. Not a good idea to treat everyone with the same brush is it?
Anyway, it's been fun twistin yer legs a bit so we could really discuss the insanity of zero tolerance to a successful end.
You guys and gals are bright and I do appreciate yer standin up for yer teacher. Takes courage to do that. But hopefully, this exercise has taught ya that often things are not always what they seem and you really need to wade through the mire in order to see them correctly so you can take the correct actions.
You are the next generation that will run this country. I just want to make sure that all of ya do a better job than many of us. A selfish reason when ya really think about it. Why?
Because as my twilight years have arrived, more likely than not, how you people decide to run our society is goin to determine how I survive and am treated until ya plant me in the ground. This is somethin’ that all adults should have in the pack of their minds.
Ok, so all of ya don't end up hatin me forever I have to confess to ya that I don't like the zero tolerance crud either. I intentionally set ya up to prove my point and make ya think hard about it.
I have always believed that each of us should be judged / punished individually and not with dumb knee jerk reactions like zero tolerance.
To that end I personally would like to see all zero tolerance rules be abolished and start treatin people as individuals and not some nameless mass. After all, that’s the way the ole man upstairs made us, we are all individuals and should be treated as such.
Don't know Mrs. Stewart personally and am sure she's probably a top notch educator. That bein' said we still have the nonsense of zero tolerance that now seems to be subjective and not zero tolerance at all.
Hint, if you call somethin' zero tolerance, shouldn't it mean zero tolerance?
Don't know who passed these dumb zero tolerance things so that ya lump everyone into the same category. But, as I have successfully demonstrated, at some cost of mental skin on my own personality, I think we can all now agree zero tolerance is not the way to go and that both students and educators should be judged as individuals instead of the snap knee jerk reaction of zero tolerance.
Do away with zero tolerance completely and you will send a much better message to those we are tryin' to educate rather than boot good students out with the badens.
True I misspell words and my grammar is horrible. But then again, I am not passin' my self off as a retired English teacher. That's where ya got yerself into trouble. Never forget, stripped butt naked you’re really no better off than the rest of the naked apes on this planet. Don't set yerself up to be better or more knowledgeable than someone else and ya won't have any problems.
You must be part of that small percentage. LOL
Thanks.
ConcernedNeighbor
I received somthing like this in an e-mail. It said if you could read it, you are part of a small percentage of people who could. Now I am sure some of you will think it is wierd but most of the words are misspelled which shows that you can still read what the writer is saying....
That's correct!
Bush, our former President has dylexsia, caused his writing to transpose letters.
Tireness has a play in it, too.
I also mistype when I am in a hurry, often transposing letters. If you read the Harvard study, you would be amazed to find how the Brain can "read" words with lots of missing letters. It is on the website, have fun.
Patience is a good virtue to learn, too. I am glad to see this student not using the "Gangsta" talk on these blogs, it shows the deterioration of the intelligence and language among the peers in America. We don't need that, right?
Keep up the good work on wanting to better yourself, you will thank yourself in the future!
I basically agree with fortheunderdog; correct spelling is not considered particularly important in these days of text messaging and internet blogging.
But you're only 14. Why not aim a little higher than the average?People who can write clearly and correctly are at a premium. Use these next eight or so years to polish your English skills. You seem to have the desire. I guarantee you, educated people will look up to you.
Good Luck!
I wasn't being sarcastic when I corrected your spelling/choice of word. I was only trying to show you that, sometimes, commentors hands get to typing so fast that they sometimes press the wrong key to misspell a word(s). I make the same mistakes. You're going to see "regular" commentors who repeatedly make the same spelling mistakes but you'll know what they are trying to say.
For the most part, you do have very good knowledge of the English language, spelling, punctuation, etc. You, and I, can thank a teacher for that.
Hats off to Discovery Charter.
BTW...MHSStudent (the commentor using the username)....you misspelled "rid" by spelling it "ride". :)
"They will if needed get ride of a student that is harming other students in any way."
THANKS!