This spring, I received an intriguing email from a parent in East Tennessee. She had seen my social media post seeking tips about a 2023 state law requiring expulsions for students who make threats of mass violence. “I have personal experience with it,” she wrote.
On the phone later that day, she told me that her fifth grader had angrily folded his hand into the shape of a gun. She later shared a letter from the principal stating that her son had made a threat of mass violence and the district had to take it seriously. Although he’d never been in trouble before, she said, the school expelled him for a year. (In Tennessee and a number of other states, expulsions aren’t necessarily permanent.)
Over the last few months, I’ve been working to understand how Tennessee school officials are responding to this law, passed soon after a shooter killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville. I requested disciplinary data from more than two dozen school districts, spoke with experts and families, and read pages of court records.
I found that Tennessee’s attempts to make schools safer for all students has harmed some of them. The state law has resulted in some districts expelling students for mildly disruptive behavior and even handing off responsibility for dealing with minor incidents to law enforcement.
— Aliyya Swaby, ProPublica South reporter.
