Michigan school shooting update, lots of kids ending up felons

[Faith-manor]

So in the wake of the shooting, a lot of kids made copycat threats. Most have been found to be not credible, in that there was no plan to actually do it, but a couple were probably serious as it seems the students were troubled and had been making some preliminary plans.

Genesee County has 7 under arrest and 6 under investigation. My county has a 17 year old girl in custody, and though she may not have had a plan, she scared the absolute willies out of some kids so the scuttlebutt from her relatives who live near me is that they expect her to end up serving some time. 

Standish schools have a student under arrest as does a school district in Shiawassee County.

5 students in my county are under investigation but not yet arrested.

We basically have an epidemic, and for a lot of incidents it is students honestly thinking they can get away with it and everyone gets to have a day or two off school. It is a depraved way to think though....let's scare the stuffing out of our friends, classmates, and teachers/staff, and risking a felony and prison time is worth a day or two off school. Something is seriously wrong! I am not sure how we go about getting to the bottom of it. However, I think the leadership of this nation that go around fondling guns, and talking violence, and think it was a hoot for a group of men to plot to kidnap the governor's family and kill her, storm the capitol with weapons, build a gallows for the Vice President, conspire to commit murder, and act like disgusting, immature middle schoolers calling names and being gross, bear TREMENDOUS blame as well as their parents who glorify it. The family of the 17 year old arrested from my local school district think no one should have been able to take their weapons, and there were A LOT, and blows off so much at the mouth in public that it begs the questions what the hell are they saying in ear shot of their child in private! The culture surrounding gun violence and anarchy narratives is our of control.

That is my rant. I am very sad about this. However, the closer we get to our two week trip to Alabama, and my grandsons, and being able to be outside, and family hikes, and....the better I do feel.

[MooCow]

Many many years ago when I was in college the second time, I did a huge paper and presentation in my sociology class about school shootings. And all the time that has passed since then, not one darn thing has been done to improve or tackle the situation. Breaks my heart.

[MEmama]

53 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

I am not sure how we go about getting to the bottom of it.

I am. 

It goes without saying that respect for board rules prevents me from saying more.

[Guest]

There was a threat rumor of school shooting in my son’s high school last night. It was investigated and found to be false/not attached to any particular student(s). However, a lot of kids did not come to school today. (My son is annoyed that I did not keep him home or pick him up.) 

DH and I have different views on this because I do not think keeping kids home or pulling them impulsively due to SM rumors is the correct response. I can understand the impulse but I still do not think it is the correct response. The correct response is to do what many parents did which is call the school and report the rumor, so they can investigate it and have more police officers on hand today. 

[KSera]

We’ve had students making threats locally over the past week as well 😔. 
 

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

The culture surrounding gun violence and anarchy narratives is our of control.

You’re telling me. The new fad of politicians posting pictures of their entire families, including children, holding semi automatic weapons in front of the Christmas tree over this past week since the shooting is absolutely mind blowing. How are the kids of those parents and other kids seeing them supposed to interpret that?

[Corraleno]

14 minutes ago, Quill said:

DH and I have different views on this because I do not think keeping kids home or pulling them impulsively due to SM rumors is the correct response. I can understand the impulse but I still do not think it is the correct response. The correct response is to do what many parents did which is call the school and report the rumor, so they can investigate it and have more police officers on hand today. 

I don't know, I think schools are so inclined to brush these things off, like they did in Oxford, that kids simply don't trust schools to protect them anymore. So maybe if large groups of students stay home when these rumors get started, that may force schools to be much more proactive, have someone monitoring social media instead of always being the last to know after kids tell parents and parent tell the school, investigate rumors immediately and take them more seriously, deal with offenders more quickly and severely, etc. I wonder how many parents in Oxford had kids who asked to stay home that day but made them go anyway and will now regret that decision for the rest of their lives? 

[Corraleno]

5 minutes ago, KSera said:

You’re telling me. The new fad of politicians posting pictures of their entire families, including children, holding semi automatic weapons in front of the Christmas tree over this past week since the shooting is absolutely mind blowing. How are the kids of those parents and other kids seeing them supposed to interpret that?

Not to mention sitting members of Congress posting images of themselves murdering elected officials, or calling for the execution of public figures they disagree with. This is the world we live in now.

[regentrude]

30 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I don't know, I think schools are so inclined to brush these things off, like they did in Oxford, that kids simply don't trust schools to protect them anymore. So maybe if large groups of students stay home when these rumors get started, that may force schools to be much more proactive, have someone monitoring social media instead of always being the last to know after kids tell parents and parent tell the school, investigate rumors immediately and take them more seriously, deal with offenders more quickly and severely, etc. I wonder how many parents in Oxford had kids who asked to stay home that day but made them go anyway and will now regret that decision for the rest of their lives? 

This, precisely. The school did have teachers report the kid, and the school failed spectacularly to keep the students safe.

I cannot imagine hearing rumors of a planned school shooting and sending my kid to school that day. I would rather err on the side of caution - it won't cause them harm to miss a day of school. Me misjudging the situation and insisting they go, OTOH, can be fatal. It's not worth second-guessing. And relying on the school seems utterly useless.

[Guest]

Yeah I get that but I do have faith in our school administrators to do their job and not brush stuff off. I realize not everyone has schools like that but I do.

If parents panic on unsubstantiated social media rumors, they give all the power to rumor mongers. 
 

It’s not as though mass shootings only happen with social media warnings beforehand. 
 

As I said, I can understand the impulse, and perhaps I would have felt differently if I/my kid followed SM and knew about this last night. I didn’t know about it until my kid was at school and the admins had to send our emails imploring parents to stop rushing to pick up the kids. I personally do not think parents should be doing that. 

[HomeAgain]

1 minute ago, Quill said:

Yeah I get that but I do have faith in our school administrators to do their job and not brush stuff off. I realize not everyone has schools like that but I do.

If parents panic on unsubstantiated social media rumors, they give all the power to rumor mongers. 
 

It’s not as though mass shootings only happen with social media warnings beforehand. 
 

As I said, I can understand the impulse, and perhaps I would have felt differently if I/my kid followed SM and knew about this last night. I didn’t know about it until my kid was at school and the admins had to send our emails imploring parents to stop rushing to pick up the kids. I personally do not think parents should be doing that. 

Money talks.

It's crass and it's blunt, but there it is.  It talks more than 20 dead 6 year olds or countless dead high school students.  Their bodies mean nothing to those that have power.

Keeping kids home?  Losing money because there is no deterrent to shooters and that's how parents react?  That's what talks.

I would keep my kid home EVERY time there was a rumored shooter because nobody cares if they're dead, but they care if the money isn't there anymore.

[MooCow]

Well, my dd and youngest high school has a boob in charge. When there are threats, I let them stay home. It doesn't happen very often thank goodness.

[Corraleno]

Just now, regentrude said:

This, precisely. The school did have teachers report the kid, and the school failed spectacularly to keep the students safe.

I cannot imagine hearing rumors of a planned school shooting and sending my kid to school that day. I would rather err on the side of caution - it won't cause them harm to miss a day of school. Me misjudging the situation and insisting they go, OTOH, can be fatal. It's not worth second-guessing. And relying on the school seems utterly useless.

The superintendent released a statement the other day saying that Ethan Crumbley's behavior was never reported to the principal's office or to the school resource officer — on both days that teachers were concerned about his behavior he was sent to the guidance office. That's where his parents went when they came to school, and it was the guidance counselor who decided to send him back to class, without involving the principal or the school resource officer, because he "seemed calm" and did not have prior reports for bad behavior. I don't know if the guidance counselor was totally out of the loop in terms of knowing there had been threats of a shooting, or knew about the rumors but assumed that he or she had sufficient expertise to assess the level of threat without involving anyone else. Maybe if large numbers of students had stayed home that day, the guidance counselor might have paid more attention. It's ironic that the school boasted how successful their active shooter drills had been in preparing kids for this, and yet did not seem to have any kind of system in place for properly assessing threats in order to prevent the shooting  from happening to begin with.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

Keeping kids home?  Losing money because there is no deterrent to shooters and that's how parents react?  That's what talks.

How does the (public) school lose money if a kid does not go to school or a parent impulsively picks kids up one day of the year? 
 

 

[TechWife]

13 minutes ago, Quill said:

How does the (public) school lose money if a kid does not go to school or a parent impulsively picks kids up one day of the year? 
 

 

Some states base per-student funding on attendance averages. It’s becoming less common, but it’s still a thing. To be counted present, the student must attend class up to a particular point in the day. When I was in school a long time ago it was homeroom, which was after first period. I’ve heard some people say their kids have to be there until the cafeteria starts serving lunch. That may have to do with lunch program funding. 

Edited December 8, 2021 by TechWife

[1234]

11 minutes ago, Quill said:

How does the (public) school lose money if a kid does not go to school or a parent impulsively picks kids up one day of the year? 
 

 

Some schools are funded based on average daily attendance. When my dc were in elementary school they gave me no problems about attendance as long as they were there for the first few minutes for roll call. Several times that’s what I did and then we left. Picking up early was never an issue because they had already been counted.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Some states base per-student funding on attendance averages. It’s becoming less common, but it’s still a thing. To be counted present, the student must attend class up to a particular point in the day. When I was in school a long time ago it was homeroom, which was after first period. I’ve heard some people say their kids have to be there until the cafeteria starts serving lunch. That may have to do with lunch program funding. 

But even if that is true locally, I don’t see how having low attendance one day would induce school admins/board of Ed to suddenly spring into action and investigate threats if they were not already. The school admins would just say something like, “Ignore this anomaly; it was a fake threat that went viral on SM and attendance was low.” 🤷🏻‍♀️
 

I can’t see that causing anyone to take action if they were not already. 

[Faith-manor]

18 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Some states base per-student funding on attendance averages. It’s becoming less common, but it’s still a thing. To be counted present, the student must attend class up to a particular point in the day. When I was in school a long time ago it was homeroom, which was after first period. I’ve heard some people say their kids have to be there until the cafeteria starts serving lunch. That may have to do with lunch program funding. 

Yes and in Michigan if more than a certain percentage of students do not attend, the school cannot count that towards it mandatory school days per year. I can't remember the percentage. So a big sit out of students is considered a very big deal to the administration.

[Faith-manor]

6 minutes ago, Quill said:

But even if that is true locally, I don’t see how having low attendance one day would induce school admins/board of Ed to suddenly spring into action and investigate threats if they were not already. The school admins would just say something like, “Ignore this anomaly; it was a fake threat that went viral on SM and attendance was low.” 🤷🏻‍♀️
 

I can’t see that causing anyone to take action if they were not already. 

I think the idea is that if inaction causes frequent student sit outs, it will make the administration put more safe guards in place such as more officers on campus or metal detectors, or hiring investigators to keep track of and check into social media threats, or whatever it is the students/parents feel will make things safer.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

I think the idea is that if inaction causes frequent student sit outs, it will make the administration put more safe guards in place such as more officers on campus or metal detectors, or hiring investigators to keep track of and check into social media threats, or whatever it is the students/parents feel will make things safer.

Yeah I mean, I can see that if the local school board is full of knuckleheads. I am privileged to not have that situation and my kid’s school is pretty excellent and is a Blue Ribbon school. I am  pretty confident in my school’s security; they investigated the threat last night after numerous parents and possibly some students/staff called in and said it was all over SM. 
If I *had* known about it last night, I am not sure what I would have thought was best to do, but I do not think it would ever occur to me that keeping my kid home would be a way to force the schools to care about the kids’ safety. If I came to the conclusion that my kid should stay home today, it would be purely out of fear that *maybe* the threat is real and *maybe* something could happen to my beautiful boy, not because I thought it was an act of civil disobedience that would enact change. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Faith-manor]

8 minutes ago, Quill said:

Yeah I mean, I can see that if the local school board is full of knuckleheads. I am privileged to not have that situation and my kid’s school is pretty excellent and is a Blue Ribbon school. I am  pretty confident in my school’s security; they investigated the threat last night after numerous parents and possibly some students/staff called in and said it was all over SM. 
If I *had* known about it last night, I am not sure what I would have thought was best to do, but I do not think it would ever occur to me that keeping my kid home would be a way to force the schools to care about the kids’ safety. If I came to the conclusion that my kid should stay home today, it would be purely out of fear that *maybe* the threat is real and *maybe* something could happen to my beautiful boy, not because I thought it was an act of civil disobedience that would enact change. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Unfortunately, we have a lot of schools, especially in rural and semi-final areas, that are run by knuckleheads. I wish it was not true, but it is. Michigan really has far more problems in education than their nation ranking, which is not great, would indicate.

But gun worshipping is a big thing here and people supporting their kids in violence is a thing. There are enough parents like the Crumbleys, that other parents can get desperate to get school administrators to wake up and smell the coffee.

[KSera]

53 minutes ago, Quill said:

I am privileged to not have that situation and my kid’s school is pretty excellent and is a Blue Ribbon school

There have been an awful lot of these tragic events at “excellent” schools in privileged areas. I wouldn’t feel assured myself by that, given what we’ve seen and know. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, KSera said:

There have been an awful lot of these tragic events at “excellent” schools in privileged areas. I wouldn’t feel assured myself by that, given what we’ve seen and know. 

Look, it’s not that I think that could never happen at my kid’s school. We have our share of gun fanatic nut jobs here, too, for one thing. It’s that I have learned that I can’t control-away all the threats that could happen. I do not live that way; in that direction lies madness. Bad stuff happens. It happens everywhere; no one can wall off every threat. 
 

It’s been a bunch of years since I thought the solution to school shootings was to keep my kids at home where they could not be involved in a school shooting. (Not sure if I actually thought that but it was probably an ideal I had subconsciously.) I’m going on this: it’s not the *likeliest* school in the nation. Of course anything can happen anywhere. But seriously; I can’t spend days and nights calculating all the possible bad stuff that might happen to my kids. I would lose my bloody mind. 

[73349]

12 minutes ago, Quill said:

I’m going on this: it’s not the *likeliest* school in the nation. Of course anything can happen anywhere. But seriously; I can’t spend days and nights calculating all the possible bad stuff that might happen to my kids. I would lose my bloody mind. 

At this point, make sure you're supposing it's not among the 31 likeliest, as Oxford was #30 with injuries or deaths this calendar year. 😕

I hate that this is a thing in this country.

[MEmama]

5 minutes ago, Carolina Wren said:

At this point, make sure you're supposing it's not among the 31 likeliest, as Oxford was #30 with injuries or deaths this calendar year. 😕

I hate that this is a thing in this country.

Barbaric. There is no other word. 😞 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Carolina Wren said:

At this point, make sure you're supposing it's not among the 31 likeliest, as Oxford was #30 with injuries or deaths this calendar year. 😕

I hate that this is a thing in this country.

That’s horribly sad, no question

[TechWife]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

But even if that is true locally, I don’t see how having low attendance one day would induce school admins/board of Ed to suddenly spring into action and investigate threats if they were not already. The school admins would just say something like, “Ignore this anomaly; it was a fake threat that went viral on SM and attendance was low.” 🤷🏻‍♀️
 

I can’t see that causing anyone to take action if they were not already. 

If it consistently happens, it will get more attention than if it doesn’t. Sooner or later it won’t be an anomaly. There are also no fake threats. There are threats that are found not to be credible, but they are threats nonetheless. 

[ktgrok]

5 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

Money talks.

It's crass and it's blunt, but there it is.  It talks more than 20 dead 6 year olds or countless dead high school students.  Their bodies mean nothing to those that have power.

Keeping kids home?  Losing money because there is no deterrent to shooters and that's how parents react?  That's what talks.

I would keep my kid home EVERY time there was a rumored shooter because nobody cares if they're dead, but they care if the money isn't there anymore.

Please don't say that nobody cares! My sister is a school administrator and she cares with all her soul for her students!

[Longtime Lurker]

4 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

Yes and in Michigan if more than a certain percentage of students do not attend, the school cannot count that towards it mandatory school days per year. I can't remember the percentage. So a big sit out of students is considered a very big deal to the administration.

I am pretty sure it is 75%. As in 75% of students must be in attendance for the day to count.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Longtime Lurker
clarity

[Stacia]

Since Oxford Shooting, At Least 519 Schools Have Closed Nationwide Due to Threats

[hshibley]

4 hours ago, Quill said:

Look, it’s not that I think that could never happen at my kid’s school. We have our share of gun fanatic nut jobs here, too, for one thing. It’s that I have learned that I can’t control-away all the threats that could happen. I do not live that way; in that direction lies madness. Bad stuff happens. It happens everywhere; no one can wall off every threat. 
 

It’s been a bunch of years since I thought the solution to school shootings was to keep my kids at home where they could not be involved in a school shooting. (Not sure if I actually thought that but it was probably an ideal I had subconsciously.) I’m going on this: it’s not the *likeliest* school in the nation. Of course anything can happen anywhere. But seriously; I can’t spend days and nights calculating all the possible bad stuff that might happen to my kids. I would lose my bloody mind. 

I completely understand what you’re saying. My children have all attended public high schools and bomb threats, threats of gun violence etc just come with the territory. But the reality is in the United States there are mass shootings at schools, colleges, workplaces, stores etc every year. There is nothing I can do to control that. As long as we are a country where guns are easily accessible and there is rampant mental illness there’s nothing I can do to control the risk. (This isn’t to argue about gun rights etc it’s just stating our reality.) I cannot completely protect my children from that reality. 

[TechWife]

3 hours ago, hshibley said:

I completely understand what you’re saying. My children have all attended public high schools and bomb threats, threats of gun violence etc just come with the territory. But the reality is in the United States there are mass shootings at schools, colleges, workplaces, stores etc every year. There is nothing I can do to control that. As long as we are a country where guns are easily accessible and there is rampant mental illness there’s nothing I can do to control the risk. (This isn’t to argue about gun rights etc it’s just stating our reality.) I cannot completely protect my children from that reality. 

Let’s not couple mental illness with mass shootings, please. The vast majority of people with mental illness are never violent, much less homicidal. Let’s stop the stigma. 

[Melissa Louise]

13 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Let’s not couple mental illness with mass shootings, please. The vast majority of people with mental illness are never violent, much less homicidal. Let’s stop the stigma. 

Better to focus on connection between guns + DV. Much stronger correlation. 

[Murphy101]

On 12/9/2021 at 12:40 AM, TechWife said:

Let’s not couple mental illness with mass shootings, please. The vast majority of people with mental illness are never violent, much less homicidal. Let’s stop the stigma. 

What? There’s a legit connection between mental health (or lack of it) and school shootings. We can’t ignore that bc it’s uncomfortable.   The bottom line in this case is that the parents for whatever reasons ignored his mental state or actually thought it was a normal mental state.  And that led to deaths.

Of course the vast majority of any people never go kill anyone or even think about doing so. But there’s a solid connecting theme for those that do - most of them have mental health issues that are not being addressed properly or at all.

We shouldn’t ignore that factor.

The vast majority of parents who own guns and let their teens use guns never hurt any person and neither do their teens. But we have to stop refusing to address the commonalities of those that do.  Same goes for domestic violence.  Most homes with DV don’t shoot each other. But we can’t ignore the common factors of those that do if we want to reduce it.

I’m all for most responsible gun ownership laws.

[TechWife]

58 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

What? There’s a legit connection between mental health (or lack of it) and school shootings. We can’t ignore that bc it’s uncomfortable.   The bottom line in this case is that the parents for whatever reasons ignored his mental state or actually thought it was a normal mental state.  And that led to deaths.

Of course the vast majority of any people never go kill anyone or even think about doing so. But there’s a solid connecting theme for those that do - most of them have mental health issues that are not being addressed properly or at all.

We shouldn’t ignore that factor.

The vast majority of parents who own guns and let their teens use guns never hurt any person and neither do their teens. But we have to stop refusing to address the commonalities of those that do.  Same goes for domestic violence.  Most homes with DV don’t shoot each other. But we can’t ignore the common factors of those that do if we want to reduce it.

I’m all for most responsible gun ownership laws.

Poor, disastrous parenting, ignorance  and being immoral are not mental illnesses. 
Can you point me to reputable documentation that connects mental illness with mass shootings or school shootings? I’m not asking for editorials or articles that correlate incidents, but  but for valid research conducted in a professional or academic setting that draws a definitive cause & effect line between mental illness and these shootings. 
 

ETA: I’m saying this as a person who wishes there were a clear cause/effect because then maybe we could DO something to prevent this. But the fact is, the only clear cause/effect is guns. Our culture has somehow come to be directed by people who have collectively decided that there’s nothing that can be done about that. 

Edited December 10, 2021 by TechWife

[Murphy101]

8 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Poor, disastrous parenting, ignorance  and being immoral are not mental illnesses. 
Can you point me to reputable documentation that connects mental illness with mass shootings or school shootings? I’m not asking for editorials or articles that correlate incidents, but  but for valid research conducted in a professional or academic setting that draws a definitive cause & effect line between mental illness and these shootings. 
 

ETA: I’m saying this as a person who wishes there were a clear cause/effect because then maybe we could DO something to prevent this. But the fact is, the only clear cause/effect is guns. Our culture has somehow come to be directed by people who have collectively decided that there’s nothing that can be done about that. 

This makes no sense to me. There’s literally millions of teens out there crappy parents, millions of people who are immoral and make bad choices.

I guess if you think it’s perfectly normal for teens to go on shooting sprees - then I guess you are right, there’s no mental illness link. I do not think it is perfectly normal for teens in those situations to do that. The vast majority do not.  Same for DV and more.

Of course I think we should look at all the factors but time and again and again  it always comes out that yep the teen school shooter had mental health issues and access to guns. 

I completely agree one of the common factors is guns but not guns alone.

And again, I’m fine with most reasonable gun regulation initiatives.   I have no issue with his parents being charged in this case.  I’d like to know more about why the hell they left him at the school for one thing. 

[TechWife]

3 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

 

I guess if you think it’s perfectly normal for teens to go on shooting sprees - then I guess you are right, there’s no mental illness link. I do not think it is perfectly normal for teens in those situations to do that. The vast majority do not.  Same for DV and more.

Of course I think we should look at all the factors but time and again and again  it always comes out that yep the teen school shooter had mental health issues and access to guns. 

I don’t think it’s normal as in acceptable or desired. I do think the overall inaction on prevention measures has normalized these shootings in the public psyche. 
 

Where are you getting the “always comes out” from? Who is collecting the needed info & documenting this? How can I access this information?

[Murphy101]

31 minutes ago, TechWife said:

I don’t think it’s normal as in acceptable or desired. I do think the overall inaction on prevention measures has normalized these shootings in the public psyche. 
 

Where are you getting the “always comes out” from? Who is collecting the needed info & documenting this? How can I access this information?

Okay…. 

So you think mentally healthy people go on homicidal sprees at schools?

I don’t. 

Therefore I think mental illness is a major factor in many of these  instances.

Of course that does not mean all people with mental illness should be ashamed or I think they are all going to go on killing sprees.

Just like most DV cases do not end in murder but we know that taking steps to reduce DV reduces domestic murders.

Again. I’m all for responsible gun ownership laws AND better (or any really) mental health services.  No stigma from me about it. 

Edited December 10, 2021 by Murphy101

[importswim]

DH messaged me yesterday to let me know about a narrowly averted shooting on Embry Riddle's Daytona campus. He had friends on campus at the time. Thankfully some students took the kid's threats seriously and contacted authorities.

https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/crime/2021/12/09/police-embry-riddle-student-planned-mass-shooting-school/6450911001/

[ktgrok]

2 minutes ago, importswim said:

DH messaged me yesterday to let me know about a narrowly averted shooting on Embry Riddle's Daytona campus. He had friends on campus at the time. Thankfully some students took the kid's threats seriously and contacted authorities.

https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/crime/2021/12/09/police-embry-riddle-student-planned-mass-shooting-school/6450911001/

Ugh, that is way too close to home (Orlando is not far from Daytona, and I have friends in that area). 

I hate all this - especially with my sister a school administrator -  I worry for her so much.