Months after the state Supreme Court ruled that a student was wrongly expelled after she accidentally brought a pocket knife to school, a state legislator has proposed making it easier for school officials to dismiss students in such cases.
Rep. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls, cautioned at the start of a House committee hearing Thursday that he was not yet sold on his legislation. But that did not stop critics, including the attorney who represented the student in the knife case, from branding it as unconstitutional and a threat to efforts to ease racial disparities in school discipline matters.
Last summer, the Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeals decision stating that a southern Minnesota school district was wrong to expel a high school honor student for having a knife in her purse in her locker because it failed to show she had willfully violated school policy or willfully endangered others.
The student, Alyssa Drescher, who is white, told the principal at United South Central High that she used the pocket knife to cut twine on hay bales at her boyfriend's farm and "totally forgot" it still was in her purse.
Kresha's bill would eliminate the requirement that an act be "willful" in order for a student to be dismissed from school.
Michael Waldspurger, whose firm represented the school district in the pocket knife case, told members of the House Education Innovation Policy Committee that districts now face a tough challenge removing students for weapons violations. Violators simply can assert an "I forgot" defense, he said, "a very strong defense to overcome."
Peter Shaw, an attorney for the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District, said the "willful requirement" was a higher standard than criminal prosecutors face.
But Andrea Jepsen, the attorney who represented Drescher, said she spoke with a former legislator who was in office when the Pupil Fair Dismissal Act was passed in 1974 and that he assured her that lawmakers were clear that a student's actions had to be intentional to warrant dismissal.
