A Minnesota Supreme Court hearing Monday on the suspension of a student for bringing a knife to school honed in on the meaning of the words "willful" and "endanger."
The six-week suspension from United South Central High School occurred nearly two years ago after Alyssa Drescher of Wells, Minn., brought a small folding knife tucked in her purse and stowed it in her locker. Drescher, a junior at the time, said she used the knife for farm chores and forgot that it was in her purse.
"A student who carries a knife into the school building certainly has carelessly disregarded the school's weapons policy and endangered others," Independent School District No. 2134 lawyer Trevor Helmers said in his argument to the court.
Drescher, an honors student and peer counselor at the time, has since graduated and gone on to college. The court case has continued in large part because the outcome will affect how educators throughout the state mete out discipline to students with weapons.
After she was suspended by the district under the Pupil Fair Dismissal Act (PFDA), the state Department of Education upheld the decision. The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the suspension, saying Drescher didn't willfully violate school policy or engage in conduct that endangered herself or others.
In seeking an overturn by the state's highest court, the school district, with support from various administrative groups, said the appellate decision in favor of Drescher would make it "extraordinarily difficult for the state's 508 school districts to protect the 20,000 students they serve."
The district's petition said that, for the first time in 41 years, the appellate court had reinterpreted the grounds for dismissal and established "new standards" that would "drastically undermine the ability of school districts to keep weapons out of schools."
In the 2013-14 school year, the state Department of Education listed 1,230 weapons incidents. Helmers told the court that the case revolves around two words: "willful," which he defined as "careless disregard" and "endanger," which he described as "to bring into danger."