Student suspended at bully's call

Great now we have another way for a Bully to game the system. Boy am I glad we home schooled

The linked piece is interesting:
The school tells a different story.

Vernon Schools Superintendent Charles Maranzano told HuffPost he couldn't discuss the specific incident because of privacy laws, but he did say "no school in the state of New Jersey or nationally would leap to a school suspension for twirling a pencil. That's not what the basis of our actions are."

Instead, Maranzano said the student was not suspended, but was told he could return as soon as a doctor completed a psychological evaluation and determined the student posed no threat to himself or others.

The author was working pretty hard to give the impression that the superintendent was talking about a school action taken on the basis of a kid twirling a pencil in class, but notice--that's actually not anywhere in the brief statement they quoted. What he did point out covered a few key points to remember:

1. While dad is telling his story to Infowars (!?) and the local news, the district is bound by confidentiality laws that prevent them from disputing even simple lies. That doesn't necessarily mean dad is lying, but it does mean that we're only getting one side of the story.

2. The story is very implausible. A kid being sent home with a requirement for a psych evaluation for re-entry--on the word of another student that he'd made "gun motions" in class--would be outrageous. For that reason, it happens somewhere between rarely and never. Again, that doesn't mean it couldn't possibly have happened in this case, only that it's unlikely. Is there a more likely explanation?

3. If you've ever worked with kids, you know the sound of this. I get accused of sending kids to in-house detention "just for sharpening a pencil" or "IDK, all I did was throw away a piece of paper" or any of a dozen other innocuous things every week (I work in an alternative school for kids with chronic behavior problems.) Those are just plain old lies. A kid who gets into any kind of trouble after a series of repeated, often serious misbehaviors, will tell the next adult he encounters that the last adult just snapped and sent him out of class for blowing his nose. Sometimes these are pure inventions, but more often, the kid *did* blow his nose. He's just not telling anyone that he *also* refused his seat, crossed the room to a peer, threatened that kid, and then threatened the teacher when he was redirected. All that goes double when the student is telling his parent what happened, and I can tell how long mom and dad have been at this by how hard they fight to preserve their belief that their child wouldn't lie to them, and the teacher must be "lyin' on my boy!"

Now, again, does any of that prove that there's more to this story than the man with the axe to grind is telling Infowars? Nope. It could turn out that his version is correct, and I'll be happy to retract my verdict of "Bullshit." But I think that's a lot less likely than the chance that this kid said or did something he shouldn't have, perhaps out of genuine frustration over genuine bullying, and made a threat that was cause for concern. I'm glad his psych evaluation went well, but I'm not buying dad's story, especially while the other side can't be told.