CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — This school year has seen several violent incidents within Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, highlighted in March by two more incidents where families said the targets of reported assaults and fights were also punished.
Queen City News has reported on two of these incidents — one at Mallard Creek High School involving a group of girls who reportedly attacked another female student; and an incident at Ardrey Kell High School, where a teenage girl was allegedly attacked by a male student.
While both incidents are completely different, they are united in one thing: the families of the targets in both incidents said their child was suspended for ten days, along with the people who allegedly assaulted them.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said they cannot comment on specific cases involving students due to privacy laws, however, the district’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Ivey said last week, responding to a question about whether both the aggressor/aggressors and those they target are suspended as standard procedure, he said, “Each incident is taken individually and we use a student code of conduct to determine who and if both parties would be suspended. So each incident is an individual incident.”
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Code Of Student Conduct indicated that incidents are looked at on a case-by-case basis, and does allow for a reasonable amount of self-defense. The minimum punishment for a fight or assault at a high school is a minimum 1 to 10-day suspension.
The student who was targeted in the Mallard Creek incident told Queen City News that she did act in self-defense after a group of girls attacked her, but noted that the suspension she received was unjust.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said earlier this month. “I’m the one who got jumped.”
Queen City News has sent a series of questions on standard procedures on disciplinary response for fights and assaults to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. As of Monday afternoon, they had indicated they had forwarded the questions to the relevant department, and will respond at a later time.
