(AP) RUTHERFORD COUNTY - In Murfreesboro, parents at Scales Elementary school were outraged after a prank they believed went too far.
Staff members of a Murfreesboro elementary school staged a fake gunman attack during a school trip.
Parents of the sixth-grade students at Scales Elementary were outraged after learning about the prank that occurred Thursday night.
Assistant Principal Don Bartch said the scenario was intended as a learning experience.
During the last night of the school trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose.
Eleven-year-old Shay Naylor said the students were told to lie on the floor or under tables and stay quiet.
A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door and pretended to be a suspicious subject.
After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry.
Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech.
The school held a meeting Saturday to discuss the situation with concerned parents.
Scales Elementary Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action
http://www.newschannel5.com/global/story.asp?s=6509286
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School system says students told to expect prank
Murfreesboro board members don’t want overreaction
By JAIME SARRIO
Staff Writer
Elementary students on a school field trip had been told to expect a “campfire prank” by the teachers, but a tale of a gunman on the loose went too far, Murfreesboro’s city school system said in a statement Sunday.
Sixty-nine sixth-grade students from Scales Elementary were told Thursday during a field trip to Fall Creek Falls that someone was shooting in the park and they should lie on the floor or crawl underneath tables and keep quiet.
Parents met at the school over the weekend to discuss the incident, which frightened many of the children and brought some to tears.
According to a statement released late Sunday by the district, the students had been anticipating a prank such as had been done to previous sixth-grade campers. Most of the students, the statement said, stood up after the trick, exchanged high fives and said, “That was a good one. Yeah, you got me.”
But some parents were outraged, especially in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech.
The district conceded that the prank crossed the line in light of recent incidents but stated that there were many versions of the story and news coverage of the hoax had been sensationalized.
Several Murfreesboro City Schools board members said Sunday that the phony attack was foolish and an error in judgment.
But they said they trust the director of schools, Marilyn Mathis, to decide what action — if any — should be taken against teachers and an assistant principal who staged the prank.
“I’m not sure punishment is even the right word,” said Nancy Phillips, a board member who knows the assistant principal involved.
“I think they need to take the appropriate action, but I don’t think they need to overreact.”
Board member Lon Nuell agrees. He said the incident was very unfortunate and immature, but he will leave it to Mathis to make the call on how those involved should be dealt with.
“It was a very foolish thing for adults to do to children,” he said. “Telling ghost stories is one thing, but carrying it as far as they did was a pretty big error in judgment.”
Scales Elementary Principal Catherine Stephens did not return calls made to her home Sunday.
She held a meeting Saturday afternoon at the school to discuss the matter with a handful of concerned parents. She said that she was saddened by the situation and that the school was handling it, though she declined to elaborate Saturday on whether the teachers involved would face disciplinary action.
Board member Patrick McCarthy said that the incident should be handled with care and sensitivity and that the administration should work hard to get all sides of the story.
“You have to hire the right people and them let them do their job,” he said.
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Reaction of a Mom
I heard about this over the weekend, and I still can’t belive that someone thought this whole thing would be funny and now the school is defending its teachers who did this. In case you don’t know about this, 69 sixth grade students from an elementary school in Murfreesboro were on an overnight field trip when the teachers and assistant principal thought it would be a funny prank to tell the students that a gunman was on the lose and to hide or lay on the floor and cover their heads. They then had someone go around and bang on hotel and doors. Then they told the kids that it was all just a joke.
Do you see any joke in that? As hard as I try, I don’t see anything funny anywhere. It’s not just a case of bad judgement, it goes way beyond that. If it were a student that did that “prank”, wouldn’t he be in jail and kicked out of school? Absolutely all the teachers involed including the assistant principal need to be charged with whatever a kid would be charged with. If they lose their job, so be it. And every one of those board members defending their actions should be fired right along with them. If this happened to my child at my school, I’d be all over them. I hope this makes the national news. They are trying so hard to downplay this incident. CNN or other network needs to grab on to this so it just doesn’t ‘go away’ like the board members hope.
