In case you just thought teachers were under fire from those who want to break their unions and kill their jobs by handing them to charter schools, guess again. Every day, teachers get to walk into their classrooms and wonder whether or not one of their students is angry enough to do something like this:
A Poway student sent a threatening email over the weekend to a Twin Peaks Middle School administrator stating he planned to shoot a teacher and 23 fellow students at the school on Monday morning.
Detectives from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department investigated the alleged shooting threat Saturday and found numerous rifles and handguns in the 12-year-old student's home.
According to officials, the email threat -- which was sent to a school administrator Friday night -- made reference to 3,000 rounds of ammunition as well as numerous firearms in the planned shooting at the Poway middle school located at 14640 Tierra Bonita Rd.NBC 7 spoke exclusively with the teacher referenced in the email. She wishes to remain anonymous to protect her safety.
"I kept asking myself, `Why me?' Literally wracking my brain trying to figure out who it is," she said.
Twin Peaks Middle School has been in the news recently for bullying incidents. It's not clear there's any relationship, but it sounds like there are some unresolved and long-standing bullying issues going on at the school.
10News reported this last Friday:
Cell phone video obtained by 10News shows a fight between two eighth graders from a Poway middle school.
Family members of one of the boys said their son was being bullied and criticized Twin Peaks Middle School of not doing enough. They claimed that their son's classmate beat and threatened him.
The video shows one boy trying to fend another, and he was on the receiving end of a flurry of punches and kicks. The fight happened last October and off-campus.
A third boy captured the incident on his cell phone and posted it on Facebook.The father of the victim told 10News that his son's life was threatened.
“Starin' him down; told him he's gonna kill him; kill our whole family," Jerrod Christian told 10News what happened to his son.
He said he reported the incident to the San Diego Sheriff's Department and school officials, but little was done.
That's the environment teachers are expected to enter on a daily basis to make sure these kids achieve whatever success they're expected to achieve on standardized tests. As for the claim that the guns in the home of that middle schooler were locked up and there was no access to the key, we know how easily that changes, don't we?