Letter: Deal with troublemakers to keep schools safe for students who want to learn

Last month a student was murdered leaving school. It doesn't get any more saddening then that. A young life was lost in a location that should have been one of the safest places in our city for young people to be. Now fingers of blame are being pointed and band-aid solutions are already being suggested.

The fact is there is more than enough blame to go around but the truth is that nothing is going to change until we get to the root of the problem. The problem being that we have to find a way to effectively deal with the students that are causing all of the trouble in our schools in the first place.

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These students know the system. They know that the courts have tied the school's hands on disciplining and in most cases know that their parents, or in a lot of cases parent, are going to take their side over the schools.

I suggest that middle school-age students and above determined to be troublemakers are isolated from the general school population as quickly as possible. Put them in a facility that has enough security to handle them and give them the option of learning or just being there. If they decide that learning is the better option, then mainstream them back into a regular school and monitor them closely.

It's time to give our schools back to the students that want to learn and the educators who want to teach them.

Steve Jones, Springfield

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Schools need to deal with troublemakers to keep students safe