Elementary-school students in Somerset, Mass., will face new rules around discussing and gesturing weapons when they return to class next week.
“So there have been several cases where kids on the bus are making gestures and we didn’t have anything in there to discipline them,” Chace Street Elementary School principal Timothy Plante told the school committee.
Now, students will be prohibited from gesturing the use of weapons and from talking about guns or knives on school grounds, WBZ-TV reported. It was not immediately clear what the punishment would be for students who violate the new rules.
Plante said staff at all three of the town’s elementary school requested the new rules in an effort to curb school violence.
“Kids nowadays are saying things probably inappropriate or so forth,” Plante said. “It could be video games, it could be TV, but it’s not appropriate in our schools.”
One parent whose son is starting kindergarten next week called the rules “absolutely silly” and “foolish.”
“The fact that they’re trying to control speech, I think, is ridiculous beyond words,” Andrew Speeckaert told the news station. “The fact that they’re trying to do it with children as innocent as kindergarteners. I don’t really understand what the intent there is.”