Fresno Students Poison Teacher’s Coffee, Get Relocated

In Fresno, California, three students admitted to putting rat poison in their teacher’s coffee and are being punished by being sent to other schools. Seems like a pretty tame consequence, and teachers and parents agree, saying the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

The 10 and 11-year-old students are being accused of putting the poison in the coffee, and also in the icing of a cupcake last December at California’s Balderas Elementary School. One of the boys “knocked the cup of coffee out of the teacher’s hand when she was going to drink it,” says the Fresno Teachers Association president.

The students in question were expelled when the district found out about the incident tow weeks ago, but teachers and parents are calling foul and the police are now investigating. “They should not be placed at another campus where now other staff and other students have to worry,” says a teacher at the Phoenix Academy, where two of the boys will be sent. “These kids are going to be elevated to gods to many of our kids, they’re going to say this is great, ‘maybe I can do something similar to a teacher or an adult.”

The same teacher, David Coss, continued: “I want a clear message sent to those students, I don’t care if you don’t have any prior disciplinary issues, you executed a plan bodily injury on an adult, on a teacher and we’re not going to tolerate that.”

Rey Saldana said, “It’s just an incident that needs to be taken care of an a real manner.”

Coss concluded, “I believe the police should press criminal charges against these students, they’ve openly admitted they’ve done it.”

Fresno police are conducting an extensive investigation. When they’re done, they’ll speak with the Fresno Country district attorney and determine whether or not to file charges against the students.

What do you think? Accounting for the ages, should these students be punished more harshly?