A judge ruled Cobb County School District officials “misconstrued” their own policies when they expelled a middle schooler who warned his friends of a school shooting threat.
The incident in took place two days after the Apalachee High School shooting in September 2024, at a time when law enforcement officers in Georgia were investigating dozens of threats of violence against schools. The student, who is only identified in official documents by the initials G.D., saw a video of someone threatening to shoot up several Cobb schools where he had friends. G.D. sent messages warning friends about the threat.
Officials at the middle school accused G.D.’s messages of prompting “a dozen or more” students, teachers and parents to report concerns about the potential threat. The school also went on lockdown after receiving an external threat, which officials said was caused by G.D.’s messages.
But in a court order signed Friday, Cobb County Superior Court Judge Robert Leonard II said the district did not prove it was G.D.’s intent to disrupt school operations.
“My son is a lot of things,” G.D.’s mother said this week, “but he is not a threat to anyone.”
The mother agreed to releasing the statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns.
School district policy prohibits students from “intentionally” disrupting the school day. The district said that because G.D. intended to send the text messages that ended up disrupting the school day, he violated the policy. The judge said that interpretation “misconstrues the plain language” of the rule.
“The Local Board’s decision that G.D. violated the School Disruption rule is unsupported by the record evidence because there is no evidence that G.D. intended to cause a disruption,” Leonard wrote in the six-page ruling.
G.D. was expelled from school in October 2024, and attended an alternative online school for the remainder of his eighth grade year. In March, the state board upheld the district’s decision. Internal documents showed that G.D.’s was a rare case where state officials were torn on whether to reverse the expulsion or affirm it. The difference hinged on the question of intent.
“Our client should never have been villainized, removed from his middle school for a year or been forced to retain legal counsel to defend his right to learn,” said Michael Tafelski, the interim deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented G.D., in a news release. “This case, along with the hundreds of other children who are expelled in Cobb County each year, should alarm every community member committed to equity and justice in our schools.”
The SPLC argued that Cobb targets students of color and students with disabilities with disciplinary actions. G.D. is Black and his parents say is autistic.
The AJC asked a spokesperson for Cobb schools if the district would be appealing the judge’s decision. The district declined to comment on the case, but said in an emailed statement the district takes threats seriously: “Each investigation of hoax threats costs local and district staff extensive time and money and leads to a significant uptick in student absences.”
G.D. began attending the high school he was zoned for in August.
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