School district calls for 13 expulsions

Thirteen TeWinkle Middle School students have been recommended for expulsion for allegedly possessing pocket knives on the campus, in the second such incident to affect the Newport-Mesa Unified School District this year.

In March, TeWinkle administrators began an investigation when a group of students reported seeing some of their classmates with the weapons. The school identified 18 students who had knives on campus. But school resource officer Jess Gilman said a small group had supplied them.

Around the same time last month, a sixth-grade girl at Newport Elementary School was detained on suspicion of possessing a knife on school grounds. Some parents alleged that she had threatened their children with the knife on the school bus. In the TeWinkle incident, Gilman said, there was no immediate danger.

“For the most part, it’s just kids getting stupid and showing them to people,” Gilman said. “They’re not stabbing them and such.”

Of the 18 students, 13 have been recommended for expulsion, with some students’ hearings still pending. Two others were given one-day suspensions, and one was transferred to another school. Two are still awaiting rulings from the district.

Student services director Mike Murphy said the penalties were given according to students’ involvement in the knife incidents, which reportedly took place around the start of the calendar year. The Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s official rules list knife possession as grounds suspension or expulsion.

Many of the students recommended for expulsion, Murphy said, did not bring the weapons to school themselves, but carried them for lengthy periods after receiving them from friends. However, they drew penalties for not reporting the knives to administrators.

“Some of these kids said they found the knives going to school,” Murphy said. “If they had walked up to the principal and said, ‘I found this over by McDonald’s,’ that would have solved the problem.”

The two students who received the lightest penalties, he added, had only briefly held the knives but still failed to alert the school about them.

TeWinkle Principal Dan Diehl declined to comment on the investigation.

Even though the knife incident was Newport-Mesa’s second in a short period, Gilman and spokeswoman Jane Garland said the district had no plans to increase security on campuses. Newport-Mesa’s protocol, Garland said, was to search and question students who were suspected of possessing weapons.

“Right now, there’s no discussion of metal detectors,” she said. “These incidents were unrelated to each other.”

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