Seattle high school student ‘disciplined’ after allegedly bringing gun to school

According to an email obtained by The Post Millennial that Seattle Public Schools sent to parents on Thursday, a video was posted on social media of a student who attends Nathan Hale High School holding a gun in the parking lot of Ingraham. The student attends morning classes at Ingraham.

Police were called to campus and officers spoke with the student. The gun was recovered and the student is being "disciplined," according to the email.

According to an email from the Friends of Ingraham to the Seattle Public School Board member Liza Rankin obtained by The Post Millennial, the group has still not received a report on the “safety audit” that was conducted following the fatal shooting of a student at the school in November. The report was expected in March.

The group also noted that the student who allegedly killed 17-year-old Ebenezer Haile “…brought a BB gun and large knife to school about a month prior to the shooting.” In a letter to the parents following Thursday’s incident, Ingraham claimed to have a “zero tolerance policy for weapons.”

The parent group continued in their email, “Bringing these weapons to school did not represent a significant enough threat to prevent that student from returning to school, and his behavior only escalated, resulting in the murder of another student.”

The group asked, “Will Seattle Public Schools be evaluating the protocols around how students re-enter the learning community after demonstrating a clear threat to themselves or others? Is there any consideration of reclassifying what a weapon ‘is.’”

“The existing protocols were not effective, and our community would like to know how SPS plans to change these protocols to better provide our students a safer environment.”

Parents also demanded to know if all safety protocols were followed leading up to the shooting and what SPS has done to improve safety and security in schools as a result of the audit. The group also asked what actions still needed to be completed and what was the target date for the actions to be completed.

Rankin responded that she had no update on the safety audit and that the report may not have even been completed. Additionally, she was unclear on what changes, if any, had been made to secure campuses since the shooting.

Rankin pointed to current rules and laws regarding firearms on campus and admitted that they had “not been updated in a decade.”

Seattle Public Schools banned police from campuses in 2020 following the BLM and Antifa riots that rocked the city. Since then, violence has increased on school campuses, especially at Ingraham.

Despite the increase in violence, the SPS board has refused to bring police back to campuses.

Last June, a video of a vicious fight at Ingraham went viral locally.

In October 2021, several students at Ingraham were threatened on campus by two people with an AR-15. The school did not inform the parent body until 24 hours later, after pressure from the parents of the students who were threatened. No meaningful security upgrades or preventative action was taken.

Rankin has been previously criticized by parents at the Broadview Thomson K-8 school for hiring a meth addict to address a violent homeless encampment on the school grounds. Mike Matthias, a former homeless meth addict, was later accused of using meth with the campers and using their housing vouchers as leverage to get them to comply with his demands.

Despite assaults, shootings, and more in the encampment on campus, Rankin and the school board refused to bring back the police and instead hired private security.

Following the fatal shooting at Ingraham in November, in what is believed to have been a targeted attack, one teacher enraged parents by immediately politicizing the tragedy, posting on social media the day of the 2022 midterm election a picture of his students in lockdown during the shooting writing, "If you didn’t vote blue today, f*ck you."

Democratic Governor Jay Inslee also politicized the tragedy, and in a rare public appearance in Seattle, came to visit Ingraham, his alma mater, under armed guard and stump for a bill banning assault weapons, which would not have prevented any of the incidents. Rankin praised the passage of the bill in her email to parents.