UPDATED September 18.
Police have arrested two Frisco Independent School District boys who participated in assaulting a special-needs student in a restroom at Lone Star High School on Tuesday.
The assault was captured on video, which was shared on social media and then forwarded to authorities on Wednesday.
Police charged the two students, who are juveniles, with injuring a disabled individual. The crime is a third-degree felony punishable by two to ten years in jail.
Reports of fights and violence on Texas school campuses have escalated over the past few years. Some attribute the rise in part to a recent shift toward “restorative discipline,” a policy that removes serious consequences from students’ bad actions.
Frisco ISD began moving to disciplinary policies designed to “change behavior, not punish” in 2020, after the Texas Eduction Agency found “significant disproportionality” in the rates of out-of-school suspensions among various groups of students.
Frisco Police said in a media release, “Criminal behavior will not be tolerated, and all persons involved will be held accountable.”
“All this hyper focus on social emotional learning in the schools is producing what again?” one mom posted after seeing the video. “These boys are callous and cruel. Disturbing.”
The disturbing video shows several students watching as a larger boy taunts a smaller boy into slapping him, then punches back hard. The puncher and four other boys, one of whom presumably filmed the assault, then exit the restroom as the boy who was attacked screams.
Current Revolt described it as a game of “slap” that went “incredibly overboard” and posted the video HERE after it was removed from YouTube.
Just prior to the incident, a Frisco ISD social media post touted the district’s “safe and welcoming learning environments.”
Parents in several school districts have told Texas Scorecard that officials have responded to reports of violence, sex, drug use, and vaping inside campus restrooms by locking the restrooms.
