Chalkboards and textbooks ...... and tasers and pepper spray

(HuffPost) Noe Niño de Rivera spent nearly two months in a medically induced coma after a Texas school resource officer shocked him with a Taser in November 2013. Niño de Rivera, who was 17 at the time, had been trying to break up a fight between other students, his attorney said, though the officer claimed he had been trying to diffuse the violence and the teen interfered.

The shock from the Taser knocked Niño de Rivera to the ground. He hit his head and sustained a severe brain injury. The incident changed his life and deeply affected his family members.

It was "emotionally devastating for them to see their 17-year-old son in a coma," said Adam Loewy, the family's attorney. "When this happened, the parents stayed by his bedside for three straight months, day and night -- literally from crack of dawn to 11 o'clock at night. It put them in very serious economic danger."

In Birmingham, Alabama, school police officers regularly use another type of weapon to subdue students. Since 2006, over 1,000 area students have been directly or indirectly exposed to pepper spray at school, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit arguing that the school district should be held to stricter standards regarding the use of chemical spray. At least three of the students who were pepper sprayed ended up in the hospital. ...............(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/03/taser-pepper-spray-in-school_n_6882920.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013