The Sun-Sentinel in Florida wrote about the problem of “violent students,” who can’t be removed from school because they are protected by law.

I hope to hear from Florida teachers about this investigation.

In an eight-month investigation, the South Florida Sun Sentinel found that a sweeping push for “inclusion” enables unstable children to attend regular classes even though school districts severely lack the support staff to manage them.

State and federal laws guarantee those students a spot in regular classrooms until they seriously harm or maim others. Even threatening to shoot classmates is not a lawful reason to expel the child.

Violent students have injured thousands of teachers, bus drivers and staff in Broward County alone and undoubtedly thousands more across Florida, records obtained by the Sun Sentinel show.

“It’s just a no-win scenario right now,” said attorney Julie Weatherly, of Mobile, Alabama, who advises school districts on the legal complexities of removing aggressive students when they have a disability. “Nobody wants a Parkland, of course. It’s this huge nightmare.”

The federal law had a noble purpose when enacted more than four decades ago, long before the ranks of violent students swelled. It ensured that students with disabilities received an education in the same classrooms as their peers, a practice known as mainstreaming.

Florida went even further, requiring agreement from the parents, or a judge, before transferring a disabled child to a special-needs school with more therapeutic services and smaller class sizes.

Looking for help for you or someone you know? See a list of mental health resources here.

The drawback today is that the law treats a student with a severe behavioral disorder the same as a harmless student with Down syndrome, ordering that they be educated in regular classrooms unless it’s proven impossible.

To understand how schools became targets of deadly threats and violence, the Sun Sentinel interviewed more than 50 teachers, parents and experts; examined state and national laws and policies; and reviewed thousands of pages of police reports and court records. The records included Florida’s new risk protection orders, created by the Legislature after the Parkland shooting to keep guns away from dangerous people. Most counties had never released the records before.

In only 18 months, more than 100 unstable and potentially dangerous students across Florida have threatened to kill their teachers, classmates or themselves, records from 10 major counties show. Nearly half of the youths had histories of mental disorders, and more than half had access to guns.

Just wondering whether charter schools and religious schools are bound by the same laws or whether they have the right to expel the students they can’t handle.