I'll offer some actual incidents from my high school.
A male student came to school forgetting he had left his BB gun in his truck, clearly visible in the window. A student reports that a there is a truck with a gun in it and knows the school policy bars bringing firearms on campus. The school calls the police, according to procedure, they identify the male student as the owner of the truck, question him and he is ultimately handed a 2 day suspension for violating school code.
A male student, in a crowded hallway, shouts loudly that another male student has a gun in his coat. Teachers calmly put students in their classrooms, the accused student is taken aside into a counselors room and left under supervision until the police are called. The police question him, find that he does not have a gun, the accuser is given a suspension from school for causing a disruption within the school.
A bored student leaves a note in a restroom that contains the threat of a bomb being in the building. Students are escorted out of the school to a safe zone, police are called in with bomb sniffing dogs, they spend 2 hours searching the school, wasting thousands of dollars and an entire school day. They do an investigation to find the student that made the threat, they are expelled from school and charged with a felony offense.
The school is locked down after a report that there are illegal drugs on campus. Students aren't allowed to leave study hall while drug sniffing dogs are brought through to search the building. Drugs found were a collective 4 oz. of pot from several lockers and 100 ecstasy pills in one locker alone. The students with pot go uncharged, the student with the ecstasy misses 2 days of school. The student with the ecstasy is also caught 4 times drunk driving, once the day before graduation, countless times in possession of alcohol and is never punished for it.
A small group of students gather during lunch every day, join hands and quietly pray before their meal. They never demand other students to join, they are never loud or disruptive so no action is deemed necessary.
During Christmas celebrations, the 2 Jewish students are asked if they would like to celebrate Hanukkah in the classroom as well. They turn down the gesture seeing no need for it, enjoying and participating in the Christmas celebrations instead.
During English classes, there are occasional offensive terms in the reading material. Teachers stop the class to explain that while those terms were common place and fine to use when the material was written, the terms are no longer okay to use in regular society. The class moves along to read the material and discuss the story itself rather than banning the books entirely.
A female student is harassed on a daily basis by a male student. He touches her inappropriately, makes rude comments and even causes her injury. She reports his actions, shows the bruise he left on her during school hours, but no action is taken to resolve the matter. She spends her lunch hours and free time hiding from him to avoid further harassment.
Students with dyslexia, Autism, and other disruptive behavior issues such as severe ADD/ADHD, are placed into smaller class groups, taught at a slightly slower pace and have aides on hand to help them understand the material they are learning. They graduate on time, passing all required classes and retain the knowledge they gained. Students that are above the regular class standards are offered more challenging classes set at a college level.
The thing is, schools all operate differently. A small town school isn't going to have the same reactions as a larger city school. A school with a majority of students that are white, Christian and middle class won't have the same policies or issues that a school with a student body from a wide range of backgrounds, from impoverished to wealthy, white, black, latino, asian, and from all religions. A school in an area with little crime and violence isn't going to react the same way to a gun or instance of violence on campus as a school in a city with high crime and violence.
