There were, in Dr. Johnson’s opinion, bigger issues at play here than a few disgruntled parents. First was the shocking nature of the property crime. He’d seen the pictures, and although it was like nothing he’d seen before, he had no doubt that at least some of his students had been involved. There’d been enough gossip at the school that some of it had bubbled up even to him. And he’d worked with teenagers long enough to know that where there was gossip, there was probably guilt.

The next parent was at the mic, and Dr. Johnson heard a saying that always rubbed him the wrong way: “Kids will be kids! We need to look at this in context.” Dr. Johnson worked hard at keeping his face neutral. The excuse that kids will be kids made sense when a toddler drew on the walls or yanked a toy out of another kid’s hands. It did not apply when teenagers ripped out a stranger’s appliances and punched holes in their walls. The second issue that concerned Dr. Johnson was the possible assault that had been reported. He’d failed to dig up any more information about it at school, and the police didn’t seem to have found anything either. And yet he sensed that something had indeed happened.

Now Linda O’Connor took the mic. Dr. Johnson had sat through plenty of meetings with her, back when her older son, Trip, was at the school. He’d been a bright boy, but he couldn’t stay out of the office for ditching school and goofing around. It had taken awhile for Dr. Johnson to realize the younger brother, Will, was an entirely different story.

“We have a lot of parents up here blaming the school, saying that their kids are good kids who are being unfairly targeted by the police,” Linda said. “We even had one parent up here who wanted to blame the ‘rural elements’ in town, whatever that means. I know it can’t mean the hardworking people who grew up here, and worked the land and the shops here, well before our real farms were replaced by oversize house farms.” She paused and there were a few whoops from the audience. “If anything is to blame here, I, for one, think it’s the culture of wealth and entitlement that seems to have taken over our town. It’s a dangerous thing for kids to think there are no consequences and to take no responsibility for their actions. There are a lot of kids in this town with a lot of money and time on their hands. We can’t protect our kids from the real world, and we shouldn’t try.”