Abigail Zwerner is the Virginia teacher who was shot by one of her 6-year-old students back in January. Zwerner has since sued the school district for $40 million alleging that administrators knew the student in question had a history of violence including trying to strangle one of his teachers the previous year. More to the point, they received multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the student had brought a gun to school. Rather than call the police, they decided to wait it out for his mother to arrive.

Today, the school district has filed a response to the lawsuit asking a judge to dismiss it on the grounds that Zwerner should accept workers compensation for her injuries.

The motion from the school district, which notes that Zwerner has so far refused to accept payment under Virginia’s Workers’ Compensation Act, argues that the Newport News Circuit Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over the case because being shot by a first-grader is, essentially, a risk that all teachers take.

“One cannot assess the state today of education-based employment in the United States without paying attention to the problem of violence in its classroom,” the motion says, calling this an “unfortunate reality.” Although teachers today see themselves as “the first line of defense” when students attack each other, the motion says, “teachers themselves are common targets of violent behavior by students.”…

“Plaintiff was clearly injured while at work, at her place of employment, by a student in the classroom where she was a teacher, and during the school day,” the school board argues. “Teaching and supervising students in her first grade class was a core function of Plaintiff’s employment. Thus, Plaintiff’s injuries arose out of and in the course of her employment and fall under Virginia’s Workers’ Compensation Act[.]”…

“Plaintiff was well-aware of John Doe’s history and behavioral challenges through her role as a teacher at Richneck Elementary School and a member of John Doe’s SST,” the motion says. “Educating John Doe through his behavioral evaluation and educational journey was squarely within Plaintiff’s job description. Thus, when John Doe acted out and injured Plaintiff during class on January 6, 2023, the resulting injuries fall under Workers’ Compensation.”

So you get the idea. Wokers’ Comp covers job related accident and this shooting clearly happened on the job, therefore she has no right to sue. Apparently the district’s response doesn’t consider the responsibility of anyone else in the school to do anything at all in this circumstance. First grade teachers are just on their own if a 6-year-old brings a gun to school. No one else has any responsibility whatsoever to deal with that problem even if they’re told about it in advance. At least that’s the implication.

Zwerner’s legal team has issued a response to the filing:

On Thursday, Zwerner’s legal team released a statement in response: “No one believes that a first grade teacher should expect that one of the risks of teaching first grade is that you might get shot by a six-year-old. The school board’s position is contrary to how every citizen in Newport News thinks teachers should be treated, and the law does not support the board’s position. Teachers across the district will be alarmed to learn their employer sees this as part of the job description.”

We’ll have to wait to see what a court thinks but it’s hard to believe they are going to side with the idea that being shot by a first grader is an ordinary workplace accident. The filing compares it to being stabbed with scissors but first grade classrooms don’t even have sharp scissors laying around much less handguns.

The whole point here is that the administrators in charge that day should have called the police the moment they learned a student may have brought a gun to school. Instead, for reasons that still aren’t clear, they refused to do that. Unless administrators have literally zero responsibility to keep the school safe I don’t see how their lack of action in this case is defensible. We’re honestly just lucky this deranged child didn’t take the opportunity to shoot at a bunch of his classmates as well.