Quebec student who mistakenly took knife to school not welcome back

An honour roll student who was expelled for taking a pocket knife to school accidentally will not be reinstated, the Riverside School Board says after it received a lawyer's letter demanding the student be allowed to return to his school.

Shawn Soucy was expelled in the middle of his final year at Heritage Regional High School in St. Hubert, on Montreal's South Shore, after the pocket knife was found in his backpack.

Soucy said he must have forgotten to take the knife out of his pack after doing chores on his family farm.

• Quebec honour roll student fights expulsion for bringing pocket knife to school
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Soucy's family turned to Montreal civil rights lawyer Julius Grey after the school board decided Soucy could no longer attend regular classes, instead allowing him to take individual lessons with a tutor two days a week.

Grey would not comment on the case, but CBC did obtain the letter he sent to the school board last week.

"The decision to expel Shawn is flagrantly unreasonable and runs contrary to the Canadian and Quebec Charters of Rights and Freedoms," Grey states in the letter.

"We do not dispute the right to prohibit knives, but the application of such a rule to a student with no disciplinary record who states that he forgot it in his pocket cannot justify a blind application of the rule."

Student was not expelled, school board says

The director general of the Riverside School Board, Sylvain Racette, says he won't comment on the specific case, but he insists it's incorrect to say Soucy was expelled.

Racette says Soucy is still a student with the school board.

There are consequences to bringing a pocket knife to school.- Sylvain Racette, Riverside School Board director general

"We're meeting the student to make sure that we are providing services that are tailored to make sure that they are succeeding," he said.

"There are consequences to bringing a pocket knife to school."

'I'm not surprised'

"I am not surprised they would say no," Soucy's mother Treasa Kenny said.

"I have never, ever seen in my entire life a school board or a few at a school-board level try so desperately hard to fight something as simple as trying to get a kid back in school, who should be back in school."

Kenny says she plans to sit down with Grey to see if further action can be taken.

She says Soucy may be almost done his school year, but she won't give up.

"Because there are other Shawns out there," she said.