football coach

Student Arrested During a Protest at Cleburne High School: Police

Just days after a Cleburne High School football coach was banned from campus after submitting his resignation, students are rallying for his return, along with two other teachers who left.

But one of the students may have gone too far on Wednesday. He was escorted out in handcuffs, arrested for pulling a fire alarm, officials said.

The Cleburne Independent School District released a statement saying the alarm led to a short evacuation and that classes were delayed less than 15 minutes. But students say that's not the whole story.

They shared videos with NBC 5, showing a large number of students out in the hallways. You can hear them chanting "fire Ms. Downs," a reference to the school's principal, Le'Ann Downs.

The student-led protest was outside the classroom of one of the teachers who the kids say was recently forced to resign.

NBC 5 spoke to one of the students who organized the protest, 11th grader Rukh Doughty. He said it did get out of hand, with some kids throwing things at the principal, and that the student pulled the fire alarm to stop that from happening and to clear out the area.

Doughty doesn't want all that to overshadow his original message.

"Two teachers were forced to resign, and we didn't feel like that was right, because these two teachers were loved and actually cared about the students," Doughty said. "They treated the students like they were their own kids."

"I'm proud of my kids for standing up for what they believe in, and the thing is most kids are like, 'Oh, we hate school, and we don't like our teachers,' but these are students that love these teachers," said Doughty's mother, Nelda Macias.

In her statement, the principal said she was proud of the students for evacuating quickly when the alarm was pulled and that the staff at the school is a family.

Football coach Jeff Merket resigned last week, saying he was facing bullying, harassment and retaliation. Right now he's not being allowed on campus, even for his son's signing day for college football.

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