Wow, the government's case, even if you accept it as true, doesn't seem to be a serious crime. She either was conducting a "science experiment", or screwing around with a small amount of chemicals to make a small bomb without threatening anyone, neither of which should be felonies.
A one-day suspension for doing this unsafely seems like about the limit of what's reasonable, and even that is questionable. The focus should be on making sure she knows about the accidental injury possible from this, not punishing her particularly, and encouraging her to continue with her interest in chemistry.
(The number of people I know who went to top-tier schools later who did crazy things much more dangerous than this, such as making fougasse, 5-10 pound black powder pipe bombs, ANFO, etc., is pretty high. They were all white or asian, though, which seems to be what this is about, as well as doing it off school property.)
I was initially a bit more suspicious of the story, assuming she was doing something actually dangerous and then explained it as "a science experiment" when caught, which clearly doesn't seem to be the case.
What you are missing is the policies of "zero-tolerance". Worried that lenient individuals might fail to enforce rules strictly enough and wanting to make a clear and unambiguous statement about behavior that should not be tolerated, many (especially schools) are setting up "zero-tolerance policies". These say that if you commit a certain offense, then certain consequences will be imposed regardless of mitigating circumstances. In this case, she did (even according to her own admission) create an explosive on school grounds. Now, the "explosive" was extremely mild (hydrogen gas can make a loud "popping" sound), she may not have realized that would be the effect, there was no malicious intent, and no one was hurt. But mitigating circumstances don't count with zero-tolerance policies, so she must be expelled.
The prosecution as an adult for felonies... for that there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse. I only hope that these threatened prosecutions do not materialize.
A one-day suspension for doing this unsafely seems like about the limit of what's reasonable, and even that is questionable. The focus should be on making sure she knows about the accidental injury possible from this, not punishing her particularly, and encouraging her to continue with her interest in chemistry.
(The number of people I know who went to top-tier schools later who did crazy things much more dangerous than this, such as making fougasse, 5-10 pound black powder pipe bombs, ANFO, etc., is pretty high. They were all white or asian, though, which seems to be what this is about, as well as doing it off school property.)
I was initially a bit more suspicious of the story, assuming she was doing something actually dangerous and then explained it as "a science experiment" when caught, which clearly doesn't seem to be the case.