Eight Annapolis High School students have been suspended for their roles Wednesday in three unrelated fights, one of which police say "stopped short of an actual riot."
The largest of the fights, involving five students, began at 9:30 a.m. as classes changed.
The police report did not give details of how the fight started, but quoted Assistant Principal Dennis McKay as saying it "caused a major disruption of the normal school routine."
Additional students became involved and almost turned the fight into a riot, the report said.
But Joyce Smith, the principal, disagreed with that assessment and said the entire incident was over in about one minute.
"There were probably more teachers in the hallway than students," Mrs. Smith said yesterday.
Two 17-year-old boys were each charged as juveniles with willful disturbance of school activities, police said. Both were released to relatives on the authority of their mothers, police said.
Mr. McKay told police he would file adult charges for the same offense with the court commissioner's office against three students -- an 18-year-old and two 19-year-olds.
But Mrs. Smith said yesterday that school officials reconsidered and decided not to pursue adult charges against the three students.
All three fights were essentially the result of "he said/she said" kinds of arguments, Mrs. Smith said.
To have three fights in a single day at Annapolis High, she said, "was not unusual in the past, but it isn't something we've seen this year."
Mrs. Smith said the fact that there are fewer fights is the direct result of a series of conflict resolution workshops at Sandy Point State Park in the fall.
The workshops, for several hundred students, were developed and conducted by student leaders who were concerned about the rising number of violent incidents in all schools.