Altercation at Waters Middle School prompts brief hold

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — An altercation at William E. Waters Middle School in Portsmouth led to a brief classroom hold on Thursday, the school division said.

The school's principal, Jennelle Burden, provided an email to the school community about the incident:

Good afternoon, Waters families –

I want to make you aware that this afternoon we briefly placed our school on a classroom hold (meaning students were escorted to their classrooms and out of hallways). We called for the hold after an altercation between two students broke out in front of the cafeteria and then escalated to involve a student’s parent. While we were handling this, we wanted to minimize traffic in our hallways and cafeteria. The hold was quickly lifted, and appropriate disciplinary action has been taken. We adjusted our lun