Teen’s badly worded prank listed school for sale; now he’s banned from graduation

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was supposed to just be a senior prank. But Truman High School officials weren’t laughing when they banned the student from his graduation.

As a joke, Kylan Scheele, 18, listed Truman High for sale on Craigslist at the bargain basement price of $12,275.

“I wanted to list it really low because people search low to high and I wanted it to be the first thing to pop up,” Scheele said.

But some who saw the post took it as a possible threat against the school and reported it.

It was Scheele’s choice of words that got the A- student in trouble. In addition to including several amenities, such as a new football field and what he called a “20 plus room facility,” his post also said, “The reason for the sale is due to the loss of students coming up.”

The “loss” meant the students who would be graduating.

“I posted a harmless ad on Craigslist with no talk of violence at all, and because someone twisted my words and inferred that I might do something to the school, they won’t let me walk at graduation,” Scheele said.

But Scheele’s post led school officials and Independence police to spend significant hours tracking down the source, said Jana Corrie, the district’s spokeswoman. She said police even issued an emergency subpoena to Craigslist.

“We determined it was not a credible threat,” Corrie said.

But before that determination was made, she said, some parents worried the school was being targeted for possible violence and pulled their children out. The district never sent parents a notification of a threat.

After investigating the Craiglist post, Independence police said they found no reason to pursue criminal charges.

Scheele said if he had it to do over again, he would still pull the school-for-sale prank.

Only, “I would use a better choice of words to make it blatantly obvious that it was a joke,” he said. “Or I would just write at the end of it: ‘This is a joke.’”