Kiera Wilmot was charged with two felonies, for popping the top off a water bottle.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

104. In my youth we blew up M-80s,

and "ash cans". Basically both were very large firecrackers, capable of doing quite a bit of damage. Regular everyday firecrackers were passé once you got past seven or so.
Only a fool would have blown one of these up at school of course. But the penalty for doing so would have been suspension, not expulsion. And it would never have occurred to anyone to press any sort of criminal charges, juvenile or adult, unless deliberate harm was done to someone with one of these.
We all knew the difference between normal kids and the really stupid and bad ones. One of those wound up crushed by an elevator, and none of us was surprised. And in our group there was one kid who was killed in a drug deal when he grew up; we didn't think he was bad, but we did know he was stupid, so that one didn't surprise us much either.
Whether this child was normal, or stupid and bad, we of course don't know. But in the old days the judgment for which she was would have been rendered in the course of her life, not by authority figures wielding an extraordinarily blunt instrument.