You can see it mentioned in your first article:
>her attorneys cite a state law that gives school districts and their employees immunity from liability if they make a good faith effort to report threats of violence.
so even if a student threatens violence, as long as the teacher reports it, there will no liability to her or the school even if they didn't do anything to stop the violence or supervise the children adequately. This statute is actually more lenient than other areas where it is complete immunity.
Now this immunity is limited to state actors and does not apply to private schools, churches or sports teams. And I believe that without these protections public schools would have been sued out of existence long ago for the horrible things constantly happening to children under their care.
I'm not sure what you expect a teacher to do. Break the student's arms? Search their bag, home, neighborhood for any guns and remove them? Duct-tape them to their desk and set a bucket underneath?
I'm not faulting the teachers, I'm talking more about legal liability in terms of sovereign immunity which limits or negates the liability of states from lawsuits.
http://www.heraldnet.com/news/teacher-wants-out-of-marysvill...
http://www.whio.com/news/crime--law/350k-lawsuit-filed-madis...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/families-washington...