HOUSTON— At Houston-area schools, it’s not unusual for principals to discipline students.

But some say what happened to two eighth-graders at Arnold Middle School was out of line.

“I don’t think a felony is really necessary for this,” student Chelsea Mathieu said.

Mathieu and Briauna Rivers claim they were both charged with felonies after they admitted to scribbling a line of graffiti on a restroom wall at their school.

For Rivers, the discipline didn’t stop there.

“They said, ‘put your hands behind your back’ and took us in that car,” Rivers said.

She was arrested, put in a constable’s car and taken to a holding room.

It’s the same kind of punishment that’s given to kids who fight, make terroristic threats or are caught with drugs.

“My biggest problem here is that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. We need to teach our kids equality, and this just doesn’t seem fair,” Rivers’ mother, Noelle Jackson, said.

Both girls were sent to Cy-Fair ISD’s alternative school for six weeks.

All of their extracurricular activities were halted, and now their parents feel their dreams of going to college are at risk.

“It’s like they are picking on them. It makes me angry as a parent. It makes me not trust the school,” mother Christi Mathieu said.

The graffiti in question includes things that 11 News cannot report, and other scribbles that most people can’t read.

But the girls said they each only wrote a single line with a few words.

And it’s not the first time a student has been severely punished for graffiti.

Two years ago, a Katy ISD student found herself in a similar situation after she wrote “I love Alex” on a gym wall.

A group called Texas Zero Tolerance called the Katy case extreme and has been fighting to make sure kids’ punishments fit their offenses.

The group believes schools should not charge kids with felonies for minor violations.

For now, Rivers and Mathieu will continue to go to alternative school while their parents fight for a punishment they feel is more appropriate.

The Cy-Fair school district sent a statement to 11 News Tuesday saying it conducted an investigation and "there was evidence of criminal activity."

It was "substantial.. and damage to property was deliberate," according to the statement. The language was "vulgar" and was "imitating gang graffiti."

The district says that's why it handed the evidence to the district attorney's office, which is now investigating the case.