Ruling on items confiscated from students who break the rules
Question

                What is the ruling on items confiscated from students for breaking the rules, such as (pumpkin or sunflower etc) seeds, chewing gum, masbahahs, rings and so on? 

I confiscate (pumpkin or sunflower etc) seeds and chewing gum and throw them in the trash. As for masbahahs and rings, I hand them over to the administration, but the administration says: Give them back so that we will owe them nothing.

To sum up, the question is: what is the ruling on items confiscated from students in such cases?.
Praise be to Allah.
      If these students have been informed about the things which 
      they are not allowed to use in class or bring to school and have been told 
      that whoever breaks the rule will have it confiscated from him, it is 
      permissible to punish those who break the rules by confiscating them. If 
      they are items of little value, such as pumpkin seeds, it is permissible 
      to dispose of them, but if they are valuable items they should be returned 
      to the student or his guardian at the end of the day or at the end of the 
      school year, according to whatever the school thinks is best. 

    Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him) was 
    asked: Is it permissible for the teacher to take things from some students 
    which may be valuable, with which they were playing in class during the 
    lesson, and give them to the school? 

    He replied: That is based on the issue of whether it is 
    permissible to punish by taking wealth or property. Some of the scholars say 
    that it is not permissible to punish by taking wealth or property in any 
    case except what is mentioned in the texts. Some of them say that punishing 
    by taking wealth or property is permissible and this is the more correct 
    view. But if the students have something that they are playing with and he 
    has warned them, for example by writing on the blackboard or posting a 
    notice, that if anyone brings something and plays with it, it will be 
    confiscated, then in that case he may confiscate it, but if it is something 
    valuable and the student is poor - for example -- then it should be kept 
    safely at the school, and at the end of the year it should be given to the 
    student or his guardian. 

    End quote from al-Liqa’ al-Shahri, 48/15 

    And Allah knows best.