Tag: school

How to Stop the School –> Prison –> Pipeline

Too many students are being diverted from school into the criminal justice system.

The school-to-prison pipeline “is one of our nation’s most formidable challenges, states the report.” “It arises from low expectations; low academic achievement; incorrect referral or categorization in special education; and overly harsh discipline, including suspension, expulsion, referral to law enforcement, arrest and treatment in the juvenile justice system.”  And, the report notes, “Throughout these causes runs evidence of implicitly biased discretionary decisions, which, unintentionally, bring about these results.”

What the report fails to mention is that the causes are not generally biased discretionary decisions, but policies imposed on schools by legislators, regulators and school boards.  There has been a movement across the country that takes the authority away from individual schools.  Individual schools often no longer have the authority to make discipline, safety, educational or treatment decisions as their discretion has been usurped by policy makers and people removed from the classroom.

The result, while, perhaps, unintentional, was absolutely foreseeable.

When you take the authority and ability to maintain a safe and effective educational environment away from the school and educators, and place the authority in the hands of law enforcement, there will be a rise in the number of students entering the school –> to –> prison pipeline.

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FL. Jacksonville teacher suspended for not intervening in kindergarten fight

A northeast Florida kindergarten teacher named Rita Baci has been suspended for allegedly making multiple video recordings of a child beating up other children without intervening.

But some believe it’s the education system itself that makes it difficult for teachers to intervene in school fights.

On three separate occasions, the teacher used her smartphone to make a video of a male student hurting others in the class. According to the Florida Times-Union, the videos show the boy smacking another boy “about his face and body several times, kicking another student who was attempting to hide under a table, and punching and slapping a third student.” The kindergarten teacher did not intervene in any of these school fights.

TN. Multimillion dollar suit filed against school for failure to protect, bullying, assault and battery

The court-appointed guardian of a 16-year-old Washburn School student has filed a $30 million dollar lawsuit against more than a dozen parties.

The case, filed last month by the victim’s court-appointed guardian, Katherine Parks, said the then 15-year-old was brutally attacked by four classmates, leaving her with injuries to the face and head, it said.

Parties in the suit named include director of schools Edwin Jarnagin, the Grainger County Board of Education, and all the named attackers’ families.

The suit says one of the four classmates confronted the victim, identified as “SL,” hit her head on a metal pole several times, and then the other three girls kicked and punched the victim several times.

“While this beating was going on, S.L. remembers seeing a teacher walk by. The teacher took no action to stop the assault on S.L. or to help her in any way,” the suit said.

After the victim’s foster mother picked the girl up to take her to a hospital, she spotted an ambulance and stopped for help. The suit added “The workers at the substation examined S.L., determined her condition to be one of life and death…”

The severity of the injuries is reason why, according to lawyers from the plaintiff at the Vogel Law Firm, so much and so many people were named in the suit.

“We send out kids to school not to fail to be protected — to go and to learn and have a positive experience,” said associate attorney Rosie Brown. “If teachers and administrators and other school supervisors are turning a blind eye to situations that could lead to an incident so serious as this, then there’s something that needs to be done about that.”

NYC. Another NYC School to be sued for failing to protect student. 14 year-old blinded in school fight will sue for 16 million.

14-year-old Brooklyn teen Kardin Ulysse was left blind in one eye after a brutal assault by bullies. The encounter involved the thugs shouting anti-gay slurs in the cafeteria of Roy H. Mann Junior High School in Bergen Beach.

In response to the attack, Pierre, the boy’s father said:

Pierre said:

“The doctor says he needs a transplant … For me to send him to school with two eyes and come back with one eye is really absurd.”

The eighth grader was double teamed by a pair of seventh graders. The pair called him names such as a “f***ing fa**ot”, a “transvestite” and “gay.”

One schoolmate pinned the victim’s arms, while the other was clear to send punches on the defenseless Kardin’s face, head and neck. Kardin was able to break away, but the fight continued in the cafeteria until school safety officers and aides finally intervened.

The boy’s family has retained lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who will file a notice Tuesday to sue the city for $16 million for failing to properly supervise the students.

Stopping a student who is headbutting his desk

Question:

We have a student that is head butting his desk while seated. What is the best approach to restrain the student in this situation?

He will also head butt the staff when they attempt to restrain him.

Answer:

You do not mention the age of the level of functioning of this student.  For this answer we assume you have already tried less intrusive strategies to interrupt the behavior.

These are some of your options:

  1. For an older child or adolescent, you can use a standard PRT initiated from behind and over the seat back.  You may also want to add another adult to help keep his body from pressing forward toward the table top with an arm; keeping his back pressed backward and into the seat back.  If you cannot prevent his body from pressing forward and his head is coming in contact with the table top, allow him to lean forward (while remaining in a PRT) and use the cushion and some manual stabilization to protect his head and the head of the PRT person from impact forces.  This is the identical strategy that you should use if the student was being held in the “Neutral Position” on the floor.  As an additional precaution, you may want to get a cushion to place between the front of his head and the desk and a second cushion, if necessary to place between the back of his head and the person performing the hold. You can get a “stadium cushion” from one of the sporting good stores. They are made out of vinyl and are perfect for this purpose.
  2. For a younger child, you can use a “Modified PRT for Smaller Children” initiated from behind and over the seat back.  The arm in front will be able to keep him pressed backward and into the seat back.   If you cannot prevent his body from pressing forward and his head is coming in contact with the table top, allow him to lean forward (while remaining in a Modified PRT) and use the cushion and some manual stabilization at the student’s temples to protect his head and the head of the PRT person from any impact forces.

Finally, knowing that this is a persistent problem, your best choice may be to routinely keep his desk in the back of the class and backed up against a wall.  You can use two adults on either side to perform, what I call, a “Two Person Escort Position in reverse” to keep him pinned into the seat back. This configuration is exactly like HWC’s “Two Person Supine” hold, except that the students back is erect in his seat rather than face-up on the floor.  Both staff can protect their own heads using the same hand position on either side of his head as you would during our Supine hold.

Oregon School Sued for Failing To Protect Students

A Harrisburg mother says educators didn’t PROTECT her son, who has Tourette’s syndrome.

The mother of a middle school student has filed a federal lawsuit against the Harrisburg School District, alleging that its educators failed to protect him from bullying and assaults by other students.

The complaint accuses the district of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress by allowing other students to taunt, push and strike him.

The suit also accuses the district of disclosing the boy’s confidential personal information and education records to the general public without his consent.

Because the boy and his alleged tormenters are juveniles, The Register-Guard is not publishing their names.

Harrisburg Superintendent Brian Wolf declined comment on the suit, saying district officials do not discuss pending litigation publicly.

The suit alleges that classmates began bullying the boy in 2007, when he was a fourth-grader at Harrisburg Elementary School.

It says he was taunted with derogatory terms for homosexuals and offensive hand gestures. It says the district failed to address “escalating incidents” of such bullying over the years, creating a “hostile and toxic education environment” for the boy.

It alleges that other students hit, punched and spit on him; jumped on him, causing him to cut his head; and shoved him into a wall, breaking his thumb.

It says the boy repeatedly complained to teachers. It charges that at least one teacher responded by accusing him of lying. It says others admonished his alleged attackers, or punished both him and them with in-school suspensions. But the district failed to stop the other students’ actions, the suit alleges, and the boy stopped seeking teachers’ help.

The boy’s mother also complained to school officials and reported the broken thumb to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office, the suit charges, but the behavior still was “not addressed” at school.

After two months of “near-daily incidents of name-calling and harassment, all with the same anti-homosexual theme,” the boy in 2009 began begging to stay home from school, the suit says. His parents pulled him from school, it contends, after he began experiencing “diarrhea, stomach pains, anxiety, fear of adults, aggression toward his younger sisters, and general distrust of people.”

The harassment and physical attacks continued when the boy attended seventh grade at Harrisburg Middle School during the 2010-11 school year, the suit alleges. It charges that a teacher failed to intervene when another student grabbed and “dry humped” the boy in a locker room.

The suit says Oregon teachers and administrators are required to know federal laws prohibiting discrimination, including “student-on-student perceived gender discrimination.”

Yet, “as a result of the (Harrisburg) district’s unofficial policies, customs or practices,” the boy was “harassed, bullied, disciplined and punished by his fellow students” with behavior that was “condoned, tolerated and intentionally encouraged by the district,” the suit says.

Moral of the Story: There are consequences for failing to take action.

New York teachers and school safety officers investigated for not intervening in girls’ beating (by other students) at Bronx prep school

Both teachers and school safety officers are being investigated for standing by and not lifting a finger to stop a bloody brawl in the Bronx.

The fight video, taken at Eximius Preparatory Academy, only lasts a minute. But for any parent who sees their child getting kicked, punched and bitten, the chaos that one minute video feels like a lifetime.

“After I seen the video, I was really destroyed,” the victim’s mother, Tjuana Thomas said. “How could they? I could understand if it was a one on one, but it’s like so many kids just pounding away.”

In the video, Thomas’ daughter is seen standing top on a school cafeteria table when another student leaps up and starts pounding on the 15-year-old sophomore.

They both fall to the floor, and that’s when four more girls jump in, kicking and punching.

“One of the boys at my school tried to pull me off of her,” the girl said. “He tried to stop the fight, but she still had my hair.”

Thomas did not want her daughter to be identified. The teen says she’s been bullied by a group of girls since she transferred to the school four months ago.

She says this fight started because she confronted another student who was bullying her by throwing water on her, and then she was surrounded by a group of girls.

“I got on the table because they were coming around me,” she said. “So they won’t hit me.”

One classmate came to her defense, only to catch the most vicious brunt of the beating. That girl tried to hide under a table, but she was savagely dragged out and kicked and punched in the face.

“I feel happy that she helped me,” Thomas’ daughter said. “But I feel bad that they all jumped on her.”

The controversy is heightened by the video, which shows two NYPD school safety officers walk into the room as the fight starts. But they are not seen at any time trying to break it up.

NYPD officials say school safety agents are supposed to intervene during fights and have the power to make arrests. They’re looking into why this may not have happened.

Three girls were arrested on misdemeanor assault, riot and disorderly conduct charges.

Thomas’ daughter was suspended for five days, but says she will not return to the school.

The Department of Education says that the students are being disciplined and that the matter is being investigated.

Thomas’ daughter says that she didn’t report the bullying because she was afraid.

NYC has a policy of not allowing school staff and teachers to intervene even though this is clearly countrary to the right to defend oneself and another.  Lucky for the girl, the cafeteria staff saved the girl from further being beaten.

Unions in the U.K. Want Restraint Training for Teachers

Thousands of teachers in the UK fear chaos in the classroom if the Government goes ahead with plans to give them powers to restrain and search unruly pupils without proper training.

Four out of five teachers surveyed by the Teacher Support Network warn that extra training is essential if they are to get a grip on misbehaviour during lessons and avoid injury and false accusations of abuse when breaking up fights.

Teaching leaders claim that unless the issue is tackled in schools, the problems will continue into adult life. Problems range from name-calling and minor scuffles to homophobic and racist abuse, cyber-bullying and teachers being seriously assaulted. A survey of about 1,000 members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) found that more than half had been confronted with aggression in the classroom in the past year. Almost 60 per cent agreed that behaviour had got worse in the past five years.

The key issue is that teachers are particularly vulnerable to false allegations by pupils,” said a spokesperson from the NASUWT teachers’ union. “This can have a devastating effect on their professional reputation, as well as their personal well-being. “Teachers have a duty of care to pupils which may at times cause them to intervene to protect pupils from harming themselves or other pupils,” the NUT warned. “Many are currently not confident that if they take such action they will be supported by senior leadership teams, parents or the local authority.”

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