CHARLESTON, W.Va.—— School principals and teachers came together at the state capitol Monday afternoon during legislative interim committee meetings; to give chilling accounts of behavioral issues they have encountered in their classrooms and pleading for something to be done.
This comes as state lawmakers are expected to start talking about a bill that would allow elementary school teachers to remove especially disruptive students from their classrooms. The bill was originally introduced in last year’s legislative session, but it only got passed by the Senate and the House of Delegates before being sent back to the Senate because some of the language was changed. The bill was sent back to the house, but they ran out of time before they could discuss the changes.
This bill would require the teacher to remove the student and that student to be placed into a behavioral intervention program that would be provided by the county. However, if the county does not have access to this program, then the student would have to be removed from the classroom, the student couldn’t ride the bus, the parents would be notified and if a parent did not show up then educators could call law enforcement.
Stephanie Haynes, Principal at BridgeView Elementary in South Charleston says that there isn’t much in-school discipline options for kids in elementary school.
“I’m not allowed to take recess from them at all, so consequences in schools are very very limited,” Haynes said during the interim meeting.
Morgan Elmore, a teacher in Randolph County, says that as a mom, especially to kids she has adopted, she has seen first-hand what trauma can make a kid do.
“Behaviors in the classroom are unfortunately getting more and more disruptive, aggressive and out of control,” Elmore said. “As a mother I understand that children that have trauma often act out, but it does not give them an excuse to come to our classrooms and beat other students, beat teachers, and beat their friends.”
Chloe Laughlin, a Kindergarten teacher for nine years, at BridgeView Elementary, says that teachers need help before the behaviors get any worse.
“Educators need help, educators need plans in place so that these violent behaviors are handled differently and effectively,” Laughlin said.
She says that it’s hard to follow protocol for behaviors that are violent. One protocol that teachers face is the PBIS system, which stands for positive behavior intervention support, which has consequences already set for certain behaviors/infractions.
“However, when those disruptions turn violent it is difficult to follow a PBIS system because the behavior has gone from zero to 100 in a matter of minutes,” Laughlin said.
And these issues are personal for Laughlin who wants her child to be able to go to school and not have to deal with these disruptions.
“As a mother of an almost three-month-old now, I want my daughter to be able to go to school in a safe environment, an environment where she won’t be hit, bit, smacked, pinched, or screamed at,” Laughlin said. “How is it fair for the other students at the school to go every day to their classrooms with these behaviors, they are not learning they are surviving for their entire day.”
She is saying that many teachers are leaving because of student behavior and not the lack of resources.
“The reason they are leaving is because they are beaten, yelled at, cussed at, they are dodging flying items, and have to endure extreme behaviors like this from the beginning of the school year, if not the entirety of the school year,” Laughlin said.
Elmore said that every year she thinks to herself that it couldn’t get any worse than the previous year.
“I’m in my eleventh year of teaching, and every single year, I say that I’m not going to say this, I say it can’t get any worse, their behavior can’t get any worse, and every year their behavior gets worse,” Elmore said.
Tina Wallen, a principal in Wyoming County, says she has personal experience with the violent behavior.
“I’ve been kicked in the face, while trying to restrain a kid, he got loose and kicked me with a good ole construction boot upside the jaw,” Wallen said. “You bring them to my office they’ll run and flip the chairs, pull all the books off of the shelves.”
She even said that this type of behavior extends to the school busses, where she had to be called out to get a child off of the bus because they were being disruptive, taking off their shoes, throwing jackets etc.
She even said that even if parents are called the behaviors don’t stop.
“Parents called in, then when they come in, I have a little boy who was beating his mom just as bad as he was destroying my office all the way to vehicle,” Wallen said. “And we get him in the van, she goes to pull out of the parking lot, he jumps out of the van, so then it’s a chase down the street to get him back in the vehicle.”
Haynes said that the students who want to learn can’t because of the kids who have behavioral problems
“98% of the children are good and want to do well but it’s that one to two percent of the building that are so disruptive that the 98% are suffering and are not learning,” she said.
Elmore said that it was so bad, that there is one classroom that teachers can find their principal in everyday, because of the behavioral issues going on in the classroom.
“We have a classroom in my building, that the principal, if you need to find her you know you’re going to find her in that classroom, she’s dealing with three behaviors in that room,” Elmore said. “My daughter is in that class, and she comes home crying every night, mom I just want to learn, I want to learn to read, but I can’t because all I get done is listen to so and so screaming or so and so throwing pencils.”