Posted on 02/23/2025 11:43:06 PM PST by Morgana
A group of elementary school principals, preschool and kindergarten teachers this week told members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability one classroom horror story after the next of violent and often uncontrollable student behavior. The educators detailed their graphic tales in an effort to lobby for help, to urge legislators to bolster and pass 2024’s Senate Bill 614. The bill – which passed the House and Senate earlier this year but died in the final hours of the legislative session – would offer some of the behavior intervention and safety measures now in code for middle and high schools.
With nearly 30 years of education experience, Stephanie Haynes, principal at Kanawha County’s Bridgeview Elementary, gave examples of the disruptive students that take away her time for administration duties and keep teachers from teaching the majority of their students.
“‘Ken’ is in third grade,” Haynes said, using another name to protect the identity of the student. “In his career, since kindergarten, he has been suspended more than 30 times. He has kicked, head butted and punched me repeatedly. Most recently on Thursday, I spent 38 minutes, because I hit my watch, being actively and violently attacked by him. On Thursday, I actually called the police, and if you don’t know this, the police cannot help me.”
Chloe Laughlin, a Kanawha County Schools kindergarten teacher, talked of dealing with multiple disruptive students, and getting beaten up and yelled at daily. She gave examples regarding students A, B, C and D.
“Student D destroyed my classroom on multiple occasions, including flipping tables and chairs, throwing all items off of shelves and onto the floor,” Laughlin said. “He pulled down my metal blinds off of my windows, which I still do not have to this day, took dry erase markers and drew all over the floors, on the walls, cussed worse than a sailor, and called me and the other students terrible things, words that five-year-olds should never hear. The other students in the classroom were hit in the head. Objects were thrown at them, and they had to evacuate the classroom.”
Laughlin told legislators that families are taking their students out of school, not because of how our teachers teach, but because of how they are treated by the other students. She said across the state educational board, students and teachers are not getting the respect that they deserve and educators need help. Laughlin asked legislators about bolstering SB 614.
“Students can be removed from the classroom if the behavior is disorderly,” she said. ”Who makes this decision? Where do they go, and what staff will be in this alternative location? What about an alternative learning environment? There is one in Kanawha County for middle and high school, but elementary has none. We have a nine week program, but that is a Band-Aid to a much bigger problem. What happens to the students if there is no alternative learning center in their school district? I see that these resolutions are more clearly defined for middle and high school and with added portions for elementary yet these questions still stand.”
Morgan Elmore teaches preschool in Randolph County. She said she understands that children who have trauma often act out, but added that it does not give them an excuse to come to classrooms and beat other children, beat teachers and beat their friends. She said these problems and situations must be dealt with early.
“Students are coming to school with less and less basic knowledge,” Elmore said. “They’re coming to us not knowing their name, not knowing their birth date, but I’m supposed to teach Johnny these things while I have another student in the corner, tearing the room apart. Scores can’t go up if I can’t be teaching, and instead, have to be acting as a counselor. In Randolph County, we do not have alternative learning for elementary students. We don’t have the nine week program. We don’t have a building to put them in. They are left in the classrooms.”
Tina Wallen taught for 16 years. She is now a Raleigh County elementary school principal who said many disruptive student behaviors begin with challenges at home.
“We’re seeing a lot of kids with trauma,” Wallen said. “A lot of kids who are born to drug addicted parents and being raised by grandparents or great grandparents. A lot of times when they come to us in kindergarten, they’re not even potty trained. Seeing that more and more each year. We remove kids from the classroom. I’ve been kicked in the face while trying to restrain a kid, and he got loose and kicked me with a good old construction boot upside the jaw. You bring them to my office, they’ll run and flip the chairs, pull all the books off the shelves.”
Wallen said she didn’t feel like sending these students home was the best answer.
“Because this is kind of where these things are allowed to take place most of the time, she said. “I love my job. I love what I do. We just have to figure out some answers and some support. I feel like we need some type of training, maybe for families. I don’t think a lot of our families even know how to deal with this.”
The teachers and principals explained that they can’t take away recess as punishment because that time often goes into the required hours of physical education. They said that West Virginia does not have any inpatient therapy hospitals for kids this age, except for Highland and River Park, and only if they’re suicidal. They also told lawmakers that if a parent or guardian is looking for help for students like this, they have to look out of state.
Stepanie Haynes told commission members the learning percentages are skewed by disruptive students.
“Ninety-eight percent of the children are good and want to do well,” Haynes said. “It’s that one-to-two percent in the building that are so disruptive that the rest are suffering, and are not learning. And I can’t take their recess, and I can’t put my hands on them.”
The educators’ tales included: four-year-old students telling the teacher they’re going to shoot them with a gun and burn the school down; four-year-old students running and choking another student on the playground and punching them in the face on their very first day of school; a four-year-old slapping the teacher so hard that her glasses went flying across the room; a four-year-old student biting the teacher so hard that it drew blood and the teacher had to get medical attention; and a grade school student who was expelled because he brought a handful of ammunition and a large kitchen knife to class.
The commission chair, Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said less than half of the counties in the state have elementary Behavior Intervention centers or behavior disorder classrooms available for elementary age students. She said the graphic behavior situations described here were statewide and key to systemic education failures.
“Until we get these behaviors under control, we’re not going to see an improvement in test scores, and our enrollment keeps declining,” Grady said. “It’s not just because people just want to send their kids to a private school or want to homeschool. They feel like it’s best for them, because they’re getting them out of situations like this to where they’re not seeing these behaviors and being affected or traumatized in many cases.
Until we get control of this, we’re not going to see any of that stuff go up. And so we have to take this seriously. And this has to be a priority this session,” Grady said.
Bring back reform schools.
Some kids are simply ineducable.
L
My general population classes were awful and the worst were the minority students.
They have been granted privileged status all their lives and behaved as such.
One or two students would prevent learning for the entire class.
As a consequence, I would have to teach 9th Grade level curriculum to my Chemistry and Physics students.
We see it reflected in our need for H1-B immigrants.
We homeschool our 15 year grandson. We have done this for the past 3 years.
When we took over he did not know the alphabet, could not write or spell his name, and could not add 2+5.
Today, he is half way through Saxon Algebra 1, and he is reading a U.S. history textbook for Advanced Placement students.
It’s not often that one has the opportunity to save a life.
After reading the article fetal alcohol syndrome, narcotic addiction, and awful home diets was my first thought.
Our nation’s children are being poisoned by moms who are themselves poisoned.
Teachers should not have to deal with this. Plus it deters talented people from entering the profession.
Take out the trouble makers and set up a military style boot camp for them.
Don’t I wish it would be allowed :)
I don’t even know if there’s not a law at the federal level banning corporal punishment.
which is a shame, because it works as part of the arsenal an adult can choose from to discipline kids.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :)
There are some old tools that might help the situation- suspension, expulsion, Juvie,- and an older one- hanging by the thumbs.
For he education establishment and for the Left in general, potty raining as well as everything else regarding children is proper to the school environment as parents must not be allowed to actually raise or influence children lest they not grow up as state robots.
Those kids should have stayed home and been home schooled. Homeschooling focuses the parents on the kids and their behaviour as well as giving them a better education than is available from the State.
Too late. Violent, disruptive kids should be removed from school immediately and with no appeal.
“My idea is that public schools should be downsized to serve special needs kids and let the normal kids go to charter, religious or private schools. It would save a lot of money.”
Interesting concept—most parents of special needs kids want them in “mainstream” settings even if it destroys the educational experience for everyone else.
Those parents need to be over-ruled.
AMEN!
Diet may be a factor but a bouncing off the wall hyperative child is not even the beginning of what we are talking about here.
these are children with no judgment, often low intelligence, violent, sexualized, with no remorse and sometimes no understanding of simple direction. Sometime in the throes of psychosis.
When you hear of the second grader led out in handcuffs... you can be sure he or she is much older than grade level and that the child has hurt someone seriously in the past. The newscaster doesn’t say that the child is a 115 lb 10 year old who bites kicks screams and needs six people to hold him down.
Oh, do believe it. Believe it in earnest.
When I was in elementary school here in Texas, I was asked while in 4th grade to show-and-tell my tadpole that had grown its legs and becoming the cool frog 🐸 God designed it to be. To the kindergarten class.
The stench of urine in that classroom was horrific and I very nearly vomited.
And that was in the early 1970s.
And not to leave out, that the same behaviors being exhibited by these kids in this instance and ongoing, right this moment, were going on then at the elementary school I attended in Texas, and in the previous two I attended in California.
A certain ethnic demographic was predominantly involved in it, being the kids, with an equal mix of Black and White Admin, Principals, Teachers, other
staff, blah and spew.. Blah because they behaved every bit the reprehensible animals and abusive monsters that CA and TX saw to stuff the classrooms with.
Whether or not desegregation had to do with it or not, in this case it didn’t help. Black kids were bused from the worst parts of cities or town to predominantly White neighborhoods / classrooms, and there were already intensely emotionally disturbed or demonically possessed White kids / staff there, and it was as nuke going off.
This went on through middle and halfway through high school, when my parents told me that I would not be returning to school after Thanksgiving break. My grades had become so abysmal, my self esteem almost undetectable, my only solace was via reading and writing my own sci-fi novels. I loved to spend long hours reading the dictionary, a well-thumbed thesaurus, and other helps to understand and comprehend and enlarge my understanding and vocabulary.
I thought God hated me and I hated myself. I still have to slap those feelings down on occasion, knowing God loves me and He doesn’t want me to hate myself, just despise the evil one, Satan, and resist him daily.
Read The Bible and let its Living Word Heal me within and without, and I can believe every Word it says. Because It Is JESUS. It Is GOD. THE I AM THAT I AM.
I’m so glad those days of torment are over for me, I should hit my knees for those who have to go through what I am at this day in time!
My wife worked in a ‘facility’ ie school for these little monsters.
The article notes issues with drug addicted parent, and mises Fetal Alcohol Syndrome kiddos whose mom was a drunk while pregnant.
Add in the parent that let their kiddo run amok - over half the kids in my DW building were **convicted felons** with parole officers and the rest. There are the girls actively hooking - to support their druggie parents and all that goes with.
Unless you have had to deal with these, you have no idea.
Now, make it all better by the FedGov and local lawyers who specialize in suing the District for failure to meet wildly unrealistic ‘goals’ and micromanaging the schools.
If your child not had to compete with one of these out-of-control lunatics - as that child was *mainstreamed* into a normal school, count yourself very lucky.
Deleting the Dept of “Education’ would be a good start.....
DUMP THE “BOARD OF EDUCATION” IDEA.
OPEN UP A DETENTION CENTER WITH NO MINIMUM AGE
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.