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.
THE “TEACHER’S AIDE THAT is hired to be 1:1 with that special needs kid gets paid about $28,000 for a school year.
THE LARGER MALES MUST HAVE MALE “HANDLERS”.
Or they get 2 on 1 or 3 on one
Of course short staffed so people get hurt all the time
Wanna talk about group homes do not the staff needed and all of them are 90 lb women
Institutions are able to focus a goodly amount of staff on any problem, which prevents the staff or the patient from getting hurt.
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.
I've seen some of these kids in action.
The fact that many are mainstreamed is a sin.
Doctors are diagnosing toddlers with autism at massive rates. It is being used ass an excuse for not teaching a child. My 6-year-old great-grandson is one of those. My daughter insisted that 'he is suppose to be on medication.' So she didn't bother teaching him. I have another granddaughter who was diagnosed and on drugs for 15 years. When her mother died, I found out that though the teen can read a bit, she must use her fingers to add and subtract. Though she doesn't have behavior problems, the school has just stopped teaching her and will graduate her in May.
“It is being used ass an excuse for not teaching a child.”
It’s also being used as an excuse to not correct bad behavior in a child.
As for your great granddaughter still adding with her fingers I know a lot of adults who still do that. We get taught that as a child and it gets embedded. Still though they should have been trying to teach her something, anything.
“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.”
Stuff like this tells me the schools have lost control. When they whooped kids butt they did not need officers in school. Think about it, when you and I were in school what would they have done to us if we bite or kicked another kid? I know what would have happened, Mrs. Ross would have marched down the hall like General Patton with that paddle of hers and you would have got it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl8NTweMM5k
you get what you put up with, and usually a lot more of it...
The schools have lost control
When you were in school the school did not permit mentally ill or mentally handicapped or sociopathic children to mainsteam in school with you.
They had their own school and residential environments.
So a threat of a spanking would be enough to manage normal socialized children.
But that is not what is going on now.
Because her specialty, though, was a despised stepchild of the system and the principals and staff largely ignored her, she was able to teach some of her students to read and write using banned classical phonetic methods and when those brighter kids were mainstreamed the were way ahead of the normals. She just had to put up all the wall decorations that were supposed to teach "look-say" or "word shapes.'
The incidence of autism has increased directly as the number of preschool inoculations has increased. Autism was unheard of until the advent of diphtheria shots a hundred years ago. Doctors had neve seen it before. When those shots became required for school doctors started seeing this new thing that eventually got named Autism. Almost all the inoculations contain adjuvants to make them more effective but those adjuvants are aluminum and mercury.
In the 80’s I saw autistic children who could not even communicate. Today, autism is declared a spectrum which I realize I was on as a child. Children “on the spectrum” should still be taught and disciplined, but they are not.
I remember the “special schools” around our county. They even had a very nice one for deaf kids. Then all this mainstreaming crap happened. Everything went to pot after that.
Many parents of these kids want their kids in mainstreaming. I honestly think it’s to make them feel better. I’m going to say it and I don’t care who’s toes I step on. These parents do that so they are feel better about not having a retarded child. They can say “see he or she is smart, they are mainstreaming” when in reality their child is still dumber than a box of rocks.
Being in a special school might have taught their child something with the one on one education but now the child is mainstreamed and is learning nothing. In fact is keeping others from learning. The other kids see the retarded kids act out and don’t get into trouble and don’t understand this. I’m sure this creates bad feelings. I don’t know for sure but when you hear about abuse in group homes of special needs people by group home workers do you ever think it is because those workers saw this happen in the schools and are now getting even in some sick twisted way?
You are correct about what parents want.
A lot of the group home abuse is perpetrated by low functioning or immigrant labor. In some other countries
Delayed, or disabled are abused sometimes to death.
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