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.
Do you think it would help or is it too late?
The whole article seems geared towards the TRUTH that these kids were lost causes from a lost household from the start.
What’s a board of education gonna do to fix that?
It doesn’t take a village.
It’s take 2 good parents. Or, if one passes, one really good parent.
Like my aunt Carmella, who raised 3 boys with great success by using the “spoon” when necessary :) I didn’t get hit since I wasn’t her kid. I just watched in the corner!!
Since this was 50 years ago, I dont think child services will interfere so it was ok to write this :)
And I think private schools are going to BOOM under POTUS Trump.
I honeslty can’t believe what I reading. I’m actually having to read this several times to take it all in.
Kids going to kindergarten and not potty trained? We were not allowed to attend nursery school if we were not potty trained. The schools should not allow them in if they are not, teacher are not there to change diapers all day. What is this? A child at 5 should be potty trained.
The intervention needed has to be profound. This is a lack of parenting.
For my money, this is the #1 issue DJT has to tackle, worthy of a national emergency: How to set up campfires (metaphorically speaking) throughout the nation and talk about parenting, the Bible, and producing moral citizens.
I started out as a special ed teacher in a state school for emotionally disturbed kids. Special education fell into disfavor. Mentally ill kids were mainstreamed into regular classrooms. Predictably chaos reigns and teachers need to have the crazy kids segregated again. 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.
Thank god we sent my daughter to private school. They dealt with abusive kids the way they were dealt with in my day. They tossed them out of school. No hand wringing.
"You can reason with the child."
What are you gonna do? They make life miserable for the other kids!
The argument for public school is that we can’t throw the troubled kids away.
YES, at a REFORM SCHOOL, you don’t kick the troubled kids out..unless they just don’t show any hope. And there’s lots of security :)
At a regular school..if it’s too late then it’s too late. They are what their parents are.
I TRIED to fix to broken kids from Brownsville Brooklyn. Dated the mom a few times (I was a little crazy at the time) and just took a liking to the 13 and 15 year old boys.
They were Puerto Rican.
4 years I tried. And I was TOUGH with them, bug gave them love they had never seen before.
Even at those ages, it was too late.
One started to show sociopathic tendencies and that was it for me!!
Your daugther turned out great, I bet :)
I’m glad.
Wallen said she didn’t feel like sending these students home was the best answer
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But you think complaining to the media will work for you ???
Duh OK
yeah like you can reason with an alligator...
“This is a lack of parenting.”
Right... AND all the things which cause it. We can’t cultivate 2 or 3 generations of feral breeding and expect anything better
Sen. Patrick Moynihan among others sounded the alarm bell on this back in the 1960's.
It doesn’t take a village.
I think you misunderstand what “board of education” is referring to here. Think something that hangs on the wall behind the Principal’s desk, not a gathering of administrators.
If they’re behaving like that at ages 5,6 and 7, they’re hard wired by that time and will likely have a lifetime of exhibiting violence.
Why do I think “Ken”’s real name is more like “Keyshawn?”
I doubt that will work since it's just a classroom extension of the violence that is likely happening at home.
If they are younger then 50 they most likely have no clue.
No corporal punishment will not help.
These children need to be identified and removed from the schools. The younger ones need to go to homes for mentally and/ or emotionally
emotionally troubled children. To be assessed and taught according to ability.
The older ones need to go to single sex reform school where they are separated from society evaluated and the salvageable ones taught a trade. All taught how to behave decently.
Some will need to go into lifelong care in a mental institution to protect them and to protect society.
There are no other options. These are the options we had before the mental hospitals and child care homes were closed.
Also need to remove these patients rights so they can be cared for.
These are feral children.
Unparented.
Once I had a family look at the apartment I had. Mother bragged about the size of their disability check.
Child did not know what a living room was.
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