Category: Behavior/Discipline

Behavior/Discipline

Bullying: Nothing is being done!

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Dear JCPS,

I am writing this letter in frustration of the JCPS System’s lack of concern for the bullying that is taking place every day in their schools. My family has been through hell and back since joining this school system in 2012. I have been to 4 different schools in the past 4 years and each time it was in reference to one of my children being bullied and for 4 years NOTHING has been done. JCPS is SUPPOSED to have a ZERO TOLERANCE rule for bullying, but I have not seen this reflected at all and I’m very disappointed in the teachers, principals, and staff that I have encountered at every turn. To help you better understand why I come to the point of writing this open letter will begin at the beginning.

My children and I moved to Louisville, KY in 2012. My oldest daughter who is now serving in the U.S. Navy started her junior year at Western. She became star student here first few weeks there and everything seemed to be going well. She was a A-B student and mostly kept to herself. She then began being bullied and I called and spoke with a staff member there about my concerns and nothing was done. My daughter told me not to worry about it as she knew nothing would be done about it and I didn’t follow up.

In 2013 I discovered that my son had started self harming because he was being bullied about his skin complexion. I spoke to the counselor at Conway and she suggested that he seek additional counseling but never spoke on the bullying my son revealed to her.

The same year his twin sister also began being bullied by a girl at the school. It got so bad that her 7th grade year her grades began to drop and I took her out of Conway because again nothing was being done about the bullying. I cried when I went up to the Board of Education and was told that I mostly likely would be denied a transfer and it was best to just home school my daughter. How can that be the only option? Why is there nothing being done about the bullies. Why does the person that is being bullied have to rearrange their whole life? I sent her to Nebraska with a family member and she finished the year with straight As at a private Christian school.

She came back her 8th grade year to the SAME SITUATION. It was the SAME GIRL AND THE SAME SCHOOL. My daughter was even pushed down in the hallway by this girl as she was talking to a teacher and NOTHING WAS DONE. I went up to the school twice. I even called the police and told them to meet me there because I had had enough. A report was supposed to be filed and followed up on and NOTHING WAS DONE.

The 8th grade vice principal while discussing courses of action looked me in my face and simple said “What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. do?” What kind of ignorant remark is that to me asking is something going to be done to this girl for putting her hands on my daughter? I was outraged. The staff at Conway middle did nothing and the bullying continued. I called the superintendent’s office and they routed me right back to the school!

My youngest daughter who is a honor’s student is now attending Carrithers Middle School and is having the same issues with a group of girls in her class. She told me that she has informed her teacher and the counselor about what she has been experiencing and NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ABOUT IT. Where is the ZERO TOLERANCE JCPS?

Oh but wait, I’m not done.

On March 11th 2016 I received a disturbing call from a counselor at PRP High School. She informed me that my daughter the same one that was bullied throughout her academic career at Conway Middle, that is now a freshman, NO LONGER WANTED TO BE HERE. She sent a text from the bathroom to her best friend telling her GOODBYE. My daughter who had already lost two friends to suicide this year could no longer take being bullied and wanted to end her life! Now, I had been to PRP twice in reference to my daughter bullied. I had a conference with the teacher because it was taking place in his class and all he could tell me was he never sees the guy doing anything only my daughter’s reaction. He then says the boy is a model student but then in the same breath says he has spoken to him several times about his behavior. He also had to let me know the boy plays football, as if I cared. NOTHING WAS DONE AND THE BULLYING CONTINUED.

As a divorced mother of 4 with 3 in school and a business to run, I do not have time to continually show up to these schools and absolutely NOTHING is being done. My next steps will force JCPS to take a long hard look at their policies and procedures when it comes to bullying. My children will not be treated this way any longer and I know I am not alone. My daughter had to be hospitalized and has had her life once again dismantled because no one in the school system will do their job. I vow that I will fight with everything that I have in me to ensure that no other parents will have to go through what I have been through in the last 4 years. I ALMOST LOST MY DAUGHTER! This is the straw that broke this mother’s heart and back and I will get the results I deserve.

Signed,
A Fed Up Mother

Behavior/Discipline

Environment is Ripe for Multiple Fights, Riots … Administrative Staff Unresponsive

jcpswatch

Dear JCPS

“Many teachers feel stressed over the lack of control at Jeffersontown High School. Simply put, we do not feel safe. A riot just broke out in a stairwell that involved multiple children fighting and over 100 other students gathering around to videotape it. Fight started in cafeteria, but security and AP’s allowed students to leave. It escalated quickly and took several admin, security and over a dozen teachers to contain it. This is the fourth fight this week. Despite the fact that teachers and staff have voiced concerns to a new administrative staff, they do not listen and continue act as if everything is ok.

This is the second time this type of riot has broken out this year. This is in addition to the multiple fights that occur daily, student being allowed to leave campus and come and go as they please. This environment was ripe to set up the events from two weeks ago when several kids left school, got drunk and savagely brutalized a classmate in the woods, leaving him for dead. The current climate of the school is tense, teachers are fearful– a far cry from how things at JTown used to be.”

(Teacher name withheld.)

Behavior/Discipline, Budget, Teacher Shortage

We need your attention and help!

jcpswatch

Dear JCPS:

I am an educator with more than 13 years experience in public schools. Prior to moving back to my hometown, Louisville, KY, I worked in the metro DC area, specifically in the Alexandria City public schools and then for Fairfax County public schools.

While I can assure you that no large public school district is perfect, JCPS is so far in the opposite direction that I am embarrassed for my hometown. My children attended TC Williams High School in Alexandria, VA…made famous by the fictional movie, “Remember the Titans!” Whatever you want to believe about strides made in desegregation and race relations in Louisville, I can guarantee you that racism exists in JCPS, and an example of that is Wheatley ES, a west end school with an almost completely black student body. It is a school that is essentially segregated. We have a building which is old and in disrepair. We have old, outdated technology, and our library has never been updated, though it has been due for renovation for years. We have a principal who is young and too inexperienced to handle the challenges our school faces, and only 17% of our students are on grade level.

Before you think that the problem lies in sub par teaching, I want to tell you that I have great admiration for my colleagues. They are excellent teachers who fight the good fight daily with little or no support from an administration who does not know what to do to improve the situation. Our students come from severely disadvantaged homes. Many are refugees from war-torn Somalia who suffer from PTSD. Others are children who are crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome babies, abused, neglected, and malnourished. Many of my students have parents in jail, drug addicted parents, or parents whom they don’t even know. The emotional trauma that these students have already encountered has taken a heavy toll on their ability to focus and learn. They are so consumed with survival that they cannot take on reading, writing and arithmetic.

Due to these unexaggerated realities, the students at Wheatley have severe emotional behavioral disabilities. The most severe students cause constant disruptions that prevent the other students in a class from learning. Teachers find themselves so consumed with keeping kids safe that little teaching and learning takes place. Students are unable to focus and stay on task when they feel so unsafe.

As you know, it is difficult to get parents on board to have their children receive services. It is my understanding that more of Wheatley’s students receive services this year than before thanks to the addition of another counselor to our staff. However, the school environment is unhealthy and non conducive to learning. In fact, at least 7 teachers have quit the school since the beginning of the year. One of our 3 fifth grade classes lost 2 teachers since August due to the behavior of the students. After the second teacher quit, the students were divided up and half were added to one fifth grade class while the others joined a fourth grade class. The result is that in a school which already has unruly student behavior, we now have two classes of nearly 30 students…and these are the worst behaved students in the building!

My principal tells me that no support can be added to the classrooms beyond what we already have due to budget cuts from last year. If JCPS truly wants its students to learn then we need to think outside of the box to get more educators into buildings with severe emotionally challenged students so that the student teacher ratio is much smaller.

However, the way that the superintendent wants to do that…by relocating teachers from east end schools will fail. Those teachers will simply quit, as so many of our staff already have, if forced to contend with the daily abuse we endure from these students.

Last week, after yet another failed class period with fourth graders exhibiting hostile behavior in my class (I am a special areas teacher), I asked one of our counselors why I should not just quit. Every day I feel like I am trying to teach in front of 6 firing squads of angry children. I put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into developing appropriate and engaging lessons with which the students will connect. I am not a novice teacher, but have more than used up my bag of tricks to handle unruly children. These children simply are not ready to learn because they are too consumed with survival.

My only recourse is to write up a behavior referral in Infinite campus and call for an SRT. Unfortunately there are not enough SRTs in my building to handle the continuous need. Behavior referrals are ineffective because in the end a student cannot truly be suspended beyond a certain number of days, and I assure you that the worst behaved children never miss a day of school. Further, writing referrals takes time at my computer, and dealing with behaviors takes both my hands as well as my full concentration. Often, I never get around to writing the referrals…so they go undocumented. By the way, the behaviors I am talking about are not disrespectful language and cursing. That is a daily continuous behavior. I am talking about threats, fights, throwing chairs, screaming, etc.

I apologize that this letter will come across as disorganized and poorly written. However, I want you to understand how truly difficult the environment at Wheatley is. Many teachers are planning to transfer or leave the profession at the end of the year, and the same thing happened last year. The district needs to come in and experience a week in the life at Wheatley. We are in crisis! The teachers who have been here the longest tell me that Wheatley was not always like this, and I would love to see Wheatley be a successful school again.

Please come visit us. But don’t; just pop in and pop out. Walk the halls, stop into special area classes, as well as the grade level classrooms. Talk to parents, teachers and staff members. We need your attention and help!

Thank you!

 

UPDATE: Dear JCPS received this comment from a teacher in response to this letter:

I have taught in several school systems for a number of years, recently retired, and am now substituting. In my own classroom, I have run a tight ship, that is, expecting that children spend their school hours on task and learning while treating all with kindness and respect. In my current position of substitute, I have the same expectations.

I subbed recently at Wheatley in a special area class, which means I taught 6 home room classes that day. I can tell you that everything the writer of the Wheatley letter says is true. Children came into the classroom and immediately began shouting out disrespectful comments to me and other students, refused to move seats if I asked them to, and a few refused to even sit down and walked or ran around the classroom at will, two jumping upon and running across table tops. Two even left the classroom and began running up and down the hall. When I attempted to stop these behaviors, students, even young children, ignored or shouted at me, refusing to comply. Remember, I have been around the block and have a bag of tricks. They were useless. I was and am appalled at behavior that seems to be acceptable because students get by with it. Teachers have no alternatives but to live with it. Then other students see them get by with it, and begin modeling that behavior. The students in my classes that day who sat ready to learn didn’t have a chance.

Board members and administration need not only to come into the building, but to come in as guest teachers to truly understand how severe this situation is. Students who are this severely disruptive need to be placed in situations where there is an 8:1 or less student:adult ratio, both to get them the help they deserve and to allow the other students to learn. Yes, that is expensive, but the children are why we are here. Wheatley needs and deserves funding to work with these children.

Behavior/Discipline

Broken, Broken, Broken

jcpswatch

Dear JCPS,

Dr. Hargens has said previously that “the data” doesn’t support the claims that student behavior is a real problem in JCPS. If the data she is referring to has to do with behavior referrals, let me tell you that I enter many referrals. However, if I wrote a referral on every referral-warranted act, then that’s all I would be doing. Honestly, I don’t have the time. After the behavior has been addressed (the situation deescalated, one-on-one conference with the student(s) involved, parent call, writing in the agenda, assigning consequences, etc) it’s often a choice between writing a referral, or getting back to the lesson/teaching at hand. This cycle with behavior is a daily occurrence in my classroom and in my school.BehaviorDJ

Anytime I have ever written a referral, it’s on my own time. Shoot, I’m even expected to administer consequences and type referrals for students who aren’t even in my class because administration has their heads buried in the sand and are not held accountable for the behavior at their schools.

I already spend a lot of time calling parents on my own time – sometimes dozens of times, for the same behavior. I already have to keep up with behavior “plans” and point sheets for many students on a daily basis. At most, I have only 3 “planning periods” per week due to PLC’s and district mandated, administration-led “common planning” meetings, which are not planning at all. The 3 planning times that I DO have are used to make copies, handle other student issues that range from sadness and sickness to anger and defiance, set-up and preparation for the next lesson, and, of course, if I’m lucky, use the restroom. So ask yourself, is the “data” really not there or are you too busy burying your heads in the sand?

It takes me about 25 minutes to enter each referral. As of this year, I couldn’t even enter referrals on Infinite Campus until I watched a video about entering referrals. I couldn’t watch the video until I called Tech Support and got a code. You can’t just hand-write who the referral is for and what they did. Teachers consistently struggle with all the demands on their time.

Time will always be an issue – no matter what. I’m insulted that the superintendent, board members and district personnel are so far removed from reality that they would assume behavior is not an issue, and that they don’t even acknowledge the professional judgment and acumen of their own teachers who are telling them that behavior is a major issue. Furthermore, I have to wonder why they wouldn’t take into account the direct relationship between the behavior data and the lack of time teachers have to input that data.

My time is finite and already I do so much on my own time, after work hours.

I wish JCPS would realize that all their mandates, basic operating procedures, and inability to deal with reality simply sets up teachers and students to fail. And now, teachers are supposed to monitor behavior on buses? When does it end? Every single expectation the district has of its teachers is always unrealistic. I’ll give you three words to describe JCPS – broken, broken, broken.

Signed: Concerned Teacher*

*Note: The identity of this teacher is being withheld from this posting for their protection. However, their identity is not anonymous to Dear JCPS, and should a JCPS Board member wish to follow up with the contributor in order to address these issues, Dear JCPS would be happy to facilitate an introduction.