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State: 209 Assaults on Teachers Last Year

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 18:00 CDT

By KEVIN ROBILLARD Staff Writer

There were more than 200 student assaults on county public schools teachers last academic year, according to a state report. But school officials said many of the incidents weren't serious assaults and involved elementary schoolers.

However, Tim Mennuti, president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, wrote in a newsletter to union members that the school system has a "climate of secrecy" around student-on-teacher assaults.

During the 2006-07 school year, 209 suspensions were given for assaults on teachers, according to a state Department of Education report. That's an increase over the 123 that occurred in the 2005- 06 school year. The report for the 2007-08 school year is not available.

That means that, statewide Anne Arundel schools had the fifth- highest number of student-on-teacher assaults in 2006-07. Baltimore City had the most with 515; followed by Baltimore, Prince George's and Montgomery counties.

Bob Mosier, a spokesman for county public schools, said many of the incidents wouldn't have been considered assaults a few years ago, but a change of categories in state reports led to minor incidents being considered assaults.

Of the 209 assaults, 23 were considered to be grounds for expulsion or a lengthy suspension and were likely the most serious incidents, Mr. Mosier said.

Elementary school students were involved in 139 of them, and 60 were either kindergartners or first- and second-graders, said Sally Pelham, the county assistant superintendent for strategic initiatives.

"It wasn't really an assault on a teacher; it was more of a behavioral issue," in many cases among younger students, Ms. Pelham said. "We found a lot of biting or kicking."

Still, Mr. Mennuti is concerned about violence against teachers. He said the school system doesn't inform the union about assaults. While he said he thinks violence against teachers is on the rise, he said inconsistency in reporting incidents means the amount of violence against teachers would still be unclear even if the school system shared the data.

That's because under a policy adopted in 2006, the local principals ultimately decide whether something is an 'attack' or not.

"Guess who gets to decide whether or not an incident is an 'attack,'" Mr. Mennuti wrote in the newsletter. "Surprise! The local principal gets to decide. Guess whose best interest it is in to not report all incidents? Surprise! The local principal."

Mr. Mennuti said the system needs "honest data" about the assaults - where and when they happened and the facts about each case - and to share information with parents and the union.

"You can't fix the problem if you don't have the data," he said. "Without data, we're like blind men."

He said the union is informed about incidents only if a teacher files for workers' compensation.

Mr. Mosier said he was unaware of the union asking for detailed numbers about assaults. "If that's a conversation they wish to have, we'll be happy to have it with them," he said.

Ms. Pelham said there was no pressure on principals not to report incidents. "They're not penalized for reporting things accurately," she said.

While schools can be punished under the No Child Left Behind Act if they are "persistently dangerous," no schools in the county are in danger of earning the label, Ms. Pelham said.

But a national expert said there is often pressure on principals to play "classification games" to make schools look safer than they are.

"Is it happening every day in every school?" said Kenneth Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services. "I don't think so."

He said assaults against teachers generate negative public attention and become political issues to be used by teachers unions. This contributes to a historic tendency by schools to downplay crime.

"Crimes in school, overall, are under-reported," he said. "Historically, there has been a culture of downplay, deny, deflect and defend."

But national data indicates student-on-teacher violence has declined. In 1999-2000, close to 4 percent of teachers nationwide said they had been assaulted, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. In 2003-04, the most recent year for which numbers are available, only 3.4 percent of teachers reported being attacked.

Mr. Mennuti said he is worried about the effect assaults have on teacher morale.

"I don't want teachers to be afraid to come to schools," he said. "That's the last thing we need when we're trying to recruit. We can't afford to have something negative like this permeate through the system."

Mr. Mennuti said in seven years as a teacher at Mary E. Moss Academy, he was assaulted twice and filed charges against students both times. He said when the school system doesn't inform the union, he is unable to offer teachers assistance they might need.

"There's no victim support" from the school system, which is more focused on students, he said.

"The teachers are hung out to dry," he said.

(c) 2008 Maryland Gazette. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Source: Maryland Gazette

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