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.
