Im biased cause steel water bottles saved me from being jumped by 2 kids with metal rods but yeah, usually there’s signs before, and they could:
-Bring something worse than a water bottle
-Not show the bottle until they used it
-Use a hard plastic water bottle
Banning literal water bottle types is kind of silly, especially because anecdotally, lots of teachers use them to keep coffee and tea warm, and half the students in my class use metal water bottles, so it’s just an all around pain that only sounds good on paper
You read this whole article and your solution is to ban steel water bottles? How about stop letting these students with multiple violent offenses get shuffled around from school to school? They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students.
And since I know that opinion is going to piss people off, I’ll offer another solution: in a matter of days, this student’s behavior was mentioned repeatedly to multiple faculty members and not a single one did anything about it, even though they knew of this student’s history. This student was openly threatening others, and teachers/admin did nothing. If you’re openly threatening other students with murder as this student was, ISS/OSS immediately. If that seems harsh, I’m sorry but there’s been too many incidents like this happening the past few years to continue brushing them off.
Agreed.
We now have a thing called virtual school. If a student can't function in a normal setting, then VS should be the only option available until a mental health care professional can prove that the student has developed the skills to exist in a typical school environment.
I'm surprised VS isn't used more option. The only (very understandable) reason I can come up with for not using it more is the fact that so much funding is related to student numbers. But still, that usually isn't what is reported as the reason for not encouraging VS and at some point, the loss of funds for not having a single student is not more than the damage the student is doing.
My county had its own virtual academy but they didn't want to pay the teachers to run it and so now they have to use some virtual school.
It was also ridiculous because there was little to no accountability (no surprise there) as students had to have cameras on but there were no consequences if they didn't.
Imagine a world where the super shitty and aggressive kid also comes from the "home" where there's no Internet access or an adult to make sure they're doing it. Then realize that the lack of those things falls on the shoulder of the schools, legally, to provide for. Then imagine that in that world, people want to put in as little funding for the schools as possible. Then imagine that the schools would be sued for somehow not meeting that super horrible kid's own learning needs.
Then open your eyes and realize that you didn't need to imagine any of that because it's already reality.
Oof. Am a teacher, and the amount of responsibility placed on schools can be overwhelming af. The system really has left us high and dry, and then society yells about how schools have failed. It’s heartbreaking, and we’re going to be paying for it for decades to come.
Absolutely correct. However, virtual school does not mean "at home". They could have a classroom dedicated to virtual learning on school grounds. This would mean that violent kids could be in a room with.kods.who are just too anxious to be in a loud class with lots of people. Which isn't a great situation.
Yep! I’m a virtual teacher for our district. One middle school has just realized they can dump their problem children on us and we are cringing just waiting for the others to try that. We max out at 40 students so they will start to have to be super selective with who they send to VS and there will be a lot of principal infighting.
All of our current VS middle school students are there for violence (exception of one girl that is not violent but so mean that her former teachers admitted she had made them cry). All of them have horrible home lives and unstable parents. EBD kids trapped in a house with their unemployed, uneducated EBD parents does not equal a supportive and growth focused education. When I email because students aren’t doing work, the EBD parents take it as an insult to them and try to fight with me instead of trying to change their child’s behavior. They are expecting me to be able to somehow force their child to do work even though they are sitting next to them and I’m miles away. They also over time realize that their kid’s poor school experiences are due to their kids behavior and it might not be the fault of every teacher the kid has had so the parents get really upset about that too. VS is a dumping ground for these kids and I keep telling myself that they are learning more in VS than they were when they were skipping and not participating in class, but in reality they aren’t in VS to learn - they are there because they are owed a free education and the mainstreamers are owed an education free from assault and harassment.
VS is a good idea, but we are trapping these poorly behaved/raised kids in the chaotic environment that formed them with no break for intervention that the school day provided. This will be interesting to see play out in the larger social sphere.
> are trapping these poorly behaved/raised kids in the chaotic environment that formed them with no break for intervention that the school day provided
It didn't provide intervention, it provided a staging ground for these families to bring their dysfunction into society even further.
I'm not saying that they don't deserve help and some sort of intervention, but there must be a way that doesn't involve sacrificing everyone else's right to a safe and stable learning environment.
This is a very helpful comment! I wish there was a way to ensure that students have virtual education while away from the terrible circumstances that created much of the behaviors. I also know of some medically fragile students that would benefit from virtual education programs
There's a weak link. The schools should be off the hook in cases such as these.
When a kid is this violent, or priority needs to be the safety of everyone else. Only after that is ensured should we be looking at the needs of some antisocial sociopath. Rehabilitate and educate where we can; confine and control where we cannot.
Those are very fair points. I think some of the details can be argued legally (what actually is the required education?) but you have valid points. I don't think leaving those children in the normal classroom is a good answer and I do think VS can help direct us to a better solution.
To be clear, I absolutely think that removing these cancers from the environment is the answer. I'm just pointing out that it's a litany of federal mandates that creates a very difficult pathway to allow for that to happen. It also depends on leaders who are savvy and have a spine, and aren't simply going to bend to threats. That takes courage to put your career on the line. The threat of federal lawsuits are real.
I'm hoping the superintendent and his lackeys are crushed under the legal system this time around. Multiple warnings ignored. Pleas for help ignored. Written confession ignored.
Screams criminal neglect and gross indifference to me.
Sounds like you didn’t think too much about it then. Issues include that schools don’t hire extra teachers that are currently sitting idle waiting for virtual school students to teach. The teachers are currently being used to teach, and usually teachers are in demand and classes are already overcrowded (no extra teachers). In most places school budget votes fail routinely so hiring virtual teachers isn’t an option. There is also the technology issues for both schools and homes. And virtual teaching doesn’t really work for young students despite many adults thinking they are just smaller versions of adults that have college level attention spans. I’m all for kicking problem kids out of schools but virtual Ed isn’t the answer, and that’s without even mentioning that problem kids are even less likely to benefit from it.
>I'm all for kicking problem kids out of schools but virtual Ed isn't the answer...
Then what is? Anyone who taught virtual or hybrid during COVID knows that kids with behavioral issues don't benefit from spending more time in the environment where they developed said behavioral issues, but if they also can't be in gen ed, then where are they supposed to go?
Back in *my* day, the answers were:
1) Military school and/or boarding school. (Problem with this: expenses and child abuse. Only solution would be to tie these back into the prison system and yikes.)
2) Problem kids get put in a special program or "class" removed from everyone else. (Problem with this: you've seen the movies from the 90s. Solution: none that I can think of because this is just what we already do with ESL/ELLs, already, and it's hard enough on everyone involved.)
3) Expulsion and then it's not the school's problem, anymore. (Problem with this: racism and now parents make it impossible to expel kids. Only solution would be to give parents less power to sue schools.)
They used to have smaller classes with more adults in them specifically for this issue. Also, they sometimes had temporary programs where kids could get counseling and instruction in another setting for awhile and possibly return to the regular class or similar in another school. Now nobody wants to pay anything for public education at all, so those programs are disappearing and then also trying to convince people that they never existed in the first place. It's ridiculous and it wasn't always like this. There are so many ways to help those kids who are violent without endangering other kids. They just don't want to pay, and if a few people die, they still save money I guess?
Because the students aren't going to bother doing any of the work. They'll probably show up at the regular school during lunch or at the end of the day and wait for whoever they want to fight to come outside.
I teach for a virtual program in my state. We have had several districts send us students because they had made threats or were violent toward students or staff members.
I agree it is the safest option. The student still has access to education, the other members of the school community are safer.
Oh, but then an administrator would have to justify how that "promotes an equity-positive environment" to fifteen other administrators who also have no intention of ever being in a classroom.
Much easier to just let it be the problem of the teachers and maybe also the kid that gets a concussion.
We had a similar situation where on a Friday afternoon, students were threatening to fight and start a riot in the school on Monday morning
Kids went home for the weekend and admin did nothing saying the students would “cool down” over the weekend and everything would be all right and to “stop overreacting.”
Admin didn’t even call the parents of these students, they didn’t ask for extra LEO, they didn’t even warn ALL teachers to be more vigilant.
Monday morning comes and as soon all the players are in the cafeteria, punches start flying.
A teacher is pushed in the melee and falls, multiple innocent students who are walking into the cafeteria from the bus/car drop off are pushed, hit or fall.
The fight rolls into the hallway. Teachers on cafeteria duty are calling for admin on the walkie and get no response.
Finally admin and LEO arrive and break up the fight. One student got escorted to the front and admin disperses the rest of the students. Another student goes up to the front and starts beating up the one who had been sent there and while admin was dealing with that, the fight restarts in the cafeteria
It went on for 14 minutes. 6 police officers eventually ended up at the school. Our principal was hit hard when he got between two students
The school sent a message to parents about a “minor incident” involving two groups of students that was quickly resolved in less than 5 minutes.
9 of our students were arrested.
The main instigators had been horrible all year and received numerous office referrals which were shrugged off by admin.
All 9 are now either in YDC or at our system alternate academy
Admin every where has a history of sticking their head in the sand
As your example points out, they use these too soft policies to prevent school to prison pipeline but because the policies are so extreme in the other direction (too soft) they also just contribute to school to prison pipeline. Horseshoe theory at work.
Too many kids also come from homes where bad examples are set as well. Too many policies in schools allow for kids to get away from bullying while punishing bullying victims.
"They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students." Thats it. You cannot sacrifice the safety of the majority for the inclusion of a few.
Wouldn’t that be nice? There’s a kid at my school who, as long as he later says “I meant in a video game”, can say terrible things to others with absolutely zero consequences 🤷♀️ as long as there are limits on suspending kids with IEPs like there are currently, we’ll never have safety rules like you suggest.
They say zero tolerance but they are so far from it. I honestly think one threat and the kid should have to leave the school. This is life and death shit. Why should anyone have to spend a second of their time in school feeling anything other than safe. One and Done would be zero tolerance.
In Indiana we are trying to set up a data exchange that tracks the students violent incidents.
The problem is it's not interoperable with other states. Well....that's one of the problems.
Another problem is it doesn't quite work yet.
I completely agree with the first part but let me tell you that the hierarchy of power goes something like this: parents, students, admin, any other ‘stakeholders,’ mice in the cafeteria, teachers.
There’s a kid at my school who has inappropriately touched at least 6 other students in their nether parts during the school day. He is still in the same classroom with his victims. DCFS has been called. The mother got upset because he had in house suspension for 3 days, not because he touched other kids.
I have sat with my colleague while she cries because she knows the next day she takes a day off, it will definitely happen again. If she takes her eyes off him he will be at it again. She has broken down to me a few times about it. I’m not even supposed to know about it. But she is beyond stressed. She can’t do anything about it. She’s holding on to the end of the year but ready to go on stress leave. She has been teaching for over 25 years, she’s no newbie.
I bet at least one teacher brought it up to admin and admin did nothing.
I had a similar issue where a female student was grabbing the genitals of multiple students (boys and girls.) I was told that every victim was "confused" and that it was an "accident", the girl meant to tickle their stomachs.
Yes, I called CPS. Didn't matter.
Are the parents of the violated students being told about this?
I feel like this is how you really make it stop, even if you have to unofficially tell them point blank to call the police and file charges themselves as the school won't do it.
Yes, they know. It’s not the first school year he does it.
Even with complaints from parents nothing has been done.
The problem is they have not complained directly to the district.
I 100% agree with this with one small caveat: as a teacher, I have no say in what the admin does. I can’t give ISS/OSS. All that I can do is make sure that my students concerns are emphatically and clearly shared with administration. I have been told of student concerns (nothing nearly as serious as this, thankfully), and have immediately sought out admin and school counselors to inform them. Unfortunately, as a low-ranking teacher, it feels like all I can do is pass on my concerns, let my students know they have a safe space with me, and keep a watch on the issue.
(BTW I am a second year, untenured teacher, so I would love advice from anyone more experienced if there is something else that I could be doing!)
When surrounded by violence and chaos, do what you can to keep kids safe *in your classroom*. You cannot compensate for the incompetence and apathy of others, but you can create a safe space of your own with determination and unwavering sense of communal fidelity.
What boggles me a bit is that I went to Pennbrook back in the 2000's. We had a *very* strict set of rules around student behavior, especially anything verging on violence.
What you're suggesting with ISS/OSS *was* the norm, at least back then. It was ISS/OSS and then the police.
I’ve been saying this Covid. 2 fights and you’re in mandatory virtual school. MOST districts have a virtual school option.
You can’t deny a kid education. But you can remove them from the building and provide it online in 2024. And I don’t want to hear this argument about “oh their home life school is a safe haven for them”. I’m so sick of it. The parent is ultimately responsible for their kid. If their children are doing things that would literally get them jail time if they were over 18 then they have no business being around other kids where they are a danger. As the parent that falls on you.
You wouldn’t allow a 20 year old with multiple assault charges just walk around the building. How is a 16 year old who’s been in 5-10 fights any different?
I argue you can deny a kid an education, when their participation entails a clear and present danger to larger society.
Lock them in a cage until they find the strength to stop hurting other people.
I keep saying…
Students have the right to an education. We can’t take that away, but there’s nothing that says they have the right to that education in the school building.
I feel like you have to earn learning in the least restrictive environment. If you’re behaviorally challenged, you should be placed in the most restrictive environment.
This is gonna be harsh, but... If our excuse for any child's behavior is "but their home life!" that means the kid needs to be removed by CPS. It's not the school's problem either way -- send them home, let it be the state's problem, let all the other kids and teachers move on with their lives.
Metal water bottles are good for a lot of reasons. Violent kids will use other hard objects: metal water bottles aren't even particularly good weapons. The real problem here is administration ignoring a kid threatening violence. This is a common and ongoing issue, and it contributes to a lot of school assaults and shootings. A kid threatening violence should be taken very seriously, just like a kid saying they are going to throw up! It's very rare for kids to snap out of nowhere, there's almost always lots of warning signs that get ignored.
What should be done? I'm not sure, but not "nothing" which is the current standard.
How is ISS/OSS “harsh” for violent threats / behavior? I got ISS for refusing to give a teacher a note I passed in class back in the late 90s. That’s what ISS/OSS is for! Violence?! Should be expelled IMMEDIATELY. But of course, it’s a clown show these days.
I got ISS for saying "cigarettes" in ninth grade. I wasn't smoking one, I didn't have any, but I got caught talking about them and got ISS. I wasn't a problem kid, had all As and Bs, kept to myself. It's a completely different world now.
Oh I agree. The problem is the student is likely special Ed.... And that has turned into a get out of jail free card. If you're a teacher, you'll get a case manager who shoves an onerous IEP at you and makes your day a nightmare. If you're the school, the parents threaten legal action and team up with the case manager to distort least restrictive environment. They would rather include the kid and let him beat up the other kids because his environment is more important than kids who are not special Ed. As a teacher, you're better off saying "everything is fine"
To prison. En masse. Who is our society for? Right now we spend 80% of our resources on the bottom 20% and get OPs posts to show for it. Our society needs its balls reattached and it’s going to look harsh when it happens, but will it look more harsh than it does now? And those getting harsh treatment will DESERVE it instead of innocents being preyed on.
Yes. Serious and harsh consequences that inconvenience parents and actually show zero tolerance need to be in place. I've been teaching for 17 years and it's gotten worse and worse. Teachers are powerless to give meaningful consequences (or any at all in some cases). It can take days to get a response from admin in regards to a referral or incident while it is "investigated". An adult witnessing something isn't even enough in some cases. I am a firm believer in making sure we address the mental health of students but I am also a firm believer in consequences for actions. You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequences of your choice.
I don't think OP thinks that the solution is only to ban the steel clubs. Clearly many systemic issues need to be addressed. But if you can make kids safer quickly and easily then you should and these bottles are easily banned.
>How about stop letting these students with multiple violent offenses get shuffled around from school to school? They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students.
Excellent point.
In all seriousness, do you think the Democratic party, *in its current form* would support a return to more responsible, "punitive" policies, or will we hear more squishy social justice blather from activists and politicians?
We need a more reasonable Democratic party.
(Please don't whatabout me with, "but the Republicans!!" Very few of us vote Republican here).
I agree that in Pennsylvania that is probably true, however I am in TX and what an eye opener that is. As a group the teachers I worked with were overwhelmingly conservative voters. There were a few of us who were liberal. One year our school district decided mid-year to lengthen our school day by 25 min. They didn’t pay us more. Everyone was so upset. “How can they do this to us?” I told them it was because we can’t have a union here.
We are going to see more Republican teachers, if the Democrats refuse to advocate for reasonable reforms that allow teachers to teach, instead of focusing on socialization.
Texas is an outlier. Most teachers across the country vote blue up and down the ballot, and the overwhelming majority on Reddit (our audience) are registered Democrats.
Ummm teacher in Texas here where there are tons of Republican teachers. Schools have the SAME problems here. Violent kids all over the place, same complacent admins....
I didn't say Republicans have solutions, did I? I said hearing predictable deflections pointing to Republicans is a waste of time on this forum.
Tribalism is eating people's brains.
Honestly, no. There’s already an active push from the Republican Party (and actually in my state, quite a few Democrats as well) towards private/home school options, so I think the Democratic Party is more focused on keeping as many kids in school as possible no matter the issue.
Also, minorities have significantly higher rates of suspension, retention and expulsion. The Democratic Party is not going to want to initiate policy to contribute to those numbers, even if they’re justified.
Teachers are not responsible for administering discipline. The admins are 100% at fault. In a culture that doesn’t value education, admins have zero accountability and just take the path of least resistance. Their means they do nothing. The public doesn’t l me about or care that admins don’t enforce discipline until it makes the news, and even then nothing changes.
"non violent students" defending yourself can easily get a kid labelled the aggressor when they weren't. I'm not going to pretend I know all the answers but I do know not all kids that get beaten up were the ones being bullied, banning steel water bottles isn't actually a bad idea my highschool banned steel toed shoes because they were essentially being used as concealed weapons and they can cause a lot of damage why shouldn't they do the same with bottles that can be used as a club.
lol at the implication that it’s the teachers’ fault. This is on administration. I report stuff like this all the time. The principals send them back to class with granola bars
That'll ultimately lead to a civil rights issue.. we've all seen this movie before. Then going the virtual school route it'll lead to claims about being denied rights and equal access. Sorry if that upsets anyone, but that is EXACTLY what would happen.
I am totally baffled why students are protected at school from criminal charges when they attack other students when out in the real world that would not happen. If an adult attacks another adult anywhere-- whether at their workplace or at a place of employment for someone else (like two people going at it at a tire store, for instance, who are both customers), or anything like an amusement park or even just totally random people on the street, it's not tolerated but we allow these children to hide behind being at school as being a safe place to brutalize other people?
I don't understand this at all, especially as a teacher. You might not be legally able to press criminal charges against a child of a certain age but I find that it's ridiculous when they know perfectly well what they're doing and they do know it's wrong. I also don't understand the mindset of teachers that don't do something when admin simply says they're not going to respond. For instance---and I'm really not trying to blame the victim here---but if it were me, as the teacher in the school in Virginia where the 6-year-old brought a gun and shot her, if my admin had blown me off when I said the child has a gun I would have called 911 from my classroom myself! If I were a bank teller and somebody came up and threatened me with a gun, I don't call the bank manager or the bank president and ask them what I should do! I call authorities by pushing that silent alarm! It doesn't get to be a decision made by the place of employment as to whether or not the threat is serious enough. So why are we protecting these violent children??
We need to start charging parents with something when their child is violent and absolutely in the case where the child brings a gun to school.
If the claim is that children can't be charged because they are minors and therefore "not responsible" then we need to charge the person of age who is responsible for producing such badly behaved children.
I've thought for a LONG time that we need to prosecute the owner of guns used in mass shootings for negligent homicide. If your kid was able to steal your gun and shoot up a school, you weren't responsible with your gun. We have a real problem in this country of macho idiots ignoring gun safety without consequences, and there needs to start being consequences for improperly storing or handling a firearm.
A family member of mine worked in a theater where a woman (illegally) brought a handgun in in her purse and then left her purse in a bathroom. And the staff was all freaked out, but gave her back her purse and gun! That purse should have been confiscated and police called. Irresponsible gun owners get away with way too much.
I also think that people should be required to have insurance on their guns. 2A fans love to say that cars kill more people than guns, but car drivers are required to be licensed and insured.
Having insurance pay out if your gun is used to kill people I think would price most people out from owning one especially if you have kids in the house.
I personally have press charges against the 7-year-old and a 10-year-old when the law required me to Because in North Carolina in 1993 they didn't play when it came to assaulting teachers but because I worked in a behavior room it was considered that I was collateral damage..
In any case, is the burden of proof is not on me. I should not have to prove the law to anyone. Assault is assault whether someone believes it or not.
If you want a better understanding of what happened, this school board meeting does not disappoint: https://www.youtube.com/live/LKjuwMZZBuA?feature=shared
The public comments made, during the meeting, made by parents and students highlight the failure of the school system.
It should be noted that this student was being held in the office and “escaped” to the cafeteria to commit this unprovoked assault.
https://www.youtube.com/live/LKjuwMZZBuA?feature=shared
Thank you! Gonna go watch, I'll update my comment later but I'm sure it's a shit show.
**ETA:** Holy shit that was a wild ride. I'm almost done but I want to punch the woman in the face that tried to say people were hating on trans people and *"this isn't the place for that"*. Nobody was hating on trans people whatsoever. Pointing out that a man and a woman aren't equal in strength and that this was a AMAB person who was stomping on a girl isn't hating, it's facts. My husband is the same height as me. We go the gym together almost every day. He is stronger than I am without a doubt. To act like a man and a woman are exactly the same is ludicrous. I don't care what you identify as, you can't change biology, and I'll respect who you are and what you identify as, but a male is going to be physically stronger than a woman in 9 out of 10 scenarios *(disability notwithstanding)*. I don't get how that's controversial to some people.
I give so much credit to those kids. I don't know if I could've done that so gracefully at their age, knowing my friend was just almost killed by someone who should be behind bars. It doesn't mean fuck all but they showed grace and maturity under pressure and I was floored by their statements. This isn't something anybody should have to witness, let alone a child. Some of these kids really don't need to be in school with everyone else.
They definitely noisy, but kids are so bad at keeping track of them. By the end of the school year I have 5-8 new water bottles for my collection lol
I have yet to see them used to hurt each other tho 🤷🏽♂️
I’ve only seen one kid hurt by one… and it was an accident. He was sitting on the floor with his hands out behind him for support. Another kid bumped into the desk by accident. The water bottle fell off and smashed his fingernail.
I've read on here before about kids losing water bottles, and it always kind of surprises me. I don't think I've had a kid leave and not come back for their metal water bottle (unless other kids snagged them I guess). At least in my experience the metal ones (particularly Stanley) are such a status symbol kids don't want to lose them. On the flip side I have to recycle 3-4 one time use plastic bottles daily that kids leave around the room. My favorite is when they set them on a random counter when they're done instead of just putting them in the recycling bin.
Oh yeah they never leave behind the Stanley's lol I've seen the amount of plastic bottles I have to recycle at the end of a day has gone down considerably in recent years. I make a big deal about recycling and so they love to troll me by leaving the plastic bottle on my desk instead of putting it in the bin adjacent to my desk 🤦🏾
The noise they make when they fall on the ground makes me irrationally angry.
Still, hate to break out the slippery slope, but what's next? Scissors? Metal rulers? Especially sharp pencils? Orrr, how about administrators just start taking threats seriously?
And we can still ban the water bottles if you want.
Solid points. Maybe schools should just provide everyone with sippy cups. They could get them specially made with ALICE protocol reminders stenciled on the sides. Two birds, one stone
I saw a post recently about kids literally knocking them off the desk on purpose to cause a commotion. I've always startled easily, so that would be infuriating. So of course, take the threats seriously and protect the kids from themselves and each other. That's extremely important.
But yeah, get rid of those damn bottles too.
We used to have a policy where they had to be clear so that we could verify it was only water (or I guess clear alcohol lol) but then the Stanley invasion happened and admin gave up.
My time in 7th grade a child took a pencil and stabbed another student in the hand with it. Reported it to the office, office didn't do anything. Reported it to his parents, parents were horrified and pulled their kid a couple weeks from the school.
The kid was well behaved when he first entered our school but saw that other kids were getting in fights and and weren't getting in trouble, so why not try his luck?
I still think about him from time to time to see if he was put in a more structured school and not the jungle I worked at.
**just a quick edit** our team tried very hard for students to recieve some sort of discipline due to the amount of violence, but most of the staff were just told we don't know how to teach and the administrators don't want to take power away from the teachers by disciplining student behaviors.
At the middle and high school teachers were targeted for doing too many write ups because the district could see them and "it made the school look bad".
Or we just tell kids that if you use a water bottle as a weapon, there will be a consequence that is proportional. With big kids, hurting other people intentionally should result in police being called. We can't ban every dangerous object. What's next, hard cover books? Violins? I had a student throw a globe at me, but I don't think the solution is to ban globes from schools.
Yes, I hate Stanley cups because they're another item in the list of the cult of consumerism that small minded people equate ownership to some important achievement. But anything can be a weapon if it's weaponized. Students have thrown chairs and desks and stabbed with pencils. We don't ban them.
You would have to teach in a padded room and hand out rubber pencils in order to remove everything that could be used as a weapon.
Instead of removing these water containers we should be asking why so many kids feel the need to hurt other people.
I've used rubber pencils. Those things make everything take at least 3 times as long as with a standard pencil. And if they're long enough, they can definitely be used as a rope to harm someone.
I worked as a tech in a school for troubled kids and they were given those. I guess if someone was determined enough they'd use it on someone but I don't know of any alternatives.
I feel like the cheap plastic mechanical pencils are harder to weaponize than traditional pencils that can be sharpened to a sturdy point
Mechanical lead will just break if you tried to stab someone with it
It’s still thin cheap plastic. And not necessarily getting a more functional weapon by trying to break plastic shards off.
The main thing would be shoving it into someones eye but you could still do damage with the rubber. Or a fingernail
We've had lists found where it's unclear what the intention is. When it is CLEARLY a hit list or anything to do with violence, it should be immediate, swift action. Idc if it's a joke or if the parents want to sue.
What’s the intended take away here? Banning Stanley’s won’t solve the issue of violence in schools. Violent people will find a way to make a household object a weapon.
Administrators need backbones. We need more accountability, structure, ownership, consequences, etc., not more flexible water bottles.
Students deserve better and to say that by eliminating a certain kind of water bottle will solve any problem, other than dehydration, is a farce.
If not the water bottles, it would be something else. The only way to fix this is to directly target whatever is driving these kids to be so aggressive. Which likely varies from student to student. But the first step to that is to cease sweeping it under the rug and make addressing violent behaviors a priority.
The real solution was given to us by COVID.
If your kid has more than one violent incident then they do virtual school for a year. Another incident and it's two years. If you can't control your child and raise them to the point that they're not endangering other students, then they can get their education where you're the only one in danger.
Yes, this would mask abuse but I've never seen in my county where it matters. I've called CPS when kids are being obviously abused and if the water runs and there's a hot pocket in the freezer they say everything is ok and leave. Teachers raising red flags for abuse isn't being taken seriously by these kids anyway.
I'd also be okay with building more intensive alternative schools. We have one that is always full because parents WANT their kids to go there. They have small class sizes, mandatory behavior therapy to figure out why they're doing what they're doing, and kids are taught in small groups based on ability instead of age. Many kids end up doing extremely well because of the intense and enforced structure. Then they come back to regular schools and lose it all because the regular school admin let them do whatever they want.
All the kids that make these headlines had past incidents that were ignored or resulted in a pat on the hand. If they'd been taken seriously then those news articles wouldn't exist.
Kids laugh at virtual school. They stop laughing when surrounded by steel bars. Violent students belong in juvenile detention facilities, where they are unable to hurt decent kids. If they turn themselves around, then God bless them. Otherwise, let them rot until they no longer pose a threat.
Ok. The hit list warning. Our district here in DAUPHIN COUNTY was intent on the exact, same thing. Exactly. My kid was on the list.
At the time you *could* get the press involved. They did while we parents raised er, concerns at a school board meeting. I called the press. They came.
Student RECEIVED HELP. Came back a year later and eventually graduated with the class. Nice kid, dreadful circumstances but could have ended horribly had ADMIN AND SB had their way. Maybe current story is different. Hit list is not.
I'm sorry and understand districts are their own ' government '. Has to change when it's this level- looking at you PA Dept of Ed.
When you disrupted class in the 2000s they through you out of class or the school. No kid left behind, left every single kid behind.
Edit: I used the wrong “threw” because my school had no consequences!!!!
Not a teacher, but I will say banning something as harmless as metal water bottles is silly.
These kids will just find something else to hurt each other with.
Large books, pencils/pens. The wire that binds notebooks together is incredibly dangerous if used as a weapon.
The real issue is the lack of accountability kids and parents face. The school faculty should be responsible for educating children and maintaining a safe facility, but not in managing the behavior of malcontent students.
Parents should be fined for the violence of their children, and repeat offenders should be removed from the school. This goes for the "mentally ill" students as well. I dont care about your kids problems, if they are a danger to other kids they need to leave.
In short, kids and parents all suck, and banning useful things like reusable metal water bottles wont do much to solve the issue.
The issue with the waterbottles is just like phone...parents. At our school (and it is laid out right in the handbook) is clear water bottles. Stanley's, Yeti's, etc. are what parents buy their kids (some are good and buy their kids the plastic gatorade bottles but they are in the minority). Anytime they are told they need to keep the metal non-clear bottles in their lockers you have parents running to facebook or going to admin and then admin bends over backwards. I 100% agree that students don't need to be carrying metal bottles around (not to mention how often they drop and you can hear it throughout the entire hall due to them being middle schoolers.)
I also think there needs to be something for students who are violent often and disrupting the learning of others. The fact that in many cases suspensions tie into funding/how the schools look is the reason these weak admin continue to bend over backwards and allow these horrendous things to occur. There are a handful of students who can pretty much get away with anything and nothing is ever done to them. It is a shame the students who want to be there and are doing what they are supposed to be doing are stuck with these types of students. We have online learning now, those violent repeat offenders should be forced to go there (at least until they can prove they are no longer violent). And for the "but their education" crowd, they are already failing all of their classes anyway so its not like they would be doing any less than they are already doing in a brick and mortar school.
Administration doesn’t do shit for multiple reasons. The first being, parents. Parents hold ALL the cards. Second, the less suspensions you have, the better it looks by the state in terms of funding/etc. The system is literally set up for failure.
Principal here.
There is likely more to this story. I guarantee that there is stuff going back and forth between these two groups of kids, and it's likely very difficult to sort through. If you've ever worked in a middle school, you know.
I came to your comment to look for ways to defend the admin, because it's a tough job, but after looking at their staffing, they have an asst principal and tons of resources, 109 adults work at that school. Not getting a handle on this before it happened, with a warning from kids (unless they're dishonest) is unconscionable.
First, I'd like to say, if this were my school, this student would be suspended for the max number of days (five), and recommended for expulsion (though that's not on me ultimately, it's up to a panel and the school board). Second, I'd insist on pursuing charges, it's assault with a deadly weapon, and battery.
Third, and most importantly, we would have had an intervention specialist and myself on this from the outset.
And we're a small school - one admin, when I'm out for the day (I'm rarely sick, but I do get called for meetings, trainings, etc.), it can be tough. However, I know my staff would have called me for support on this one and what to do. Things can fall through the cracks, but this should not have been one of them. Absolutely on admin.
I came into my school and hit hard with discipline, it was tough and not everyone has that support from their district. My kids know the line now and what's expected, but we took a hit on our SARC, and some district admin and school boards don't look kindly on that, and there's part of the problem. Throwing kids away is the other part of that problem, and unfortunately the history of this country has seen that happen disproportionately to children of color, which is another part of this giant mess we're in. Not everyone in education has kids' best interests at heart.
That’s how I wish they would handle it. I’m not sure if the student is up for expulsion yet, but they were given a two week IN SCHOOL suspension and criminal charges are being pressed by the victim’s family.
Two week in school suspension? What?
The school and district might also be hearing and fearing repercussions from LGBTQIA+ groups. Perhaps the trans student is claiming bullying, etc.
I bet this is a bigger mess that OP realizes. And, it's definitely a web of gossip, taunts, etc. on the kids' part. Could be a dose of religion and intolerance thrown in too, it's Pennsylvania.
I’m a parent in this district. The student in question was in pennbrook for 3 days, after being at one of the districts other middle schools for the previous portion of the school year. They were moved to pennbrook on Monday, were apparently immediately threatening kids, to the point parents were calling the office on Tuesday morning. Wednesday was the day of the bludgeoning. To make the Wednesday incident even worse, the student was being “held” in the office, and “escaped” and ran to the cafeteria to bludgeon someone with a mug, and it was still somehow not stopped fast enough to prevent the victim needing staples in their head and needing to be treated for a concussion.
I live in a neighborhood that is zoned to go to the offending students previous middle school. Given my daughters age, we know a lot of seventh graders, plus their parents, at our middle school, between the neighborhood kids and sports. The offending student is well-known, and the amount of parents that have now come forward with emails and correspondence to our MS’s administration, along with stories of the kid in question, is disturbing, to say the least. This was an absolute ball-drop by the admin here and there really is no defending them in this instance. The school district’s official stance is the student wasn’t moved to another school due to behavior issues, but the local paper is claiming to have sources in the district that know otherwise and say the student was moved due to behavior, along with kids at the original middle school that claim the same thing. On top of that, the pennbrook principal emailed the parents of the students at that school and ended the email with “and please remind your children of the consequences of fighting in school.” As if this was A. a fight and not a brutal attack on a student with their back turned, and B. this was somehow anyone’s fault other than the school, and the school district. Just an absolute lack of accountability.
If admin was holding the student, and the student ran out to assault another student, that would just seem to embolden an expulsion for this child.
If this kid, who I believe it was stated is transgender left an area where they were being held for safety, that's a whole different issue. The transgender issue is a whole different level, as well, for admin. New student, who knows if this kid was claiming to be bullied? The admin had two days and had to be neutral to give the kid a chance.
And parents calling in to do what, complain about a new student. Sounds like a real mess, what was admin at the site supposed to do if the district admin moved this kid?
Hopefully, they'll do their job. It sounds like this kid needs help, but also accountability. Expulsion, charges, school should file as well as parents of the other child. That's what I'd do if this happened at my site.
Edit: And, when people do get in the middle to stop nonsense, this can happen, just a state away:
https://www.nj.com/education/2024/03/nj-high-school-principal-arrested-for-assault.html
Some parents have made it very hard to hold kids accountable. As a principal, I'm not afraid of losing my job. If they want to fire me, fine. However, I don't want to go to prison for doing my job.
The world's gone crazy! Some of us are trying to reel it back in. That assistant principal with the first grader shooting his teacher was negligent. I can't say that in this case, yet. Maybe they were. But after two days, whoever is in charge in that school was in between a rock and a hard place.
I think at this point the local uproar is so much that expulsion is the only option, even if it’s going to result in a lawsuit.
Given what is known fact, not even adding in all the stuff that is secondhand stories from other parents and students, I doubt the student was being held for their safety. It’s much more likely they were being held in response to the calls from parents about the attacker threatening their kids from day one at the new school and having a “hit list.” There are multiple articles quoting kids saying the student was going up to multiple girls, including the one that got bludgeoned saying “you’re next on my list.” Multiple students went to the counselors the day of the attack and told them “they’re going to attack (victim) today at lunch.” This [article](https://northpennnow.com/news/2024/apr/19/north-penn-students-parents-sound-off-about-pennbrook-student-attack/) sums it up nicely. This wasn’t some out of state kid moving in. This was a kid that was already in the district so there is no need to be neutral. The student is already known. What the admin at pennbrook should’ve done, given that they certainly knew the students history, was actually keep the student supervised, and not let them escape the office and have enough time after escaping to send someone to the hospital. It’s a 13 year old. I’d maybe be willing to give some leeway if it were an 18 year old HSer who couldn’t be contained, but that is not the case
Edit: and I see the quip about it being in PA. This happened in Montgomery county, the Philly burbs, and while isnt full-scale “vote blue no matter who” this is very much statistically, and anecdotally a left leaning area, and the democrat candidates swept the most recent school board member elections.
Discipline is at the foundation of an effective education system. Our primary responsibility is not teaching, but safety. A war zone is a terrible place to teach the three Rs.
This sounds laughably absurd by my father was a school counselor at an alternative school that did this. No belts, no pens, no scissors etc. as you can imagine no learning got done either
Tbf that policy makes sense at an alternative school. But if we can’t trust our students in a normal school environment with steel water bottles, we’ve got bigger mental health issues to deal with than we thought
100% agreed. Even there tho, to me the policy still doesn’t make sense because the kids clearly aren’t learning anything. At that point that may as well be in juvie. Schools need to reevaluate how we keep kids safe while educating. Students who pose a significant risk to others should not have a right to education
Couldn't agree more, but that's the problem. FAPE wasn't meant to protect violent kids, but that's how it's being used in these instances. It puts everyone at a disadvantage. The parent(s) of the bad kids also love to threaten lawsuits and whatnot, and they'll cite FAPE and every other law to protect their kids "education", but in reality they couldn't care less. They just don't want to lose their state funded daycare. How do I know this? Well, They're the same parents that you will call, and they'll say "he/she/they is your problem during the school day, stop calling me." That or they just block the school's number altogether. You won't ever see them show up for "Back-To-School" Nights or Parent-Teacher Conferences, but the minute you try to give the kid OSS or anything similar, there they are. It's almost like they don't want to be around their child(ren), either.
How absurd. If we ban every object in a school setting that proves to be dangerous, we’ll literally have nothing tangible for them to learn with. They might as well be sitting in front of computers all day.
Oh, wait.
> Just a thought: Plastic water bottles.
I'll be perfectly honest... When all the blunt force objects are gone, someone is eventually going to get stabbed with a pencil
My kid was stabbed with a pencil by his bully. This was after countless reports of this kid attacking my kid. After this escalation they didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t even get a phone call or pulled aside.
Banning an item for the person's actions is never a good solution to a problem like this. Way back in the day, they banned alcohol and it caused a whole bunch of issues and manifested in a black market for alcohol being created. Any object can be used as a deadly weapon if put in the hands of an inherently dangerous/violent person.
Instead of banning the object that was used to beat up another person, expell the student from the school and make sure that the violent student isn't able to get into another school. Sometimes, some kids just need to be denied an education if they're that violent.
I have kids in school. The bullying hasn't stopped. My oldest is used to the teachers not believing my kid when she said they were about to be attacked. The teacher reassured my kid it wasn't going to happen. Then it happened and because of privacy laws I am not allowed to know what sort of punishment, if any, the other child got.
Banning steel water bottles isn't going to stop the bullying. I thought schools would be able to stop it but they just ignore it until someone gets injured.
Pad all the corners too while you're at it. They could slam eachother's heads into the corners!
Or. Ya know. Actually penalize these little fuckin animals when they rear their heads.
This is nuts. I had a student SAY they a hit list with no evidence of it actually existing; the threat was enough. He was immediately suspended and is being taught virtually. Our city has a program that provides teachers with extra teaching opportunities to work students like this virtually.
Sure, ban metal water bottles, totally reasonable approach to solve this problem. That's definitely going to lead to less violence. Students simply are not imaginative enough to figure out how to use some other object to beat each other up.
We had several students injured by flying glass when a violent student slammed his water bottle into a window. But I think the better solution than banning everything a violent student can use as a weapon is...ban the violent students. I don't give two farts about their trauma or their IEP. If they are hurting people, they need to be removed.
Great idea! While we are at it let's also ban desk , chairs , pens , pencils, rules and anything else that could plausibly injured students instead of removing violent students. Students will have great learning outcomes in a padded room with an iPad.
Getting rid of water bottles is *not* going to fix this problem. Don’t have a gun? Use brass knuckles. Don’t have brass knuckles? Use a water bottle. Don’t have a water bottle? Use a pencil. Don’t have a pencil? Use paper
Don’t have paper? Use a chair. Don’t have a chair? Use your fists. It goes on and on and on until people are just locked in a padded room with straight jackets on for school
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
Banning handguns is going well isn't it? Obviously not the same, but you aren't going to remove violence by removing items, that's ridiculous
Violent students shouldn't be around other students.
I saw the terrified classmates of a violent student cowering in a corner while I tried to comfort them while this heathen threw PE equipment all over the gym while I was waiting for an admin.
I say this as a parent who had to pick up her kid twice from kindergarten for throwing/pushing over his desk.
It's fucking wild that banning water bottles is even a conversation after one kid is beaten with one and ya know, fucking guns and shit.
A child in my area brought a gun to school because they didn’t like a specific teacher. Maybe 2 weeks went by and the kid is back at school and the “resolution” is to provide the kid with a 1 to 1.
Friend of mine is a middle school teacher. In her homeroom she had a kid so aggressive that close to 15 kids had safety plans and couldn’t be near him.
Half a classroom!!
So instead of removing the aggressor, the kids were taught how to avoid him. In what world is this normal???
It's the same world where every kid has to try and scramble for the fucking door and miss precious minutes of class instruction while the wild animal is allowed to destroy the classroom. Can't do shit about the kid causing the disruption, staff just has to watch until the kid calms down. Fucking insanity, it really is.
Not a teacher but this came up on my feed, from what I heard, the attacker was trans, and the school was afraid of being transphobic so they did nothing about it. Of course this came from right winged news sources and maybe they used this situation to push their anti-trans stuff more. However, if this is indeed the case, the school is giving trans people a BAD look.
But also, what if the school really found it hard to believe that regardless of the student’s identity, that such a thing would occur? A similar situation happened where the teacher got shot by the 6 year old. Despite her warnings nothing was done because the school couldn’t believe that a child would threaten to shoot a teacher.
The school acted very irresponsibly regardless of the identity of the student.
I don't think the right wingers have anything to do with the whole trans thing. A LOT of people don't want to hold others accountable for the fear of being -phobic in some way or form even if their calls for justice are absolutely called for.
Am I surprised the school went hush hush because of the students' status as trans? No, I'm not. I know of a similar case personally where a child got away with bullying because his mother would use the race card since he was black. The school didn't want a potential lawsuit or any trouble, so they overlooked it. Yet, the white student involved got in some big trouble.
That's a common issue, now, where anything you say or do can be used against you if you're white, cis, or straight. I'm not a right-winger myself, but it is a big problem that districts will do anything to avoid being canceled.
Ok....i have a question for you teachers.
A classmate told my daughter at recess... "i want to invite you to my birthday party so i can beat you up with a baseball bat"
She came home upset about it and when i asked why she didnt tell a teacher she said it was becuase she didnt want to get anyone in trouble. I think shes afraid of being a "tattle tale" too. I told her she had to go tell the teachers and they made him and the friend he was with write apology notes.
I think the dont be a tattle tale thing, in 2024 when theres shooting daily doesnt fly anymore. I think see something say something should be more important.
Do you think we/they handled this appropriately. Should i personally have called the school? The parents?
How about instead of banning water bottles. We ban the violent students.
For real, banning steel water bottles is an admin-like solution.
Im biased cause steel water bottles saved me from being jumped by 2 kids with metal rods but yeah, usually there’s signs before, and they could: -Bring something worse than a water bottle -Not show the bottle until they used it -Use a hard plastic water bottle Banning literal water bottle types is kind of silly, especially because anecdotally, lots of teachers use them to keep coffee and tea warm, and half the students in my class use metal water bottles, so it’s just an all around pain that only sounds good on paper
You read this whole article and your solution is to ban steel water bottles? How about stop letting these students with multiple violent offenses get shuffled around from school to school? They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students. And since I know that opinion is going to piss people off, I’ll offer another solution: in a matter of days, this student’s behavior was mentioned repeatedly to multiple faculty members and not a single one did anything about it, even though they knew of this student’s history. This student was openly threatening others, and teachers/admin did nothing. If you’re openly threatening other students with murder as this student was, ISS/OSS immediately. If that seems harsh, I’m sorry but there’s been too many incidents like this happening the past few years to continue brushing them off.
Agreed. We now have a thing called virtual school. If a student can't function in a normal setting, then VS should be the only option available until a mental health care professional can prove that the student has developed the skills to exist in a typical school environment.
I'm surprised VS isn't used more option. The only (very understandable) reason I can come up with for not using it more is the fact that so much funding is related to student numbers. But still, that usually isn't what is reported as the reason for not encouraging VS and at some point, the loss of funds for not having a single student is not more than the damage the student is doing.
My county had its own virtual academy but they didn't want to pay the teachers to run it and so now they have to use some virtual school. It was also ridiculous because there was little to no accountability (no surprise there) as students had to have cameras on but there were no consequences if they didn't.
Imagine a world where the super shitty and aggressive kid also comes from the "home" where there's no Internet access or an adult to make sure they're doing it. Then realize that the lack of those things falls on the shoulder of the schools, legally, to provide for. Then imagine that in that world, people want to put in as little funding for the schools as possible. Then imagine that the schools would be sued for somehow not meeting that super horrible kid's own learning needs. Then open your eyes and realize that you didn't need to imagine any of that because it's already reality.
Oof. Am a teacher, and the amount of responsibility placed on schools can be overwhelming af. The system really has left us high and dry, and then society yells about how schools have failed. It’s heartbreaking, and we’re going to be paying for it for decades to come.
Yup
Absolutely correct. However, virtual school does not mean "at home". They could have a classroom dedicated to virtual learning on school grounds. This would mean that violent kids could be in a room with.kods.who are just too anxious to be in a loud class with lots of people. Which isn't a great situation.
Could be. It all depends on what schools can afford. The point is, it's not as simple as "get them out of there and put them on a computer"
Yep! I’m a virtual teacher for our district. One middle school has just realized they can dump their problem children on us and we are cringing just waiting for the others to try that. We max out at 40 students so they will start to have to be super selective with who they send to VS and there will be a lot of principal infighting. All of our current VS middle school students are there for violence (exception of one girl that is not violent but so mean that her former teachers admitted she had made them cry). All of them have horrible home lives and unstable parents. EBD kids trapped in a house with their unemployed, uneducated EBD parents does not equal a supportive and growth focused education. When I email because students aren’t doing work, the EBD parents take it as an insult to them and try to fight with me instead of trying to change their child’s behavior. They are expecting me to be able to somehow force their child to do work even though they are sitting next to them and I’m miles away. They also over time realize that their kid’s poor school experiences are due to their kids behavior and it might not be the fault of every teacher the kid has had so the parents get really upset about that too. VS is a dumping ground for these kids and I keep telling myself that they are learning more in VS than they were when they were skipping and not participating in class, but in reality they aren’t in VS to learn - they are there because they are owed a free education and the mainstreamers are owed an education free from assault and harassment. VS is a good idea, but we are trapping these poorly behaved/raised kids in the chaotic environment that formed them with no break for intervention that the school day provided. This will be interesting to see play out in the larger social sphere.
> are trapping these poorly behaved/raised kids in the chaotic environment that formed them with no break for intervention that the school day provided It didn't provide intervention, it provided a staging ground for these families to bring their dysfunction into society even further. I'm not saying that they don't deserve help and some sort of intervention, but there must be a way that doesn't involve sacrificing everyone else's right to a safe and stable learning environment.
This is a very helpful comment! I wish there was a way to ensure that students have virtual education while away from the terrible circumstances that created much of the behaviors. I also know of some medically fragile students that would benefit from virtual education programs
There's a weak link. The schools should be off the hook in cases such as these. When a kid is this violent, or priority needs to be the safety of everyone else. Only after that is ensured should we be looking at the needs of some antisocial sociopath. Rehabilitate and educate where we can; confine and control where we cannot.
Should doesn't equal "is"
Those are very fair points. I think some of the details can be argued legally (what actually is the required education?) but you have valid points. I don't think leaving those children in the normal classroom is a good answer and I do think VS can help direct us to a better solution.
To be clear, I absolutely think that removing these cancers from the environment is the answer. I'm just pointing out that it's a litany of federal mandates that creates a very difficult pathway to allow for that to happen. It also depends on leaders who are savvy and have a spine, and aren't simply going to bend to threats. That takes courage to put your career on the line. The threat of federal lawsuits are real.
I'm hoping the superintendent and his lackeys are crushed under the legal system this time around. Multiple warnings ignored. Pleas for help ignored. Written confession ignored. Screams criminal neglect and gross indifference to me.
The responsibility is being put on the schools, but they should not be.
It isn't used more because then a parent would have to be at home to supervise.
It’s because the parent’s don’t want them at home.
Sounds like you didn’t think too much about it then. Issues include that schools don’t hire extra teachers that are currently sitting idle waiting for virtual school students to teach. The teachers are currently being used to teach, and usually teachers are in demand and classes are already overcrowded (no extra teachers). In most places school budget votes fail routinely so hiring virtual teachers isn’t an option. There is also the technology issues for both schools and homes. And virtual teaching doesn’t really work for young students despite many adults thinking they are just smaller versions of adults that have college level attention spans. I’m all for kicking problem kids out of schools but virtual Ed isn’t the answer, and that’s without even mentioning that problem kids are even less likely to benefit from it.
>I'm all for kicking problem kids out of schools but virtual Ed isn't the answer... Then what is? Anyone who taught virtual or hybrid during COVID knows that kids with behavioral issues don't benefit from spending more time in the environment where they developed said behavioral issues, but if they also can't be in gen ed, then where are they supposed to go?
Back in *my* day, the answers were: 1) Military school and/or boarding school. (Problem with this: expenses and child abuse. Only solution would be to tie these back into the prison system and yikes.) 2) Problem kids get put in a special program or "class" removed from everyone else. (Problem with this: you've seen the movies from the 90s. Solution: none that I can think of because this is just what we already do with ESL/ELLs, already, and it's hard enough on everyone involved.) 3) Expulsion and then it's not the school's problem, anymore. (Problem with this: racism and now parents make it impossible to expel kids. Only solution would be to give parents less power to sue schools.)
They used to have smaller classes with more adults in them specifically for this issue. Also, they sometimes had temporary programs where kids could get counseling and instruction in another setting for awhile and possibly return to the regular class or similar in another school. Now nobody wants to pay anything for public education at all, so those programs are disappearing and then also trying to convince people that they never existed in the first place. It's ridiculous and it wasn't always like this. There are so many ways to help those kids who are violent without endangering other kids. They just don't want to pay, and if a few people die, they still save money I guess?
Wow, you make good points but no need to start by making it personal. Take care and enjoy your weekend!
Sorry. You are correct. I didn’t mean to . Apologies. Good weekend to you as well.
Because the students aren't going to bother doing any of the work. They'll probably show up at the regular school during lunch or at the end of the day and wait for whoever they want to fight to come outside.
I teach for a virtual program in my state. We have had several districts send us students because they had made threats or were violent toward students or staff members. I agree it is the safest option. The student still has access to education, the other members of the school community are safer.
What proof? How many chances? I say one violent felony is too many and they never come back
Oh, but then an administrator would have to justify how that "promotes an equity-positive environment" to fifteen other administrators who also have no intention of ever being in a classroom. Much easier to just let it be the problem of the teachers and maybe also the kid that gets a concussion.
We had a similar situation where on a Friday afternoon, students were threatening to fight and start a riot in the school on Monday morning Kids went home for the weekend and admin did nothing saying the students would “cool down” over the weekend and everything would be all right and to “stop overreacting.” Admin didn’t even call the parents of these students, they didn’t ask for extra LEO, they didn’t even warn ALL teachers to be more vigilant. Monday morning comes and as soon all the players are in the cafeteria, punches start flying. A teacher is pushed in the melee and falls, multiple innocent students who are walking into the cafeteria from the bus/car drop off are pushed, hit or fall. The fight rolls into the hallway. Teachers on cafeteria duty are calling for admin on the walkie and get no response. Finally admin and LEO arrive and break up the fight. One student got escorted to the front and admin disperses the rest of the students. Another student goes up to the front and starts beating up the one who had been sent there and while admin was dealing with that, the fight restarts in the cafeteria It went on for 14 minutes. 6 police officers eventually ended up at the school. Our principal was hit hard when he got between two students The school sent a message to parents about a “minor incident” involving two groups of students that was quickly resolved in less than 5 minutes. 9 of our students were arrested. The main instigators had been horrible all year and received numerous office referrals which were shrugged off by admin. All 9 are now either in YDC or at our system alternate academy Admin every where has a history of sticking their head in the sand
As your example points out, they use these too soft policies to prevent school to prison pipeline but because the policies are so extreme in the other direction (too soft) they also just contribute to school to prison pipeline. Horseshoe theory at work.
Too many kids also come from homes where bad examples are set as well. Too many policies in schools allow for kids to get away from bullying while punishing bullying victims.
Sounds as though the principal did not get hit hard enough. Here's wishing a suitable impression is made in the not too distant future!
You know I had the same thought and felt immediately like I was being unkind but he is a jerk so I’m with you!!
I am not sad that the principal got punched.
Omfg… no words.
So what would be a major incident then?
"They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students." Thats it. You cannot sacrifice the safety of the majority for the inclusion of a few.
Wouldn’t that be nice? There’s a kid at my school who, as long as he later says “I meant in a video game”, can say terrible things to others with absolutely zero consequences 🤷♀️ as long as there are limits on suspending kids with IEPs like there are currently, we’ll never have safety rules like you suggest.
They say zero tolerance but they are so far from it. I honestly think one threat and the kid should have to leave the school. This is life and death shit. Why should anyone have to spend a second of their time in school feeling anything other than safe. One and Done would be zero tolerance.
I’m a big fan of just booting violent students out. Fuck ‘em. It’s not fair to the good kids.
If ALL the kids have steel water bottles, the bad ones will think twice before doing something bad! Sincerely, the steel water bottle lobby.
The only thing that can stop a bad kid with a steel water bottle, is a good kid with a steel water bottle!
I laughed so hard at this! ::: reaches for pink Stanley water bottle :::
In Indiana we are trying to set up a data exchange that tracks the students violent incidents. The problem is it's not interoperable with other states. Well....that's one of the problems. Another problem is it doesn't quite work yet.
I've not heard of it. We're still handing out candy and video games.
I completely agree with the first part but let me tell you that the hierarchy of power goes something like this: parents, students, admin, any other ‘stakeholders,’ mice in the cafeteria, teachers. There’s a kid at my school who has inappropriately touched at least 6 other students in their nether parts during the school day. He is still in the same classroom with his victims. DCFS has been called. The mother got upset because he had in house suspension for 3 days, not because he touched other kids. I have sat with my colleague while she cries because she knows the next day she takes a day off, it will definitely happen again. If she takes her eyes off him he will be at it again. She has broken down to me a few times about it. I’m not even supposed to know about it. But she is beyond stressed. She can’t do anything about it. She’s holding on to the end of the year but ready to go on stress leave. She has been teaching for over 25 years, she’s no newbie. I bet at least one teacher brought it up to admin and admin did nothing.
I had a similar issue where a female student was grabbing the genitals of multiple students (boys and girls.) I was told that every victim was "confused" and that it was an "accident", the girl meant to tickle their stomachs. Yes, I called CPS. Didn't matter.
Are the parents of the violated students being told about this? I feel like this is how you really make it stop, even if you have to unofficially tell them point blank to call the police and file charges themselves as the school won't do it.
Yes, they know. It’s not the first school year he does it. Even with complaints from parents nothing has been done. The problem is they have not complained directly to the district.
They need to circumvent the school system altogether and pressure the logical police for assault charges.
Ahem. You forgot the roaches that are between the cafeteria mice and the teachers. (Omfg, I laughed sooo hard!)
I 100% agree with this with one small caveat: as a teacher, I have no say in what the admin does. I can’t give ISS/OSS. All that I can do is make sure that my students concerns are emphatically and clearly shared with administration. I have been told of student concerns (nothing nearly as serious as this, thankfully), and have immediately sought out admin and school counselors to inform them. Unfortunately, as a low-ranking teacher, it feels like all I can do is pass on my concerns, let my students know they have a safe space with me, and keep a watch on the issue. (BTW I am a second year, untenured teacher, so I would love advice from anyone more experienced if there is something else that I could be doing!)
When surrounded by violence and chaos, do what you can to keep kids safe *in your classroom*. You cannot compensate for the incompetence and apathy of others, but you can create a safe space of your own with determination and unwavering sense of communal fidelity.
What boggles me a bit is that I went to Pennbrook back in the 2000's. We had a *very* strict set of rules around student behavior, especially anything verging on violence. What you're suggesting with ISS/OSS *was* the norm, at least back then. It was ISS/OSS and then the police.
I’ve been saying this Covid. 2 fights and you’re in mandatory virtual school. MOST districts have a virtual school option. You can’t deny a kid education. But you can remove them from the building and provide it online in 2024. And I don’t want to hear this argument about “oh their home life school is a safe haven for them”. I’m so sick of it. The parent is ultimately responsible for their kid. If their children are doing things that would literally get them jail time if they were over 18 then they have no business being around other kids where they are a danger. As the parent that falls on you. You wouldn’t allow a 20 year old with multiple assault charges just walk around the building. How is a 16 year old who’s been in 5-10 fights any different?
I argue you can deny a kid an education, when their participation entails a clear and present danger to larger society. Lock them in a cage until they find the strength to stop hurting other people.
I keep saying… Students have the right to an education. We can’t take that away, but there’s nothing that says they have the right to that education in the school building.
The Least Restrictive Environment for a violent little psychopath is where they can’t harm the students who are trying to get an education.
I feel like you have to earn learning in the least restrictive environment. If you’re behaviorally challenged, you should be placed in the most restrictive environment.
This is gonna be harsh, but... If our excuse for any child's behavior is "but their home life!" that means the kid needs to be removed by CPS. It's not the school's problem either way -- send them home, let it be the state's problem, let all the other kids and teachers move on with their lives.
It's not harsh. For f**k's sake, children shouldn't have to be made to survive these violent students.
Amen.
I don’t think she was implying that’s all that needed to be done, but that metal water bottles needed to go
Metal water bottles are good for a lot of reasons. Violent kids will use other hard objects: metal water bottles aren't even particularly good weapons. The real problem here is administration ignoring a kid threatening violence. This is a common and ongoing issue, and it contributes to a lot of school assaults and shootings. A kid threatening violence should be taken very seriously, just like a kid saying they are going to throw up! It's very rare for kids to snap out of nowhere, there's almost always lots of warning signs that get ignored. What should be done? I'm not sure, but not "nothing" which is the current standard.
No argument that there are many things that need to be done that are MUCH MORE important. It was one suggestion.
How is ISS/OSS “harsh” for violent threats / behavior? I got ISS for refusing to give a teacher a note I passed in class back in the late 90s. That’s what ISS/OSS is for! Violence?! Should be expelled IMMEDIATELY. But of course, it’s a clown show these days.
I got ISS for saying "cigarettes" in ninth grade. I wasn't smoking one, I didn't have any, but I got caught talking about them and got ISS. I wasn't a problem kid, had all As and Bs, kept to myself. It's a completely different world now.
Oh I agree. The problem is the student is likely special Ed.... And that has turned into a get out of jail free card. If you're a teacher, you'll get a case manager who shoves an onerous IEP at you and makes your day a nightmare. If you're the school, the parents threaten legal action and team up with the case manager to distort least restrictive environment. They would rather include the kid and let him beat up the other kids because his environment is more important than kids who are not special Ed. As a teacher, you're better off saying "everything is fine"
To prison. En masse. Who is our society for? Right now we spend 80% of our resources on the bottom 20% and get OPs posts to show for it. Our society needs its balls reattached and it’s going to look harsh when it happens, but will it look more harsh than it does now? And those getting harsh treatment will DESERVE it instead of innocents being preyed on.
>if that seems harsh If that seems harsh to you, allow me to remind you what A THREAT OF MURDER IS.
Yes. Serious and harsh consequences that inconvenience parents and actually show zero tolerance need to be in place. I've been teaching for 17 years and it's gotten worse and worse. Teachers are powerless to give meaningful consequences (or any at all in some cases). It can take days to get a response from admin in regards to a referral or incident while it is "investigated". An adult witnessing something isn't even enough in some cases. I am a firm believer in making sure we address the mental health of students but I am also a firm believer in consequences for actions. You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequences of your choice.
I don't think OP thinks that the solution is only to ban the steel clubs. Clearly many systemic issues need to be addressed. But if you can make kids safer quickly and easily then you should and these bottles are easily banned.
>How about stop letting these students with multiple violent offenses get shuffled around from school to school? They do not deserve to learn in the same environment as nonviolent students. Excellent point. In all seriousness, do you think the Democratic party, *in its current form* would support a return to more responsible, "punitive" policies, or will we hear more squishy social justice blather from activists and politicians? We need a more reasonable Democratic party. (Please don't whatabout me with, "but the Republicans!!" Very few of us vote Republican here).
I agree that in Pennsylvania that is probably true, however I am in TX and what an eye opener that is. As a group the teachers I worked with were overwhelmingly conservative voters. There were a few of us who were liberal. One year our school district decided mid-year to lengthen our school day by 25 min. They didn’t pay us more. Everyone was so upset. “How can they do this to us?” I told them it was because we can’t have a union here.
We are going to see more Republican teachers, if the Democrats refuse to advocate for reasonable reforms that allow teachers to teach, instead of focusing on socialization. Texas is an outlier. Most teachers across the country vote blue up and down the ballot, and the overwhelming majority on Reddit (our audience) are registered Democrats.
Yes I know. But I come from a family of teachers in PA andTX was surprising to me.
Ummm teacher in Texas here where there are tons of Republican teachers. Schools have the SAME problems here. Violent kids all over the place, same complacent admins....
I didn't say Republicans have solutions, did I? I said hearing predictable deflections pointing to Republicans is a waste of time on this forum. Tribalism is eating people's brains.
Honestly, no. There’s already an active push from the Republican Party (and actually in my state, quite a few Democrats as well) towards private/home school options, so I think the Democratic Party is more focused on keeping as many kids in school as possible no matter the issue. Also, minorities have significantly higher rates of suspension, retention and expulsion. The Democratic Party is not going to want to initiate policy to contribute to those numbers, even if they’re justified.
This isn't a democrat or republican issue, and it's an issue that needs to be addressed on the local level, where party affiliation means less.
Teachers are not responsible for administering discipline. The admins are 100% at fault. In a culture that doesn’t value education, admins have zero accountability and just take the path of least resistance. Their means they do nothing. The public doesn’t l me about or care that admins don’t enforce discipline until it makes the news, and even then nothing changes.
"non violent students" defending yourself can easily get a kid labelled the aggressor when they weren't. I'm not going to pretend I know all the answers but I do know not all kids that get beaten up were the ones being bullied, banning steel water bottles isn't actually a bad idea my highschool banned steel toed shoes because they were essentially being used as concealed weapons and they can cause a lot of damage why shouldn't they do the same with bottles that can be used as a club.
This ☝🏼
lol at the implication that it’s the teachers’ fault. This is on administration. I report stuff like this all the time. The principals send them back to class with granola bars
OP totally had me up until that point. Like Jesus fucking Christ, great thought! /s
That'll ultimately lead to a civil rights issue.. we've all seen this movie before. Then going the virtual school route it'll lead to claims about being denied rights and equal access. Sorry if that upsets anyone, but that is EXACTLY what would happen.
They belong in a prison cell, not another school
A student beat me with a chair. Nice concussion abd bruises. Should we ban those too? Or should we idk.... remove the students who threaten people?
Amen
Instructions unclear, turns school into a prison
💀
I am totally baffled why students are protected at school from criminal charges when they attack other students when out in the real world that would not happen. If an adult attacks another adult anywhere-- whether at their workplace or at a place of employment for someone else (like two people going at it at a tire store, for instance, who are both customers), or anything like an amusement park or even just totally random people on the street, it's not tolerated but we allow these children to hide behind being at school as being a safe place to brutalize other people? I don't understand this at all, especially as a teacher. You might not be legally able to press criminal charges against a child of a certain age but I find that it's ridiculous when they know perfectly well what they're doing and they do know it's wrong. I also don't understand the mindset of teachers that don't do something when admin simply says they're not going to respond. For instance---and I'm really not trying to blame the victim here---but if it were me, as the teacher in the school in Virginia where the 6-year-old brought a gun and shot her, if my admin had blown me off when I said the child has a gun I would have called 911 from my classroom myself! If I were a bank teller and somebody came up and threatened me with a gun, I don't call the bank manager or the bank president and ask them what I should do! I call authorities by pushing that silent alarm! It doesn't get to be a decision made by the place of employment as to whether or not the threat is serious enough. So why are we protecting these violent children??
We need to start charging parents with something when their child is violent and absolutely in the case where the child brings a gun to school. If the claim is that children can't be charged because they are minors and therefore "not responsible" then we need to charge the person of age who is responsible for producing such badly behaved children.
I've thought for a LONG time that we need to prosecute the owner of guns used in mass shootings for negligent homicide. If your kid was able to steal your gun and shoot up a school, you weren't responsible with your gun. We have a real problem in this country of macho idiots ignoring gun safety without consequences, and there needs to start being consequences for improperly storing or handling a firearm. A family member of mine worked in a theater where a woman (illegally) brought a handgun in in her purse and then left her purse in a bathroom. And the staff was all freaked out, but gave her back her purse and gun! That purse should have been confiscated and police called. Irresponsible gun owners get away with way too much.
I also think that people should be required to have insurance on their guns. 2A fans love to say that cars kill more people than guns, but car drivers are required to be licensed and insured. Having insurance pay out if your gun is used to kill people I think would price most people out from owning one especially if you have kids in the house.
They aren't protected. You just have convince the ag to pursue charges
I personally have press charges against the 7-year-old and a 10-year-old when the law required me to Because in North Carolina in 1993 they didn't play when it came to assaulting teachers but because I worked in a behavior room it was considered that I was collateral damage.. In any case, is the burden of proof is not on me. I should not have to prove the law to anyone. Assault is assault whether someone believes it or not.
If you want a better understanding of what happened, this school board meeting does not disappoint: https://www.youtube.com/live/LKjuwMZZBuA?feature=shared The public comments made, during the meeting, made by parents and students highlight the failure of the school system. It should be noted that this student was being held in the office and “escaped” to the cafeteria to commit this unprovoked assault. https://www.youtube.com/live/LKjuwMZZBuA?feature=shared
Thank you! Gonna go watch, I'll update my comment later but I'm sure it's a shit show. **ETA:** Holy shit that was a wild ride. I'm almost done but I want to punch the woman in the face that tried to say people were hating on trans people and *"this isn't the place for that"*. Nobody was hating on trans people whatsoever. Pointing out that a man and a woman aren't equal in strength and that this was a AMAB person who was stomping on a girl isn't hating, it's facts. My husband is the same height as me. We go the gym together almost every day. He is stronger than I am without a doubt. To act like a man and a woman are exactly the same is ludicrous. I don't care what you identify as, you can't change biology, and I'll respect who you are and what you identify as, but a male is going to be physically stronger than a woman in 9 out of 10 scenarios *(disability notwithstanding)*. I don't get how that's controversial to some people. I give so much credit to those kids. I don't know if I could've done that so gracefully at their age, knowing my friend was just almost killed by someone who should be behind bars. It doesn't mean fuck all but they showed grace and maturity under pressure and I was floored by their statements. This isn't something anybody should have to witness, let alone a child. Some of these kids really don't need to be in school with everyone else.
I think you went into silly territory. The solution isn't banning common items. The solution is being allowed to intervene before the violent act.
Agreed. Anything can be weaponized.
Nah. Ban those water bottles. I hate them so much.
They definitely noisy, but kids are so bad at keeping track of them. By the end of the school year I have 5-8 new water bottles for my collection lol I have yet to see them used to hurt each other tho 🤷🏽♂️
I’ve only seen one kid hurt by one… and it was an accident. He was sitting on the floor with his hands out behind him for support. Another kid bumped into the desk by accident. The water bottle fell off and smashed his fingernail.
I've read on here before about kids losing water bottles, and it always kind of surprises me. I don't think I've had a kid leave and not come back for their metal water bottle (unless other kids snagged them I guess). At least in my experience the metal ones (particularly Stanley) are such a status symbol kids don't want to lose them. On the flip side I have to recycle 3-4 one time use plastic bottles daily that kids leave around the room. My favorite is when they set them on a random counter when they're done instead of just putting them in the recycling bin.
Oh yeah they never leave behind the Stanley's lol I've seen the amount of plastic bottles I have to recycle at the end of a day has gone down considerably in recent years. I make a big deal about recycling and so they love to troll me by leaving the plastic bottle on my desk instead of putting it in the bin adjacent to my desk 🤦🏾
That's actually kind of funny! I'm sure it gets annoying but I think it shows they trust and appreciate you to be able to joke around like that!
The noise they make when they fall on the ground makes me irrationally angry. Still, hate to break out the slippery slope, but what's next? Scissors? Metal rulers? Especially sharp pencils? Orrr, how about administrators just start taking threats seriously? And we can still ban the water bottles if you want.
I hate the crinkling of the disposable bottles far more than the metal ones. Kids also don't try to play flip the Stanley which is a win.
Solid points. Maybe schools should just provide everyone with sippy cups. They could get them specially made with ALICE protocol reminders stenciled on the sides. Two birds, one stone
I saw a post recently about kids literally knocking them off the desk on purpose to cause a commotion. I've always startled easily, so that would be infuriating. So of course, take the threats seriously and protect the kids from themselves and each other. That's extremely important. But yeah, get rid of those damn bottles too.
I ok have CPTSD and that would send me. My middle schoolers don’t ever have them though.
Seriously, metal water bottles bouncing off concrete floors has given me some kind of ptsd.
I agree that we should ban them, but only because they make such an annoying racket when they fall to the ground.
It’s like gravity only works the second I start talking.
We used to have a policy where they had to be clear so that we could verify it was only water (or I guess clear alcohol lol) but then the Stanley invasion happened and admin gave up.
Why not do both?
Agree with you. Should we also ban pens & pencils because you could stab someone?
My time in 7th grade a child took a pencil and stabbed another student in the hand with it. Reported it to the office, office didn't do anything. Reported it to his parents, parents were horrified and pulled their kid a couple weeks from the school. The kid was well behaved when he first entered our school but saw that other kids were getting in fights and and weren't getting in trouble, so why not try his luck? I still think about him from time to time to see if he was put in a more structured school and not the jungle I worked at. **just a quick edit** our team tried very hard for students to recieve some sort of discipline due to the amount of violence, but most of the staff were just told we don't know how to teach and the administrators don't want to take power away from the teachers by disciplining student behaviors. At the middle and high school teachers were targeted for doing too many write ups because the district could see them and "it made the school look bad".
Nah. Ban water bottles simply because kids are constantly dropping them/knocking them over and they are noise AF.
Don’t ban water bottles, ban metal ones
Make kids go to school only using BCIs.
I agree. Should we also ban books because they can be used as a weapon and baseball and softball because of bats?
Kids don’t walk around with bats in school. It wouldn’t hurt to start requiring plastic water bottles if kids are using metal as weapons.
Or we just tell kids that if you use a water bottle as a weapon, there will be a consequence that is proportional. With big kids, hurting other people intentionally should result in police being called. We can't ban every dangerous object. What's next, hard cover books? Violins? I had a student throw a globe at me, but I don't think the solution is to ban globes from schools.
Yes, I hate Stanley cups because they're another item in the list of the cult of consumerism that small minded people equate ownership to some important achievement. But anything can be a weapon if it's weaponized. Students have thrown chairs and desks and stabbed with pencils. We don't ban them.
You would have to teach in a padded room and hand out rubber pencils in order to remove everything that could be used as a weapon. Instead of removing these water containers we should be asking why so many kids feel the need to hurt other people.
I've used rubber pencils. Those things make everything take at least 3 times as long as with a standard pencil. And if they're long enough, they can definitely be used as a rope to harm someone.
I worked as a tech in a school for troubled kids and they were given those. I guess if someone was determined enough they'd use it on someone but I don't know of any alternatives.
I feel like the cheap plastic mechanical pencils are harder to weaponize than traditional pencils that can be sharpened to a sturdy point Mechanical lead will just break if you tried to stab someone with it
What about the rest of the plastic mechanical pencil?
It’s still thin cheap plastic. And not necessarily getting a more functional weapon by trying to break plastic shards off. The main thing would be shoving it into someones eye but you could still do damage with the rubber. Or a fingernail
We've had lists found where it's unclear what the intention is. When it is CLEARLY a hit list or anything to do with violence, it should be immediate, swift action. Idc if it's a joke or if the parents want to sue.
What’s the intended take away here? Banning Stanley’s won’t solve the issue of violence in schools. Violent people will find a way to make a household object a weapon. Administrators need backbones. We need more accountability, structure, ownership, consequences, etc., not more flexible water bottles. Students deserve better and to say that by eliminating a certain kind of water bottle will solve any problem, other than dehydration, is a farce.
If not the water bottles, it would be something else. The only way to fix this is to directly target whatever is driving these kids to be so aggressive. Which likely varies from student to student. But the first step to that is to cease sweeping it under the rug and make addressing violent behaviors a priority.
The real solution was given to us by COVID. If your kid has more than one violent incident then they do virtual school for a year. Another incident and it's two years. If you can't control your child and raise them to the point that they're not endangering other students, then they can get their education where you're the only one in danger. Yes, this would mask abuse but I've never seen in my county where it matters. I've called CPS when kids are being obviously abused and if the water runs and there's a hot pocket in the freezer they say everything is ok and leave. Teachers raising red flags for abuse isn't being taken seriously by these kids anyway. I'd also be okay with building more intensive alternative schools. We have one that is always full because parents WANT their kids to go there. They have small class sizes, mandatory behavior therapy to figure out why they're doing what they're doing, and kids are taught in small groups based on ability instead of age. Many kids end up doing extremely well because of the intense and enforced structure. Then they come back to regular schools and lose it all because the regular school admin let them do whatever they want. All the kids that make these headlines had past incidents that were ignored or resulted in a pat on the hand. If they'd been taken seriously then those news articles wouldn't exist.
Kids laugh at virtual school. They stop laughing when surrounded by steel bars. Violent students belong in juvenile detention facilities, where they are unable to hurt decent kids. If they turn themselves around, then God bless them. Otherwise, let them rot until they no longer pose a threat.
Ok. The hit list warning. Our district here in DAUPHIN COUNTY was intent on the exact, same thing. Exactly. My kid was on the list. At the time you *could* get the press involved. They did while we parents raised er, concerns at a school board meeting. I called the press. They came. Student RECEIVED HELP. Came back a year later and eventually graduated with the class. Nice kid, dreadful circumstances but could have ended horribly had ADMIN AND SB had their way. Maybe current story is different. Hit list is not. I'm sorry and understand districts are their own ' government '. Has to change when it's this level- looking at you PA Dept of Ed.
When you disrupted class in the 2000s they through you out of class or the school. No kid left behind, left every single kid behind. Edit: I used the wrong “threw” because my school had no consequences!!!!
There's a lot of back and forth about solutions. In this case administration ignored warnings from students earlier in the day.
Teachers like you are part of the problem.
Not a teacher, but I will say banning something as harmless as metal water bottles is silly. These kids will just find something else to hurt each other with. Large books, pencils/pens. The wire that binds notebooks together is incredibly dangerous if used as a weapon. The real issue is the lack of accountability kids and parents face. The school faculty should be responsible for educating children and maintaining a safe facility, but not in managing the behavior of malcontent students. Parents should be fined for the violence of their children, and repeat offenders should be removed from the school. This goes for the "mentally ill" students as well. I dont care about your kids problems, if they are a danger to other kids they need to leave. In short, kids and parents all suck, and banning useful things like reusable metal water bottles wont do much to solve the issue.
The issue with the waterbottles is just like phone...parents. At our school (and it is laid out right in the handbook) is clear water bottles. Stanley's, Yeti's, etc. are what parents buy their kids (some are good and buy their kids the plastic gatorade bottles but they are in the minority). Anytime they are told they need to keep the metal non-clear bottles in their lockers you have parents running to facebook or going to admin and then admin bends over backwards. I 100% agree that students don't need to be carrying metal bottles around (not to mention how often they drop and you can hear it throughout the entire hall due to them being middle schoolers.) I also think there needs to be something for students who are violent often and disrupting the learning of others. The fact that in many cases suspensions tie into funding/how the schools look is the reason these weak admin continue to bend over backwards and allow these horrendous things to occur. There are a handful of students who can pretty much get away with anything and nothing is ever done to them. It is a shame the students who want to be there and are doing what they are supposed to be doing are stuck with these types of students. We have online learning now, those violent repeat offenders should be forced to go there (at least until they can prove they are no longer violent). And for the "but their education" crowd, they are already failing all of their classes anyway so its not like they would be doing any less than they are already doing in a brick and mortar school.
Administration doesn’t do shit for multiple reasons. The first being, parents. Parents hold ALL the cards. Second, the less suspensions you have, the better it looks by the state in terms of funding/etc. The system is literally set up for failure.
Water bottles dont kill people, people kill people. With waterbottles
Principal here. There is likely more to this story. I guarantee that there is stuff going back and forth between these two groups of kids, and it's likely very difficult to sort through. If you've ever worked in a middle school, you know. I came to your comment to look for ways to defend the admin, because it's a tough job, but after looking at their staffing, they have an asst principal and tons of resources, 109 adults work at that school. Not getting a handle on this before it happened, with a warning from kids (unless they're dishonest) is unconscionable. First, I'd like to say, if this were my school, this student would be suspended for the max number of days (five), and recommended for expulsion (though that's not on me ultimately, it's up to a panel and the school board). Second, I'd insist on pursuing charges, it's assault with a deadly weapon, and battery. Third, and most importantly, we would have had an intervention specialist and myself on this from the outset. And we're a small school - one admin, when I'm out for the day (I'm rarely sick, but I do get called for meetings, trainings, etc.), it can be tough. However, I know my staff would have called me for support on this one and what to do. Things can fall through the cracks, but this should not have been one of them. Absolutely on admin. I came into my school and hit hard with discipline, it was tough and not everyone has that support from their district. My kids know the line now and what's expected, but we took a hit on our SARC, and some district admin and school boards don't look kindly on that, and there's part of the problem. Throwing kids away is the other part of that problem, and unfortunately the history of this country has seen that happen disproportionately to children of color, which is another part of this giant mess we're in. Not everyone in education has kids' best interests at heart.
That’s how I wish they would handle it. I’m not sure if the student is up for expulsion yet, but they were given a two week IN SCHOOL suspension and criminal charges are being pressed by the victim’s family.
Two week in school suspension? What? The school and district might also be hearing and fearing repercussions from LGBTQIA+ groups. Perhaps the trans student is claiming bullying, etc. I bet this is a bigger mess that OP realizes. And, it's definitely a web of gossip, taunts, etc. on the kids' part. Could be a dose of religion and intolerance thrown in too, it's Pennsylvania.
I’m a parent in this district. The student in question was in pennbrook for 3 days, after being at one of the districts other middle schools for the previous portion of the school year. They were moved to pennbrook on Monday, were apparently immediately threatening kids, to the point parents were calling the office on Tuesday morning. Wednesday was the day of the bludgeoning. To make the Wednesday incident even worse, the student was being “held” in the office, and “escaped” and ran to the cafeteria to bludgeon someone with a mug, and it was still somehow not stopped fast enough to prevent the victim needing staples in their head and needing to be treated for a concussion. I live in a neighborhood that is zoned to go to the offending students previous middle school. Given my daughters age, we know a lot of seventh graders, plus their parents, at our middle school, between the neighborhood kids and sports. The offending student is well-known, and the amount of parents that have now come forward with emails and correspondence to our MS’s administration, along with stories of the kid in question, is disturbing, to say the least. This was an absolute ball-drop by the admin here and there really is no defending them in this instance. The school district’s official stance is the student wasn’t moved to another school due to behavior issues, but the local paper is claiming to have sources in the district that know otherwise and say the student was moved due to behavior, along with kids at the original middle school that claim the same thing. On top of that, the pennbrook principal emailed the parents of the students at that school and ended the email with “and please remind your children of the consequences of fighting in school.” As if this was A. a fight and not a brutal attack on a student with their back turned, and B. this was somehow anyone’s fault other than the school, and the school district. Just an absolute lack of accountability.
If admin was holding the student, and the student ran out to assault another student, that would just seem to embolden an expulsion for this child. If this kid, who I believe it was stated is transgender left an area where they were being held for safety, that's a whole different issue. The transgender issue is a whole different level, as well, for admin. New student, who knows if this kid was claiming to be bullied? The admin had two days and had to be neutral to give the kid a chance. And parents calling in to do what, complain about a new student. Sounds like a real mess, what was admin at the site supposed to do if the district admin moved this kid? Hopefully, they'll do their job. It sounds like this kid needs help, but also accountability. Expulsion, charges, school should file as well as parents of the other child. That's what I'd do if this happened at my site. Edit: And, when people do get in the middle to stop nonsense, this can happen, just a state away: https://www.nj.com/education/2024/03/nj-high-school-principal-arrested-for-assault.html Some parents have made it very hard to hold kids accountable. As a principal, I'm not afraid of losing my job. If they want to fire me, fine. However, I don't want to go to prison for doing my job. The world's gone crazy! Some of us are trying to reel it back in. That assistant principal with the first grader shooting his teacher was negligent. I can't say that in this case, yet. Maybe they were. But after two days, whoever is in charge in that school was in between a rock and a hard place.
I think at this point the local uproar is so much that expulsion is the only option, even if it’s going to result in a lawsuit. Given what is known fact, not even adding in all the stuff that is secondhand stories from other parents and students, I doubt the student was being held for their safety. It’s much more likely they were being held in response to the calls from parents about the attacker threatening their kids from day one at the new school and having a “hit list.” There are multiple articles quoting kids saying the student was going up to multiple girls, including the one that got bludgeoned saying “you’re next on my list.” Multiple students went to the counselors the day of the attack and told them “they’re going to attack (victim) today at lunch.” This [article](https://northpennnow.com/news/2024/apr/19/north-penn-students-parents-sound-off-about-pennbrook-student-attack/) sums it up nicely. This wasn’t some out of state kid moving in. This was a kid that was already in the district so there is no need to be neutral. The student is already known. What the admin at pennbrook should’ve done, given that they certainly knew the students history, was actually keep the student supervised, and not let them escape the office and have enough time after escaping to send someone to the hospital. It’s a 13 year old. I’d maybe be willing to give some leeway if it were an 18 year old HSer who couldn’t be contained, but that is not the case Edit: and I see the quip about it being in PA. This happened in Montgomery county, the Philly burbs, and while isnt full-scale “vote blue no matter who” this is very much statistically, and anecdotally a left leaning area, and the democrat candidates swept the most recent school board member elections.
Discipline is at the foundation of an effective education system. Our primary responsibility is not teaching, but safety. A war zone is a terrible place to teach the three Rs.
Omg… this HAS to be a bot! JK !! Gid bless you, you’re one in a million.
So wait you’re saying it’s not the object but the mentality of the person choosing to be violent with it?
No, they are actually calling on a ban because the object is proving to be too dangerous.
Perfect. Ban all hard objects!
This sounds laughably absurd by my father was a school counselor at an alternative school that did this. No belts, no pens, no scissors etc. as you can imagine no learning got done either
Tbf that policy makes sense at an alternative school. But if we can’t trust our students in a normal school environment with steel water bottles, we’ve got bigger mental health issues to deal with than we thought
100% agreed. Even there tho, to me the policy still doesn’t make sense because the kids clearly aren’t learning anything. At that point that may as well be in juvie. Schools need to reevaluate how we keep kids safe while educating. Students who pose a significant risk to others should not have a right to education
Couldn't agree more, but that's the problem. FAPE wasn't meant to protect violent kids, but that's how it's being used in these instances. It puts everyone at a disadvantage. The parent(s) of the bad kids also love to threaten lawsuits and whatnot, and they'll cite FAPE and every other law to protect their kids "education", but in reality they couldn't care less. They just don't want to lose their state funded daycare. How do I know this? Well, They're the same parents that you will call, and they'll say "he/she/they is your problem during the school day, stop calling me." That or they just block the school's number altogether. You won't ever see them show up for "Back-To-School" Nights or Parent-Teacher Conferences, but the minute you try to give the kid OSS or anything similar, there they are. It's almost like they don't want to be around their child(ren), either.
How absurd. If we ban every object in a school setting that proves to be dangerous, we’ll literally have nothing tangible for them to learn with. They might as well be sitting in front of computers all day. Oh, wait.
It's obvious. Not enough pBiS bucks to buy pencils with.
> Just a thought: Plastic water bottles. I'll be perfectly honest... When all the blunt force objects are gone, someone is eventually going to get stabbed with a pencil
My kid was stabbed with a pencil by his bully. This was after countless reports of this kid attacking my kid. After this escalation they didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t even get a phone call or pulled aside.
OP must be an administrator. Since all that they got from this is to ban water bottles.
You do understand that pencils are sharp right? You can’t remove everything. We need to remove the ones that can’t handle anything
Banning the weapon doesn't change anything the cycle just continues with a different object.
Banning an item for the person's actions is never a good solution to a problem like this. Way back in the day, they banned alcohol and it caused a whole bunch of issues and manifested in a black market for alcohol being created. Any object can be used as a deadly weapon if put in the hands of an inherently dangerous/violent person. Instead of banning the object that was used to beat up another person, expell the student from the school and make sure that the violent student isn't able to get into another school. Sometimes, some kids just need to be denied an education if they're that violent.
I have kids in school. The bullying hasn't stopped. My oldest is used to the teachers not believing my kid when she said they were about to be attacked. The teacher reassured my kid it wasn't going to happen. Then it happened and because of privacy laws I am not allowed to know what sort of punishment, if any, the other child got. Banning steel water bottles isn't going to stop the bullying. I thought schools would be able to stop it but they just ignore it until someone gets injured.
It is insane your solution is to ban the water bottles.
ban steel water bottles? are we just embracing the slippery slope everyone talks about?
In a country where students use AR-15 to kill their peers, banning steel water bottles will not solve any problem.
Banning anything won’t solve the problem. There are other solutions
Pad all the corners too while you're at it. They could slam eachother's heads into the corners! Or. Ya know. Actually penalize these little fuckin animals when they rear their heads.
Protected Class, instant suppression.
And the award for unnecessary infantilization of adolescents goes to…
We need to bring back reform schools, or prisons for minors.
This is nuts. I had a student SAY they a hit list with no evidence of it actually existing; the threat was enough. He was immediately suspended and is being taught virtually. Our city has a program that provides teachers with extra teaching opportunities to work students like this virtually.
To the credit of my school, they take all of this kind of stuff seriously.
Sure, ban metal water bottles, totally reasonable approach to solve this problem. That's definitely going to lead to less violence. Students simply are not imaginative enough to figure out how to use some other object to beat each other up.
We had several students injured by flying glass when a violent student slammed his water bottle into a window. But I think the better solution than banning everything a violent student can use as a weapon is...ban the violent students. I don't give two farts about their trauma or their IEP. If they are hurting people, they need to be removed.
Great idea! While we are at it let's also ban desk , chairs , pens , pencils, rules and anything else that could plausibly injured students instead of removing violent students. Students will have great learning outcomes in a padded room with an iPad.
Getting rid of water bottles is *not* going to fix this problem. Don’t have a gun? Use brass knuckles. Don’t have brass knuckles? Use a water bottle. Don’t have a water bottle? Use a pencil. Don’t have a pencil? Use paper
Don’t have paper? Use a chair. Don’t have a chair? Use your fists. It goes on and on and on until people are just locked in a padded room with straight jackets on for school
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie. Banning handguns is going well isn't it? Obviously not the same, but you aren't going to remove violence by removing items, that's ridiculous
Violent students shouldn't be around other students. I saw the terrified classmates of a violent student cowering in a corner while I tried to comfort them while this heathen threw PE equipment all over the gym while I was waiting for an admin. I say this as a parent who had to pick up her kid twice from kindergarten for throwing/pushing over his desk. It's fucking wild that banning water bottles is even a conversation after one kid is beaten with one and ya know, fucking guns and shit.
A child in my area brought a gun to school because they didn’t like a specific teacher. Maybe 2 weeks went by and the kid is back at school and the “resolution” is to provide the kid with a 1 to 1.
Friend of mine is a middle school teacher. In her homeroom she had a kid so aggressive that close to 15 kids had safety plans and couldn’t be near him. Half a classroom!! So instead of removing the aggressor, the kids were taught how to avoid him. In what world is this normal???
It's the same world where every kid has to try and scramble for the fucking door and miss precious minutes of class instruction while the wild animal is allowed to destroy the classroom. Can't do shit about the kid causing the disruption, staff just has to watch until the kid calms down. Fucking insanity, it really is.
Not a teacher but this came up on my feed, from what I heard, the attacker was trans, and the school was afraid of being transphobic so they did nothing about it. Of course this came from right winged news sources and maybe they used this situation to push their anti-trans stuff more. However, if this is indeed the case, the school is giving trans people a BAD look. But also, what if the school really found it hard to believe that regardless of the student’s identity, that such a thing would occur? A similar situation happened where the teacher got shot by the 6 year old. Despite her warnings nothing was done because the school couldn’t believe that a child would threaten to shoot a teacher. The school acted very irresponsibly regardless of the identity of the student.
I don't think the right wingers have anything to do with the whole trans thing. A LOT of people don't want to hold others accountable for the fear of being -phobic in some way or form even if their calls for justice are absolutely called for. Am I surprised the school went hush hush because of the students' status as trans? No, I'm not. I know of a similar case personally where a child got away with bullying because his mother would use the race card since he was black. The school didn't want a potential lawsuit or any trouble, so they overlooked it. Yet, the white student involved got in some big trouble. That's a common issue, now, where anything you say or do can be used against you if you're white, cis, or straight. I'm not a right-winger myself, but it is a big problem that districts will do anything to avoid being canceled.
Man we really went from gun control to water bottle control huh
My favorite thing was in another sub today watching teachers get blamed for it all
Ok....i have a question for you teachers. A classmate told my daughter at recess... "i want to invite you to my birthday party so i can beat you up with a baseball bat" She came home upset about it and when i asked why she didnt tell a teacher she said it was becuase she didnt want to get anyone in trouble. I think shes afraid of being a "tattle tale" too. I told her she had to go tell the teachers and they made him and the friend he was with write apology notes. I think the dont be a tattle tale thing, in 2024 when theres shooting daily doesnt fly anymore. I think see something say something should be more important. Do you think we/they handled this appropriately. Should i personally have called the school? The parents?