Criminalizing Child Behavior at School

Update: messaging from the Seattle Education Association via Facebook.  The teacher comments bring insight to the discussion.

end of update

An audiotape and police report has surfaced about an incident that occurred at Van Asselt Elementary School earlier this year.   Here's the story as the Seattle Times reported it.

Basically, a teacher was threatened with bodily harm by a 5th grade student who is less than 5 feet tall - only threatened but it appears he leaned into her using foul language -  after she denied his request to leave the classroom.  There was no weapon involved. It ended up with her calling the police after he was sent to the office. 

Before anything else I want to make clear - the teacher should not have called the police.  I'll say that again - she should not have called the police.  That the student was African-American (as is established in the police report) makes it much worse because of the disproportionality that we know exists for black children.  The teacher was a white woman.


I note that this story has gone national, with the story appearing in Education Week.  I also see that the Seattle Times - which has no stated policy on when they allow comments and when they don't - has no comment section for this story.

I also want to make clear that we are going to have a civil conversation.  Since this situation is so deeply upsetting, I am going to turn on comment moderation to keep things civil.

There are calls for this teacher to be fired.  That might seem an easy call but she is part of a union.

But the Number One action that should happen - and that means before school starts - is that every single person who works in the district should take racial equity and bias training.  Those who work directly with children should have training in deescalation techniques.

Why, in 2019, this isn't the district's policy, I don't know.  
We have a superintendent who had her Strategic Plan written to directly address issue of race and outcomes, specifically for African-American males, and yet, has not taken steps to bring that kind of understanding and practice about race and bias to the entire SPS staff.

There are Board members who continually bring up issues of racial justice - where is their initiative for this training to take place?

At the next Board meeting, there should be a discussion about this, when it IS going to happen and how to rearrange the budget to support it.  It's a lot more important than hiring a consultant to think up a new graphic to represent the district.

The Times' story says the district has hired staff to train for restorative justice.  Great but where's the overall plan for ALL staff?  I find it quite telling that the Board has taken two days of racial bias training - at their retreats - and yet the Superintendent doesn't require it for her own staff. 

The Board DOES have the power to direct the Superintendent to do this. 

We need to hear less talk, more action. 

It's that important.

As well, what else is coming up?  Teacher contract negotiations.  If the union wants to protect their members, this training needs to happen.  And that means writing it into the contract.  How can the district deny teachers the training that will help lessen disproportionality in discipline AND protect teachers?

I have heard numerous stories over the years about teachers who don't feel they have enough tools to counteract this kind of behavior.  I have received many emails from teachers and other staff about the fear they feel from some students (especially if they have already been physically attacked) and that their administration doesn't help them.

You can't expect teachers and staff to figure this out by themselves or you have the EXACT situation that just played out. 

Also, sometimes context adds explanation for behavior.  Doesn't make that behavior right but it you are truly trying to understand a situation, rather than react to it, it's helpful to ask a lot of questions.

Here's the audio and police report.  The police report states "no bias" but I don't know what that notation is based on.  It does appear from the police report that there may be another piece of evidence; I'll see if I can get ahold of it.

What we know:

- This happened in early May.
- Van Asselt is 40% black, 35.5% Asian, 11% Hispanic, 8% Bi-racial, and 3.5% white.
- The story got out probably because someone at the school told someone else who then recently got the police report which included the audio of the call made to police by the teacher.
- From the Times: Alma Alonzo and Megan Isakson, teachers at Van Asselt, serve on the school’s racial-equity team, and say the incident provided an avenue for discussion. Except for a friendly detective who comes in regularly to build relationships with students and help with chess club, the school doesn’t have regular contact with law enforcement.

Sequence of events (via the police report and the Times' story)

At 9:10 am, the child came into the classroom visibly agitated.  At 9:15, he tells the teacher he has to go.  (Tells is the word in the police report which would indicate to me that he didn't ask.) The teacher says no, he can't leave.  He said he would leave anyway and she again told him no.  He then verbally threatens to beat her up, saying he didn't care if she was a woman. 

(Times) When the teacher wouldn’t allow the student to leave her classroom, the student allegedly told his teacher that he was going to “beat the [expletive] out of her,” and that he didn’t care that she was a woman, according to a police report from the incident.

The student puffed his chest and walked toward her, the teacher said, but never raised his fists. She told the dispatcher the student was under control, but she said she still didn’t feel safe at the school.

The teacher says she believed he would follow-thru.  She reported the incident and the child was removed from the class and taken to the office.

Somewhere around 11:30 am, a call was made to police.  ( That's about two hours time; what was happening in those two hours is unknown.)

The police arrived at around noon to find the principal on the phone with the child's mother.  The police then talked to the mother on the phone and she asked them to do two things.  1) give her child a ride home and 2) not talk to her child without her being present.  The police tell her they have to check with their supervisor about the ride and they would not speak to her child without her.  (They later say they could not give him a ride home).

They stated that when they talked to the teacher she was "visibly upset" and that her voice "cracked" when speaking.  She said she didn't want to press charges because of possible "retaliation" from her administration.

According to the police report, the police were there nearly two and a half hours.

What don't we know

- Did the teacher say anything to the student when he first came to class and she knew he was upset?
 She might have said,  "Okay leave if you must but please go talk this over with the counselor.  I can see you are upset and that might help."  Maybe she said this but it's not in the police report.

- The district says the principal talked to the teacher about alternatives to calling the police. Did the principal tell the teacher she felt the teacher should not call police?

- Did the teacher call the police because she didn't believe that the principal would be firm in disciplining the child? 

- Did the teacher feel that a uniformed cop might give the student a "scared straight" kind of experience just by having the cop there, telling the boy to behave? I'm not sure I understand what outcome she wanted.

- I believe Van Asselt has a school counselor; what was that person's role in this situation?

What has the district said (from the Times' story):

In a statement, Seattle Public Schools spokesman Tim Robinson acknowledged that racial bias in discipline is an issue in schools and called it an “unfortunate” incident. He said the district’s discipline policy “outlines our collective commitment” to address disproportionality.

Robinson said the principal of the school recommended alternatives to law enforcement, but the teacher decided to call the police anyway — an action protected by her union’s contract. The district has a policy governing racially disproportionate discipline, but no official protocol for when schools should involve the police.

The district has no policy on when police should be called.  Manuela Slye, SCPTSA president, is calling for this.  Here is the SCPTSA's statement.

In an email, district spokesman Robinson said that the school “resolved” the issue with the family in early May. Robinson did not specify what that resolution entailed, though he did say it didn’t involve money. The district isn’t sure whether student is still enrolled because the district’s data-management system is being updated.

After a series of Seattle Times articles explored this gap in 2015, the School Board adopted a policy banning out-of-school suspensions for elementary-school students for disruptive behavior or rule-breaking. The district also has hired staff focused on restorative justice work.

 What the Board has said:

School Board President Leslie Harris said Wednesday that the district is conducting an investigation into the incident.  

School Board President Harris said she thinks training would serve the district better than a blanket policy on when to call police.

What the Principal, Huyen Lam, has said:

This Monday, Huyen Lam, the school’s principal, sent a letter to school staff and families saying she was “aware that the incident was being held up as an example of racial bias in the community.” After the event, she wrote, the staff discussed the implications of involving police and the school’s responsibility to disrupt racist systems.

What Should Have Happened

Sean Goode, director of Choose 180, a diversion program that works with teens who have committed misdemeanors and kids at risk of discipline in schools, said educators should view disruptive student behavior through the lens of public health, diagnosing the underlying problem instead of treating the symptoms.

“If a young person threatens a teacher, we need to get to the root cause — what happened leading up to that moment? What happened that morning? Do you know what they had to overcome to just come to that space?” Goode said. “Law enforcement’s role is not to heal or be restorative — it’s to suppress and remove a threat … Come on now.”

This incident would be a good case story to use in training on deescalation.  The teacher was wrong to make the call to police but I would like to hear the backstory about why she believed the student was such a threat.  Had he threatened her before?  Had he hit her before?  Had he hit threatened or hit other kids or teachers/staff?

Absent any evidence of prior problems, then it was a huge overreaction.  If there were prior issues, maybe this would explain her fear.