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Friday, July 1, 2016

The district okays battery on school employees

I don't know if this is oy vey or sigh but I do that over the years I have talked to several teachers who were assaulted by children and the district did nothing about it, well the reason is apparently that's the district's policy.

From First Coast News:


"I've never, never, in my almost 29 years of being a police officer, seen anything like this, like what's occurring at the Duval County School Board," said Steve Zona, president of Jacksonville's Fraternal Order of Police.
The memo was sent to all school police personnel at the beginning of 2016 addressing battery on a school employee.
The policy says "if the victim does not wish to prosecute, the investigation will be suspended." Even if the victim wants to prosecute it says, "no arrest will be made at the time of the initial investigation."
If a student lays a hand on a teacher something that happens more than you might think, then that student should be arrested right then and there and no ifs, ands or buts about it, that instead of nothing happening should be the district's policy.

This is also from the First Coast piece.

“I can't think of any other reason to write a report like that than to mask the true crime rate in schools,” Zona said. "I don't think I've gone on record this openly talking about stuff, but everything that I'm hearing and I think that you've heard in your research is enough is enough. I mean something needs to be done."

Zona is right on both accounts the only reason you wouldn't arrest someone is if you wanted to skew the numbers, so the superintendent can say, hey look at us arrests are way down, and something needs to be down.

Discipline is hard but important and when the district hamstrings teachers and then does not back them up then we are courting tragedy. 

10 comments:

  1. I believe DTU also received a copy in early 2016. What did they do about it? If anything is a DTU issue, it's this. I hope they follow up on this, since Terrie Brady is "out of town."

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  2. Terri Brady is out to lunch. When has the unions told up for any of the teachers or staff lately? Oh, and did you know her sister just got a promotion?

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  3. I retired early as of this June. I was in CSS and SLA for 14 years. The past 3 - 4 years have been the worst with having students assaulting me. I have written so many reports and nothing ever results in any kind of punitive discipline to the student. Instead it is put back on the teacher for not taking control of their classroom and they always want to enforce positive behavior discipline with 25 to 1 positive actions or comments for every one negative. If you send them to administration they give them toys or edibles to take care of the problem right away, which only makes things worse because you are now teaching them bad behavior is rewarded. All of this has become much worse for the teacher since Vitti took over as superintendent.

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  4. What promotion? Did you notice that the police were afraid to speak up, because of retaliation?

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  5. All educators need to rise up against this. There is no place for complete disregard of the safety of a citizen except in education, and in our past, in slavery.

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  6. To answer the question "When has the union stood up for anybody?" If you have a blog that gets 1000 hits/day, they'll represent you. If you just pay dues of $59/month, not so much.

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  7. A co-worker of mine was pushed hard by a large third grader the week she returned from a serious surgery. He got one day suspension and put in another class to terrorize it. She was encouraged not to press charges. When asked if he wanted to apologize, he said he wouldn't and he would do it again. The system is broken.

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  8. I wish she had pressed charges. Did she fear retaliation?

    Suspensions are down because they stopped suspending kids. Next year, they will announce that arrests are down as if behavior is improving, not because they stopped arresting kids.

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  9. She now wishes she had pressed charges. if nothing else to help the kid, he needs help but family is in denial and he still has no record. So, next time he does something, it is still the first time. She was told it was up to her but could feel the "pressure" to not press charges....again, very broken system. It should not have been up to her. she should have had to press charges. What happened to zero tolerance??

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  10. A student who batters a teacher would batter a student sooner, making them particularly dangerous to everybody. And since it's a felony, there should definitely be zero tolerance and the student should be arrested. Why is DCPS micromanaging the police now, telling them how to do their jobs even when it involves ignoring the law? Hmmm, sounds familiar.

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