'Safety should be non-negotiable': Springfield teachers air out concerns over safety

At a recent staff meeting discussing student behavior and discipline at Grant Middle School, Wendy Turner said she looked around the room and saw teachers who were "tired, defeated, hopeless.'

The morale currently at the near west-side school is, contended the fourth-year English Language Arts teacher, at an all-time low.

"The most unsettling thing I've heard," Turner said, "was a colleague saying they told their family they loved them every morning because they weren't even sure if they would make it through the day unscathed.

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"Safety should be non-negotiable."

Turner was one of four middle and high school teachers who addressed the District 186 board of education meeting last week.

Turner said staff members, her included, have been battered or threatened with violence by students but that consequences for them are "inconsistent and sometimes non-existent."

Thirty-two teachers and staff members were absent from Grant on May 3, some purposefully calling in for safer school environment, though some, said district spokeswoman Rachel Dyas had already had obligations.

Because the district was notified about the teacher-led action, enough substitute teachers were in place and student attendance was normal at 83%, Dyas said.

Springfield Education Association President Aaron Graves said the teachers' union was pressing for additional alternative education options for students and bargaining with the district about improving the culture, including academic offerings, for middle schoolers.

Graves also said Gill and board members haven't lived up to a video they posted at the beginning of the year about drawing "a line in the sand (about student) behavior and discipline."

"We are not being looked after," Graves said during the public comment session last week. "Our trauma is not being taken into account and it is showing. Our adults are being verbally, physically and emotionally assaulted on a daily basis across this district and very little is being done."

Nicole Moody, the district's assistant superintendent of teaching, learning and school culture, said following the board meeting that school safety remained "a number one priority" for students and staff, and over the last three to five years the district has increased safety, particularly at its middle and high schools.

"Do we hear our staff? Yes. We are continuing to respond to those individual concerns case-by-case," Moody said. "This is a daily priority for us, thinking what staff need, what students need, what families need to feel safe in our environments."

'Begging for help'

Turner, speaking to the SJ-R after last week's meeting, said the situation at Grant has deteriorated to the point where teachers are constantly fearful, and some don't want to come back to the school next year.

The same night Turner made her public comments, the board approved the hire of Jordan Joost as principal at Grant. Longtime educator Joby Crum resigned after one year.

Turner said when teachers go to administration to ask for help, "we are told that (administration is) not getting the help they need from the district, so it's a trickle-down effect.

"We're at a point where we're asking, begging for help to get our school back and make it a safe place for ourselves and for our students."

Vocal/instrumental music teacher Brian Daugherty pointed out that there are sixth graders at Grant who need to be escorted to class "because they're not ready to learn.

"The current system is ineffective in meeting the social and emotional needs of our students," Daugherty added.

Melissa Hostetter, a science teacher at Franklin Middle School, said consequences for student-on-student violence and student-on-staff violence were inconsistent and the district needs "alternative and therapeutic placement options.

"We must figure out a way to hold students and parents more accountable," said Hostetter at the meeting. "We must decide if and how we are going to respond in a way that respects the learning of all students and staff in our schools."

'Turning around the Titanic'

School board member Buffy Lael-Wolf acknowledged acting-out behaviors have escalated significantly since students and staff returned to in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic and that middle schools "have probably had the toughest time because of the age range they serve."

The school board-developed video, she said, was to remind students there are "consequences to actions. It was also intended for staff to know that we understand the seriousness and want to support them."

Board member Sarah Blissett said the board meant what it said in the video and that "the safety of our staff is something that weighs heavily on me."

Blissett said she was hoping to work over the summer to ensure there is more consistency between the schools over such things as cell phone and dress code enforcement and referrals and suspensions across the district.

"It's going to take all of us to turn this Titanic around," Lael-Wolf admitted. "But at the end of the day both parents and teachers want (kids) to be successful and that's what we need to work towards."

Graves agreed that engagement needs to happen and that all parties want "what's best for their kids," he told The State Journal-Register. "We all have to find some points of alignment and be honest about where we're at."

But Graves was adamant that the district needs to come up with a solution for alternative placement because both Douglas Prep and Springfield Learning Academy are both full.

"We love kids. We want to help kids," he said. "Some of these things you can't love out of kids. There have to be clear boundaries and consequences and alternatives for kids than the traditional schoolhouse. If that means sometimes kids have a tough road or parents have a tough road with their kids temporarily, then that's what it means.

"You can't be everything to everybody all the time, as much as we try."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; [email protected]; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield Public School teachers air out concerns on safety