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Teacher safety doesn't make the grade in LAUSD
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Teacher safety doesn't make the grade in LAUSD
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TEACHER SAFETY DOESNT MAKE THE GRADE IN LAUSD by Allison Michelle Kornberg ____________________________________________________________ A Thesis Presentation to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (JOURNALISM) May 2008 Copyright 2008 Allison Michelle Kornberg ii Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................... iii Little Help For Victims 4 Administrative Apathy.....................................................................................................6 Substitute Teachers at Greater Risk ...............................................................................11 Accountability For Teacher Safety.................................................................................13 Psychological Causes and Effects ..................................................................................17 Raising Awareness about Violence against Teachers .....................................................22 Sidebar: Act of Violence 25 Bibliography ..26 iii Abstract Teachers in the Los Unified School District (LAUSD) are severely imperiled as violence among students continues to escalate out of control. Student disrespect and disobedience in the classroom has been a pressing issue for decades, but one that continues to be covered up for many reasons, including administrative fears of scaring parents and reticence to follow through on workers compensation claims. With the LAUSDs current teacher payroll debacle, health care concerns and budget deficits, violence against teachers receives little to no attention or concern, feeding an insidious culture where teachers who dedicate so much to inducting our youth into society are allowed to be abused in so many unnerving ways. 1 Charles Smith didnt anticipate that one minute he would be subbing math and science at Gompers Middle School, the next gasping for breath as the contents of a fire extinguisher filled his lungs. But thats exactly what happened. A student in the schools hallway ran inside his classroom, grabbed an unsecured fire extinguisher, and sprayed it right in his face. It was a burning sensation in my throat, said Smith, now 77. It felt like my lungs were on fire. Smith lost everything on that day seven years ago. School administrators fired him from his job of 16 years after the attack, citing out-of-date credentials - - something that had never come up in the past. He also suffered memory loss from the medications he took to try to recuperate, stopped breathing regularly, and experienced routine psychological doldrums related to the attack. I began to have problems that stemmed out of being depressed most of the time, Smith squeezed out through short exhalations, inhaling through the oxygen tube plugged into his nose and attached to the oxygen machine he carries everyday. I can no longer do the things I used to enjoy, like reading, running track. Smith is one of nearly 5,500 employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) who annually report workers compensation injuries on school grounds. Of those, 142 are due to assault and battery on teachers that are predominantly perpetrated by students, according to 2003-04 statistics, the most recent available from the Los Angeles School Police. 2 However, these figures are probably underestimated. Experts say that accurate information about violence against teachers is simply not available because many assaults never get reported to anybody. One reason for this is lack of appropriate data-tracking systems and methods. Safety surveys given in the LAUSD that are required under No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) guidelines, such as the West Ed California Safe and Healthy Kids Survey and School Climate Survey, are only taken at selected school sites. Teacher surveys are optional, and thus not all violent crimes are being reported. Other experts contend the problem is intentionally underreported by teachers and then by the district itself to avoid paying claims. Teachers in need of medical help for assaults by students can often go untreated for months or even years. An administrative fear of schools being labeled Persistently Dangerous under NCLB helps to fuel this inaction. The label would allow parents to transfer students out of such schools, and would probably discourage teachers from teaching there. Surprisingly, despite gang and other campus violence, no schools in the LAUSD, let alone California, have been deemed persistently dangerous. We know its [student violence against teachers ] a very high-profile subject, but most school districts are not going to want to get those stats out there, said Program Director Hilda Quiroz of the National School Safety Center, a data-collecting organization that provides resources and training for the prevention of school violence. The district also maintains no central repository for keeping records of violent acts against teachers, said Larry Hall, an employee of LAUSDs Office of Environmental Health and Safety who handles injury reports daily. Teachers instead file reports through various unconnected channels, from confidential incident forms directed to local 3 superintendents, to police reports for more serious injuries directed to the LAPD, to workers compensation claims directed to Hall himself. Reports get lost, buried, and misplaced. Sometimes, teachers dont report anything at all. 4 Little Help For Victims Help for victims has also been in short supply. With the district and union focusing almost exclusively on payroll, healthcare, test scores and other No Child Left Behind issues, teacher safety repeatedly gets sidelined by administrators. Very little has been done, said Hall. We dont train teachers. Thats a missing part; we really have no mechanism. There are so many competing issues going on. Centralized records are only kept for Acts of Violence, a specific term defined by the district as a physical injury to an employee resulting from an intentional, violent act that occurred during the performance of assigned duties. (See Sidebar No.1) The term is employed only if a teacher can prove intended harm and fills out appropriate district and workers compensation forms. If an Act of Violence can be proven, the teacher may be eligible for more financial compensation for his or her injuries. But that hardly ever happens. Carl Joseph, a lawyer and area representative for the United Teachers of Los Angeles union who deals with victims, said that he hasnt handled many successful Acts of Violence claims in the past few years despite the fact that he hears about student violence against teachers almost every day. Some teachers are loath to report it due to fear of retribution or looking weak; others, simply cant prove the intent requirement, are confused about how to seek action, or dont think their altercations with students are of high enough priority, officials said. The concerns that teachers have right now by and large are their salaries and their health benefits, said Joseph. Then you start talking about other things that are 5 dear to their hearts; classroom sizes, a certain amount of autonomy, and it goes all the way down. Only four successful Act of Violence claims stand out in Josephs mind: two were rapes, another involved a broken bottle used against a teacher by a student, and the final, most infamous one, involved Alfredo Perez, who in 1996 was shot in the head by a stray bullet while teaching in the library at Figueroa Street Elementary School. That year, the Los Angeles Times called the shooting the most serious assault on a teacher in the history of the Los Angeles public school system. Although no intent was directed at Perez, and the alleged perpetrators were supposed gang members, not students, Joseph said that the district bends over backwards to remedy the situation financially in similar incidents, calling them Acts of Violence regardless of whether or not they meet exact standards. That creates major shades of gray in the process for all the in-between, according to Joseph and other LAUSD employees of Risk Management, the department that handles workers compensation and Acts of Violence claims. Acts of Violence perpetrated by members of a community outside the school system, such as a rape on campus, are immediately acknowledged addressed. When it comes to student disobedience and student assaults on teachers, however, violent intent becomes debatable. If a kindergartner hits a teacher, should that be considered an Act of Violence? If a Special Education student scratches a teacher, should that be considered an Act of Violence? Since most Acts of Violence claims are filed by teachers against students, and not against outside members of a community, these gray areas only complicate the system of justice and safety prevention. 6 Administrative Apathy Aside from the financial restitution derived from successful Acts of Violence cases, which almost always involve extreme situations, little work to prevent violence is triggered as a result of violent acts themselves. Teacher victims seeking justice for any kind of violence such a pushing, biting or beating, get ignored by administrators because they have to contend with a barrage of competing issues, including test scores, the number one issue [at the district], said Hall of LAUSDs Environmental Health and Safety division. People live and die by those scores, said Hall, who yet affirms that hardly a day goes by where he doesnt receive a workers compensation report dealing with a teacher assaulted by a student. Safety tends not to be a priority. Education is a heavily regulated business. The average administrator is buried in paperwork and numbers, more than a human can handle. School administrators are aware that violence against authority is a prevalent and pervasive issue. The number one reason for student suspension this year was defiance, according to the research and data-tracking branch of the LAUSD, School Information. Students today also get suspended most often for threatened/attempted/caused injury to persons, and carrying weapons to school, a figure that has increased in recent years. Studies suggest violent offenders are getting younger, too. A 2006 Rand Corporation study found that 74 percent of middle schools and 77 percent of high schools nationwide reported one or more crime incidents to the police in 1996-1997. 7 Teachers need to know that when they come onto these campuses, these arent sanctuaries, said UTLA representative Carl Joseph, who believes that students who commit Acts of Violence against teachers hardly learn from suspension or expulsion, and that more immediate measures need to be taken to detect early signs of deviant behavior. These are violent places. Charles Smith has most definitely seen an escalation in violent students since he began teaching nearly 20 years ago. Now they will assault a teacher with no regard, he said. Even police officers, they dont respect the police officers like they once did. Those behaviors have deteriorated to a point where something will have to drastically be put in place by the district. Madeline Lutz, a former middle school teacher, was used to seeing ice picks, guns and machetes in her students backpacks. When she started teaching at Carnegie Middle School in Los Angeles South Bay 20 years ago her life was threatened daily. Students slipped her bone-chilling letters filled with curse words and dumped white out in her iced teas, physically attacked her when she tried to intercept fights, threw basketballs at her, and jammed doors into her hands, leaving her disabled. The 65-year-old now wears braces on both of her hands, on which she will need surgery, suffers post-traumatic stress, and no longer teaches. She never qualified as a victim of an Act of Violence, according to the district, because she wasnt able to prove student intent to cause harm in the fight situation, and in other cases, because she went back to work before a 60-day off work for injury requirement. 8 I dont see anything positive in the future, she lamented, reflecting on her daily confrontations with violence and her disappointment with the district for not recognizing them. I am terrified at the thought of being destroyed. Officials urge teachers to stay away from fights between students as a simple way to protect themselves against student violence. Hall once dealt with a LAUSD teacher who had been assaulted 20 times for breaking up fights. Its inevitable and a surefire way to get hurt, he said, and it is nearly impossible to prove an Act of Violence, or that the student intended to harm the teacher. Some teachers, however, easily find themselves in the middle of fight situations because its in their nature to want to protect one of their students, or because they think they are taking actions to make the school safer, instead of just sitting back. Leaving the situation to school safety seems like a viable way to keep the teacher out of such a predicament, but in Lutzs case, for instance, no phones were the classroom and officials delayed in their response for up to an hour. Safety officials also suggest that teachers press charges against student perpetrators of direct violence, but it poses a dilemma for some of them. Lutz never considered pressing charges because, I didnt have the time, the energy, or the will to prosecute a student, she said. Whats the point? A teacher prosecuting a student doesnt seem right to me. It wouldnt be comfortable. Its distasteful. School psychologists have also heard of teachers who fear retribution from students who may be involved in gangs. The first thing Id impress upon teachers if they were assaulted is, If you want me to do something, you have to press charges, said Mark Wilkins, chair of the unions 9 Safety and Violence Committee and discipline dean at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers are reluctant. Lawyers for the union believe that the district discourages teachers from filing charges, for whatever reason. Violence against teachers is an issue that rarely gets solved on school grounds. School principals will often perpetuate the problem by transferring trouble students, called opportunity transfers, to other schools without informing their teachers of histories of violence or disobedience. When Lutz was teaching at Carnegie Melon, the district never informed her of juvenile delinquents and pugnacious, violence-prone pupils entering her class, a requirement also stipulated in Californias Education Code. Support from the administrators at her school regarding teacher safety was instead anemic, paving the way for student control over violent situations. You get no respect for being a teacher and kids know that they can get away with it, said Larry Hall of LAUSDs Safety and Environmental Health Office, who has been working for the district for seven years. They act out in whatever way they feel. An October 2007 survey conducted by the California Teachers Association found that administrators failure to notify teachers regarding problem students is the number one most critical school safety issue, yet one that is largely overlooked. That is exactly what happened to Lutz; she had no idea a former juvenile delinquent, once in trouble with the law or school authority for deviant behavior, was in her classroom. That student, an 8 th grader her size, later lashed out against her, jamming a door into her two hands after she moved him to the front of the classroom for disrupting 10 the class. The opportunity transfer system, she conceded, amounts to musical chairs and pass the bad penny - - at the expense of teacher safety. [Principals] horribly underestimate everything that goes on in their school district, said Professor Ron Astor, who teaches Social Work and Education at the University of Southern California, where he specializes in school violence. 11 Substitute Teachers at Greater Risk Substitute teachers often bear the biggest brunt for student disobedience and administrative oversight. They have no control over which schools they are sent to , and in most cases are ill-prepared for the challenges of teaching in a new classroom. Bill Hill, a substitute teacher for over eight years, was punched in the stomach, slapped with a jacket and hit hard in the head with a thick paper ball by students at three different LAUSD schools in the San Fernando Valley. His classes were mostly large and uncontrollable, he said, and it wasnt uncommon for him to have to quiet down the class six or seven times just to take roll. In all three of the above instances, Hill spoke to assistant principals for help, but they all seemed unconcerned, if not highly suspicious of his allegations. I felt like I was on trial instead of this child who struck me, he said of the time a girl in a special education classroom at Maclay Middle School punched him in the stomach after she was told to wait her turn to leave the classroom when it was dismissed. They asked me four or five times, Did you hit her? Hill never had a chance to defend himself at Northridge Middle School, either. There, a student threw a 25 piece wad of balled-up paper at him while he was trying to discipline another student who kept getting up out of his seat. It felt like a bean bag had hit him, he said, and his face stung. Hill admits that he got into close proximity of the student that he was trying to discipline, stamping my feet a couple of times to express my displeasure and leaning my face close to his, but never touching the student. He thought the 8 th grader who 12 threw the object at him may have done so to thwart his discipline. Calling in the assistant principal seemed like the best way to handle the rowdy situation. The assistant principal had each of the 30 students in Hills class write statements recalling what had happened between the two students and the teacher. Four students indicated that Hill took a swing at the child -- one being the student who he attempted to discipline -- which Hill vehemently denies. For that, Hill was fired from substitute teaching at the school with disciplinary action on his record and not allowed back. The situation had turned around on him completely. I had no chance to defend myself whatsoever, all I was able to say was, No, I didnt do it, Hill said. I feel like some of these administrators are so concerned about lawsuits from the students and their parents, that they are willing to sell these teachers down the river; especially substitute teachers. Its the kind of environment where a teacher is really going to get injured some day. I was physically assaulted in the classroom, and I get fired. What kind of message does that send to these children? Weve given these kids an unbelievable amount of power, but they are not held accountable. 13 Accountability For Teacher Safety Making schools safer for teachers is a task that often falls in the laps of the school police. But with so many students to manage, even they lack the prowess to root out violence and incorrigibility. The school police is fairly non-responsive, said Matt Taylor, a teacher at Fremont High School in South Los Angeles who serves on a grievance review committee for teacher victims. In 2006-2007, about 700,000 students were enrolled in the LAUSD. There are more than 400 elementary schools, 75 middle schools and 64 high schools. One to two school police officers are deployed to each high school, and police security is only available to one-third of the middle schools. No officers are deployed permanently to elementary schools. We dont have half of what we need, said Deputy Police Chief Mike Bowman, who also remarked that students aggressive behaviors have gotten really bad since his time as a school officer in the 1980s. That causes you problems, and you have things that go wrong. Bowman said that nationwide, school-based police departments employ one officer per 1,000 students and staff. His department, however, employs only one per 2,300, mostly due to budgetary restraints. Ninety-eight percent of the LAUSD School Polices budget went to salary after the district cut funds by nearly 20 percent. That move put valuable goals like long-term crime suppression and teacher training on the backburner. The police even fell short for ammunition to train new officers. 14 Weve been very neglected because the world is worried about test scores, and rightfully so, but theres been a lack of balance, said Bowman. There is very little in terms of, You as a teacher, how do you stay safe? Parents are often just as neglectful -- or simply unavailable -- when it comes to teaching their kids about safe behavior and respect for their teachers. Dina Ricciardi, an elementary school teacher who used to teach at 24th Street Elementary in South Los Angeles, confronted violent parents and threats all the time. A 6-year-old student in Ricciardis class once rammed himself headlong into her hands while she was trying to make a circle out of students for a class exercise, screaming Im going to sue you! along with other profanities. I wept for four days on that job; it does something to your spirit, it takes something away from you she said. His parents taught him this. Theres so much groundwork thats not laid at home. When Ricciardi called the students mother into her classroom to discuss the incident, she grabbed [Ricciardi] by the bicep and pushed [Ricciardi] against the wall, threatening her about any kind of discipline. The students father, Ricciardi said, was in jail at the time. Similar teacher-parent and teacher-student confrontations occur in other, perceivably safer school areas, not just those seen as tainted by crime, adverse family life, or poverty. This happens in all the schools, good areas and bad, said Mark Wilkins, chair of the unions Safety and Violence Committee. 15 A study published in the October 2007 issue of The American Teacher found that more than one in three teachers report their colleagues left their teaching jobs because student discipline was such a challenge. Eighty-five percent of teachers polled thought that new teachers were particularly unprepared to deal with behavioral problems in their classrooms. Teachers that are leaving are teachers that have issues with violence, no question, said Professor Astor, an expert on school violence and teacher at the University of Southern California. For Charles Smith, who taught for 16 years, nothing could have prepared him for that fateful day when a student shot him in the face with a fire extinguisher. Seven years later, he still cant breathe without the help of an oxygen machine, and agonizes over how to make ends meet. After the incident, the district roundly denied responsibility for Smiths injury. Eventually, and amid actionable contentions, they realized that they would have to take on a workers compensation case. Even so, the district caused Smith hardship. Gompers Middle School decided to dismiss him from his position directly after the injury, citing inadequate credentials. The district also refused to pay him his temporary disability payment for two years after that. Smiths road to recovery has been mired in a revolving door of inadequate workers compensation doctors and scattered disability payments, underscoring fractures in the districts ability to get workers back to work -- and concern to do so. The district, according to Smith, has ushered him to doctors who give him the runaround about his 16 injuries, pump him with medications that adversely affected his memory, and, in some cases, deny seeing him more than once a year. I feel like at my age, they may be waiting for me to die off, Smith said of the district. If I continue going to the same doctors, them saying the same thing year in and year out when is it going to stop? Sometimes, Smith wishes that he could just go back to the profession he loved so much. From whats left of his atrophying memory, he recalls having fun running track and playing all kinds of sports with his students, always keeping them and their positive growth at heart. Teachers like Smith, who come to work hoping to make worthwhile changes in their students, are the ones who get disregarded when it comes to their safety. I dont blame the student for what happened; I blame the district for having these things accessible to the child, Smith said of the fire extinguisher, among other potential dangerous mechanisms. If they had safeguarded things this would have never happened. But they didnt, and it did happen. The answer lies in the district and their inability to cope with and understand behavioral problems that children have, he said. Despite his turbulent past, Smith now has a new raison detre in changing just that. I am going to start a campaign on my own so that this will help some teacher in the future to avoid this kind of thing, he said. I am going to fight this with all that I have to fight to with. Im not letting go. 17 Psychological Causes and Effects For Susan Haywood, a single mother and former middle school teacher who has twice been the victim of student violence, trying to forget seemed easier. She tried to forget the time when a rowdy male student at Emerson Middle School rammed someone into her eight years ago, upset he was being sent to the principals office for disruption, and caused her a slip disc. She tried to forget how he accused her of hitting him, and how she had to press charges. She also tried to forget the time an emotionally disturbed child in her class at Westside Magnet Leadership Middle School was allegedly off of his medication and acted out against her, running up to her in class and shaking her like you kill a baby. And despite the fact that she still suffers lightening headaches, back and neck pain, and depression, she tried to forget that she is still fighting the district in workers compensation court about the nature of her injuries and the appropriate pecuniary remedies. But she lives with reminders everyday. I went from being a really high energy person who accomplished lots everyday to for a couple of years just laying around hoping that Id get better, and I didnt, she said. Ive lost muscle in my arms and legs. If Im walking for 20 minutes, I have to go take an hour nap. It was like becoming an old lady overnight. Her marriage, she said, also quickly crumbled. He would not accommodate me so we broke up, we broke up after these injuries, she said. 18 Looking back on her situation, Haywood acknowledges that certain truculent kids cannot help the way they behave. Some, like the very student who attacked her, experience adverse side effects from medications for disabilities or psychological imbalances. Yet Haywood still cannot understand why school administrators continue to place kids with mental, emotional or anger problems in overcrowded, sometimes gifted classrooms, and offer them little psychological help. There are so many kids that have problems, and every classroom has them, she said. There are always kids in your class who really need help, and most of them dont get it. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, in 2005, at least 2.2 million American children over the age of 4 were treated for serious difficulties with emotion, concentration, behavior or ability to get along with others. Another 2004 study by the University of Virginia found that students considered emotionally disturbed are the ones who perpetrate the highest number and most serious number of threats against teachers. In the LAUSD, out of the nearly 700,000 students enrolled, 70,000 have some form of emotional disturbance, estimates Geri Kenyon, the unions chapter chair for school psychologists and Venice High School psychologist. There are students that are truly, significantly disturbed, [and] that see themselves as being a perpetrator of violent acts, said Kenyon from her Venice High School office. They constitute a real threat because its uncertain what they may or may not do. 19 Each individual school in the district is responsible for mapping out policies and programs to deal with such students, according to Kenyon, but not all schools have the funding, community support, psychological expertise and time necessary. Caseloads from the county Mental Health Department are bursting at the seams. School psychologists feel overwhelmed, and the LAPD will not step in to take action unless some sort of imminent danger can be proven. New district regulations for dealing with students who may have psychological problems also require school psychologists to provide specific details of previous intervention attempts, forcing them to vet the histories of students so extensively that they often get entangled in exhaustive written reports and do not have time to identify other students with significant needs. If counselors fail to prove that previous intervention attempts were taken for a student with deemed psychological problems, the student is not eligible for on-site treatment. That requirement seriously overlooks the fact that some students do not exhibit behavioral signs of psychological disorders linked to violence until well after childhood. Profound depression and homicidal ideation, for instance, are not as likely to manifest in pre-teen years as they are in teenage years. What [the new regulations] enable the district to do is push a lot of the responsibility into the classroom and into the teaching profession, rather than turning toward helping professionals like psychologists, Kenyon said. Teachers try to address [student violence] but they are limited because beyond suspensions and expulsions, we dont have a lot of other resources. Teachers, left to their own devices, find it difficult to tame unruly students who need psychological help. At least one student a day in the district is turned into the Los 20 Angeles School Police for psychiatric problems, according to Deputy Chief Mike Bowman. This student will most likely wind up back in the classroom, perpetuating the cycle. There are a lot of kids on medication and a lot of mental, emotional stuff going on, said Bowman. Those are all issues teachers deal with. That kid was in the classroom first, and for most of the day, the teacher deals with that, all day, every day. When the kid gets out, hes going back to the classroom, all day, every day. Certain experts say that while some students may act out against teachers because they have psychological problems, most do so because they dont respect boundaries, are being raised by ill-prepared parents, or are in some instances raising themselves. Poverty also plays a role, they say, but is not necessarily as destructive as a dysfunctional home life. At inner-city school Fremont High, school psychologist Deadra Bouligny sees many students who live with their mothers, grandparents, or in foster care, lacking the potential benefits of a solid father figure. Lack of structure, priorities, goal setting and self-respect play a part in the way a student behaves in school. Most fathers are not in the home, Bouligny said. Most men are not teaching in the classroom, either. Nationally, the number of male schoolteachers is at a 40-year low, and only one quarter of the 3 million teaching positions are filled by men, according to the National Education Association. Newsweek reported in a September 2007 article that males shy away from the profession because salaries can be low, they feel they lack nurturing skills, and because they are concerned about accusations of pedophilia if they express physical affection for small children. Some wonder if the presence of more male teachers would help stem discipline problems 21 and provide more male students with role models. Female students have already shown that they excel in school at a faster pace than males, who tend to have lower graduation rates and have more trouble with reading and writing. It is not uncommon for males to act out against their female teachers more than their female classmates, either. 22 Raising Awareness about Violence against Teachers With so many discipline issues marring the path to good education, good educators, and a robust, supportive administration, some union members wonder if they will ever find a way out of the escalating violence. Evidence of inconclusive and suppressed data, and data unavailable to the public about how teachers are affected by violence, reaffirm why this issue remains guarded from necessary solutions. There are also always those who simply rest on avoiding the issue, including even union members. You see it across the board, the teachers, the union, everyones lying, said Astor, citing fear of the public catching wind that there are teachers who fear going to school to teacher, as well as fear of questions about the teachers role in inciting violence by students. When Lutz reached out to union board members about her concerns over escalating student violence and hobbled systems of teacher protection, they never returned her calls. Late in 2007, the Capably Disabled Committee of the UTLA decided to do something to bring more awareness to student-induced violence against teachers. The committee, formed about 3 years ago, typically functions as a network and support group for teachers with disabilities seeking reasonable accommodations. But in 2006, co-chair Douglas Stingley started receiving complaints from teachers who had been violently injured by students in elementary, middle and high school. Stingley himself was shot in 23 the stomach with a pellet gun once while subbing at Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles. Being subjected to an act of violence changes you inside, he said. I feel guilty for having to give up on the good kids Its like all of your dedication gets thrown back in your face. Stingley didnt realize the full impact of violence against teachers, he said, until he met Charles Smith, the substitute teacher who was sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher. Then he began to look deeper into the issue, and picked up his mission to find out why so little has been done about it. Its LAUSDs biggest kept secret, Stingley said. If parents find out that students are acting violently against teachers, how are parents going to feel as far as being safe in sending their kids to public school? Its intentionally not reported. Now he is attempting to bring attention to the issue in union contract renegotiations with the district. Each year, the union has the ability to renegotiate previous agreements within the contract through reopeners, or contract issues up for debate. Reopeners are voted on by union members, passed onto the unions negotiating committee for further review, and then settled on by district and union parties. With his reopener proposal about violence against teachers, Stingley hopes to implement a new system that strikes the intention requirement of an Act of Violence, provides annual training to teachers to help them cope with violent students and fight situations, takes measures to properly secure all fire extinguishers in the district, and collects data efficiently for the union and district, among other positive changes for teacher safety. 24 At a union meeting in November of last year, the organization voted unanimously to send the issue through to further review among top UTLA executives. Lutz, the retired Carnegie Melon teacher who struggled as the victim of student violence almost everyday while teaching, was at the meeting. After the union vote, Stingley sat down next to her. Optimistic and reassuring against so-far unfortunate odds, he looked into her weary eyes, patted her on the shoulder, and said: Youll get your justice. 25 Sidebar No. 1: What is an Act of Violence? ! The term Act of Violence was first used in the inaugural contract between the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) union in 1978-79. ! An Act of Violence must occur during the performance of assigned duties. It must also be a physical injury, and the teacher must prove intent to cause harm. Teachers must also file police reports. ! Until 2005, whether or not a claim was considered an Act of Violence was at the discretion of school principals alone. In January 2006, the LAUSD Department of Risk Management took over the primary duty to streamline the process and root out subjective inconsistencies as to what was, or what was not, considered an Act of Violence. ! The majority of Acts of Violence claims the district receives from teachers are a result of injuries caused by students, according to the LAUSDs Risk Management Division. ! Between 20 and 22 Acts of Violence claims are filed each year. ! Teachers may file for Acts of Violence only in conjunction with workers compensation cases. ! Teachers must be out of the classroom for at least 60 days to qualify for an Act of Violence. ! A granted Act of Violence claim extends an injured teachers full pay beyond an initial 60-day temporary disability payment. This is done so without charging their sick leave accounts for as long as they remain temporarily disabled. ! For UTLA, there is no limit on an Act of Violence payment extension. Teachers can receive their full salaries for as long as they are receiving temporary total disability. This precludes teachers from having to drop down to payments of two- thirds their salary through workers compensation. ! Acts of Violence also apply to substitute teachers. 26 Bibliography A Call to Order. American Teacher. Oct 2007: 11-16. Astor, Ron. Personal interview. 11 Sept. 2007. Bouligny, Deadra. Personal interview. 13 Nov. 2007. Bowman, Mike. Personal interview. 23 Oct. 2007. California Department of Education. West Ed California Healthy Kids Survey. San Francisco, 2007.<http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/pj/245>. Cass, Linda. Personal interview. 24 Oct. 2007. Frame, Jan Coddington. Personal interview. 12 Oct. 2007. Goldstein, David. Personal interview. 6 Sept. 2007. Goldstein, Irwin. Personal interview. 24 Oct. 2007. Hall, Larry. Personal interview. 27 Nov. 2007. Haywood, Susan. Personal interview. 29 Sept. 2007. Healy, Melissa. Are we too quick to medicate children? 5 Nov. 2007 http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he- psychkids5nov05,0,1469820,full.story?coll=la-home-middleright Hill, Bill. Personal interview. 14 Oct. 2007. Joseph, Carl. Personal interview. 10 Oct. 2007. Kenyon, Geri. Personal interview. 5 Nov. 2007. Livingston, Mike. Personal interview. 16 Oct. 2007. Lutz, Madeline. Personal interview. 23 Aug. 2007. National School Safety and Security Services. Ohio, 1996-2008 <http://www.schoolsecurity.org>. Papas, Stephanie. Personal interview. 15 Oct. 2007. 27 Posnick-Goodwin, Sherry. School Safety: Students cant learn if they dont feel safe. California Teachers Association on the Web. Volume 12, Issue 2. Oct. 2007. <http://www.cta.org/media/publications/educator/current/1007_feat_01.htm> Quiroz, Hilda. Personal interview. 24 Aug. 2007. Scelfo, Julie. Come Back, Mr. Chips. Newsweek 17 Sept. 2007: 44. Shen, Christine. Personal interview. 5 Oct. 2007. Smith, Charles. Personal interview. 11 Oct. 2007. Stingley, Douglas. Personal interview. 7 Sept. 2007. Stingley, Douglas. Personal interview. 15 Sept. 2007. United States Department of Education. Washington, 2007. Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2007. <http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/crimeindicators2007>. Walker, Tim. Assessing the Threat: Are we doing enough to reduce the risk of violence against educators? NEA Today. Feb. 2008: 26-30. Wallis, Claudia. Is Middle School Bad For Kids? Time 5 Aug. 2005: 48-51.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Teachers in the Los Unified School District (LAUSD) are severely imperiled as violence among students continues to escalate out of control. Student disrespect and disobedience in the classroom has been a pressing issue for decades, but one that continues to be covered up for many reasons, including administrative fears of scaring parents and reticence to follow through on workers' compensation claims. With the LAUSD' s current teacher payroll debacle, health care concerns and budget deficits, violence against teachers receives little to no attention or concern, feeding an insidious culture where teachers who dedicate so much to inducting our youth into society are allowed to be abused in so many unnerving ways.
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
Conceptually similar
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Substitute teachers become permanent fixture in Los Angeles schools
Asset Metadata
Creator
Kornberg, Allison Michelle
(author)
Core Title
Teacher safety doesn't make the grade in LAUSD
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Journalism (Print Journalism)
Publication Date
04/22/2008
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
LAUSD,OAI-PMH Harvest,Teachers,Violence
Place Name
Los Angeles County
(city or populated place)
Language
English
Advisor
Celis, William, III (
committee chair
), Astor, Ron Avi (
committee member
), Castaneda, Laura (
committee member
)
Creator Email
allison_kornberg@yahoo.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1176
Unique identifier
UC1280447
Identifier
etd-Kornberg-20080422 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-59969 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1176 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-Kornberg-20080422.pdf
Dmrecord
59969
Document Type
Thesis
Rights
Kornberg, Allison Michelle
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Repository Name
Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
LAUSD