A huge brawl at Philadelphia’s Cheltenham High School last week was pretty easy to predict … if school and district officials had listened to the teachers.
Last Wednesday, seven teachers and three security personnel were injured in a fracas at the Montgomery County school, one of whom had to go to the hospital due to a concussion. A community meeting regarding the incident will be held tomorrow evening.
According to Philly.com, faculty have been warning about out-of-control students for some time, but few have heeded the alarm.
“Students jostle each other, scream aggressively, and always seem to be on the verge of a fight,” one faculty member wrote on a teachers’ union survey. “If teachers try to discipline them for this behavior, some students will verbally assault teachers, saying things like, ‘What are you going to do about it? You can’t do anything.’”
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News acquired a copy of the survey complete with teacher comments (names redacted). Here’s a sample regarding safety within the building:
— I avoid walking in the corridors between classes whenever possible. Students are often sprinting or chasing each other, which could lead to a dangerous collision.
— I feel safe, but I try to be very alert to my surroundings.
— I feel safe but the hall ways are not, students use profanity all the time and can’t understand why they are being confronted. My size insures my safety.
— Number of students in the halls at any given time, inappropriate (aggressive) actions, blatant disrespect for adults and peers.
— Groups of mostly young men loitering in the hallways, using bad language, creating an intimidating atmosphere…almost daring authority to ask them to move to class.
Alarmingly, the comments regarding how administration deals with the above demonstrate why the school has the issues it does:
— Sometimes progressive discipline is followed, but at other times the policies are bent to fit the situation or blatantly ignored.
— Discipline is very slow and often doesn’t match the student’s action.
— I had a student I wrote up TWICE for racist comments and remarks. As far as I know, besides a phone conference, no disciplinary action was taken.
— The handbook is not worth the paper it is printed on. We have completely abandoned any sense of discipline. We make it up as we go along. It is a complete joke. I am never going to write kids up because I know that the punishment as outlined in the handbook is going to be completely ignored.
It’s quite telling that those surveyed unanimously favor establishing an “alternative school” for chronically misbehaving students.
It’s even more telling that Superintendent Wagner Marseille reportedly was more upset by the survey itself, rather than the issues it addressed.
Even state teachers’ union rep. Paul Gottlieb, while certainly vouching for his constituents, was spouting the politically correct edu-jargon by noting that the union is “very cognizant of the school-to-prison pipeline.”
The riot, too, has “divided the community,” as some are claiming the “complaints overstate the extent of the problem and are tarnishing the image of Cheltenham, its schools, and their children.”
“Overstated”? Highly unlikely. Teachers aren’t inclined to make such remarks on a survey if they weren’t true. If the community — and the administration — want to play ostrich, then they shouldn’t feign surprise when there’s an exodus of faculty and students alike as they seek out a reasonable atmosphere in which to teach … and learn.
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