School violence bill opposed
Critics warn Teacher Protection Act will have unintended results
A bill aimed at addressing violent behavior in schools drew opposition Thursday from educators and disability-rights advocates who said it would violate student privacy, disproportionately affect poor and disabled students, and widen the school-to-prison pipeline by sending more students into the criminal justice system.
“We’re substituting punishment for problem-solving,” Mike Julka, an attorney for the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance, told members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee during a hearing on the so-called Teacher Protection Act.
“In the end, parents are going to perceive teachers as adverse to their students,” he said. “And all of this has the real potential to be disruptive to school climate and culture, student success, parental relationships and leadership of the schools.”
The bill’s author, Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt (R-Fond du Lac), defended the measure, saying he was open to amendments but that something has to be done about the rise in assaults and threats against teachers. He blamed what he described as the “social justice agenda” in some schools, saying it does not hold students accountable for their negative behavior.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that negative behavior without consequences promotes more negative behavior,” Thiesfeldt said. “What truly grows the school to prison pipeline is the current
trend toward minimizing serious negative behavior and the coddling of children with no serious consequences,”
Thiesfeldt’s wide-ranging bill would, among other things:
❚ Require schools to notify police about any physical assault or violent incident by a student at school if requested by a witness or adult victim; and require police to notify a school when a student has been taken into custody for a violent felony or misdemeanor.
❚ Allow teachers to review the behavioral records of students in their classes.
❚ Give teachers the right to remove students from classrooms under certain circumstances for up to two days at a time; allow them to use reasonable and necessary force” in certain cases; and give them civil immunity under state and federal law for certain acts.
❚ Allow teachers to seek the suspension of a student through the school board if the district administrator denies the request.
❚ Require districts to provide leave and other assistance to teachers assaulted on the job, and allow those teachers to break their contracts without penalty.
Assaults and threats against school teachers — public and private — have been on the rise nationally since 2003’04 after declining for a decade, according to a report issued last year by the U.S. Department of Education. In 2011’12, the latest data available, it said Wisconsin had the highest percentage of teachers reporting they’d been attacked or threatened over the previous 12 months, at 25%, up from 5.2% in 2003-’04.
Thiesfeldt said school districts exacerbated the problem by curtailing suspensions and expulsions in response to a 2014 letter from the U.S. Department of Education, which suggested they could lose federal funding if their disciplinary policies were found to have disparate impacts on students according to race.
Witnesses who testified for and against the bill agreed that teacher safety must be a priority, but they disagreed on whether Thiesfeldt’s is the right approach, and whether it would have unintended consequences.
Critics raised concerns about teacher access to students’ behavioral records and police contacts outside of school, saying they could violate student privacy and contribute to teacher biases against students.
Keeping children outside of the classroom hinders their education, they argued. And students with disabilities and those from high-poverty schools who have experienced significant trauma — who are already expelled and referred to police at higher rates — would be disproportionately affected.
“The definition of physical assault in the bill is very minimal physical contact. So a student who is dysregulated who hits their teacher, kicks their teacher could have to be reported to police,” said Sally Flaschberger of Disability Rights Wisconsin.
Wisconsin law, she said, already allows teachers and schools to report violent incidents to police, and that it does not serve as a deterrent. In the 2014-15 school year alone, she said, the Kenosha Unified School District called police 1,900 times and had 399 arrests by school resource officers.
“So, police contact with children in schools is alive and well,” she said.
Thiesfeldt said he did not believe the bill would negatively affect students with disabilities. He said he drafted the bill in response to complaints from teachers but that he did not expect them to testify because they feared retaliation by their administrators.
Supporters at the hearing included conservative radio personality Dan O’Donnell, who did a 2016 report on violence in Milwaukee Public Schools; and David Olien, senior vice president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin System, who criticized schools and politicians on both sides of the aisle for not taking the issue more seriously.
The problem, he said, is the rise in gang violence, not outbursts by students with disabilities. Teachers, Olien said, “deserve more protection than they are afforded.”
Committee Member Chris Taylor (DMadison), who grilled Thiesfeldt throughout the hearing, accused him of “missing the boat,” saying what schools need is more funding for special education teachers and services,
“You can’t expect schools to meet the individual needs of kids with autism and cognitive disabilities when the budget (for those services) has been flatlined for a decade,” Taylor said.
“This bill doesn’t help students, and it doesn’t help schools and it doesn’t help teachers. Nobody is asking for this bill,” she said.