Student attacks are taking toll on city teachers Physical assault jumps 17 percent The Chicago Tribune March 21, 2004 By Ana Beatriz Cholo Pena-Davis is barely 5 feet tall, but the veteran English teacher doesn't scare easily.One day, though, a girl arrived 15 minutes late to class--and full of attitude. When the girl took out a snack and began to talk loudly to a friend, Pena-Davis asked the student to leave the class and try again the next day.
One day, though, a girl arrived 15 minutes late to class--and full of attitude. When the girl took out a snack and began to talk loudly to a friend, Pena-Davis asked the student to leave the class and try again the next day.
The girl hurled a full soda can at her head.
Pena-Davis was able to duck the can. But as the teacher went to close the classroom door, the girl dragged her into the hall and began to beat her--punching and scratching, pulling off her glasses and tugging viciously at her hair. The attack was enough to terrify Pena-Davis, 55, who walked out of Austin High School that day and never went back.
S uch assaults are occurring with startling frequency in Chicago's public schools, according to statistics provided by the district. Many teachers say that they sometimes feel like their students are holding them under siege and that principals do little to protect them.
Reports of verbal and physical assaults against teachers by students have risen during the last four years, the data show. From Sept. 1, 2003, through the end of February, 970 such incidents were reported in elementary and high schools--an increase of 25 percent from the 777 reported during the same period a year earlier.
These reports include battery, threats of violence, assault, vandalism, theft and sex crimes. In cases of physical assault only, the increase is about 17 percent over the previous year.
School officials say the numbers show that more teachers are reporting offenses, not that there are more incidents.
"We do have higher numbers than last year, no doubt about it," said Andres Durbak, the head of safety and security for the district for the last two years. "We are encouraging teachers to report [incidents] more. We don't want teachers to hide things."
Reports questioned
But many teachers and officials from the Chicago Teachers Union say the number of assaults is probably much higher than what is reported. They say many incidents go unreported because teachers fear retaliation or loss of their job. Some say they feel pressured by school administrators to just let the incident go. "Normally, these things are swept under the rug, kept in-house," said Karl Sundstrom, a colleague of a teacher who was attacked at Westinghouse High School. "It's one of those dirty little secrets. Maybe it would bring disrepute upon the school or the school system at large. It's just bad publicity."
This week, the Chicago Teachers Union expects to announce plans to strengthen its fledgling safety and security department. It hopes to model the program after a successful one involving New York City schools that supports teachers physically and mentally after they have been attacked.
The union was spurred to action last year after a study of teacher attrition in Chicago showed that threats of violence and gang-related violence are major reasons for teacher flight.
At Westinghouse, Sundstrom and his fellow teachers were shaken up when a student attacked Joyce Bart on March 5.
The bruises still are visible on Bart's arms and chest. Her right eye is still black and blue, and the six stitches on her forehead are slowly healing.
Bart says she suffers from sleeplessness, vomiting, nagging headaches and an extreme fear of venturing outside and being attacked again. Her doctor has recommended she seek counseling, and the 35-year veteran of Chicago's city schools is beginning to consider it.
Four months shy of celebrating her retirement, Bart says she was assaulted by a stocky football player wearing a ski mask in the school lunchroom.
As dean of attendance, Bart often had problems with the student. He would not wear his ID card. He would come to school late and leave early, she said.
Bart said she recognized him during the attack by his clothes and his eyes.
The lights had just come back on in the school after a two-hour blackout, and she thinks he took advantage of the chaotic situation.
"He was running at me," she said. "I didn't think he was going to punch me. So many kids will try to scare you, but he punched me many times and he kicked me and then he ran out."
The student, 17, has been arrested and charged with aggravated battery.
Sundstrom says the reason Bart was attacked was because she took her job seriously.
"She was trying to hold these kids to a standard," he said. "The student had difficulty with the rules. He waited until he had a clear opportunity to pay her back."
Youths often return to school
Many assault cases are handled at the district level, with suspensions and expulsions handed out to students only to have the cycle begin again, say frustrated administrators. Even if students are prosecuted and spend some time behind bars, they often return to school.
"It's just not safe," said Bart, 68. "It's not a good situation. [Students] are getting away with it. They are getting a slap on the wrist and going back to the schools."
Miguel Rodriguez, associate general counsel for the school district's law department, says schools are safer now than they were before 1995, when Mayor Richard Daley took control of the district.
"I think we are more vigilant," he said.
According to Durbak, the district has added more than 100 security guards to the most troubled schools during this fiscal year, and some of those schools are getting closed-circuit TV systems.
Two police officers are stationed in each of the district's approximately 90 high schools, Durbak said, and officials are looking into whether some schools might need more officers.
Many veteran teachers say the behavior of many students has reached a new low and that it illustrates a cultural meltdown in which parents even fear their own children. The teachers say they endure verbal assaults daily.
"We've all been assaulted at one time or another," says Frank Candioto, the principal of Foreman High School and an employee of the system for 35 years. "I just consider it part of the cost of doing business here."
During his first week as Foreman principal, a female student shouted obscenities at him after he told her not to sit on top of a lunch table, he said.
When Candioto was the assistant principal at Westinghouse High School, he said a student punched him in the eye without provocation during a basketball game. His glasses broke and he had a black eye, but he returned to school the next day.
"I wasn't going to let word get out that I was a wimp," the principal said.
Violence down in U.S.
Bill Modzeleski, director of the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program of the U.S. Department of Education, said violence in schools is decreasing nationally. But "if you peel the layers off the onion, there are some districts with a bigger problem," he added.
The fact that Chicago has been working to improve safety in the schools and is encouraging individuals to report all kinds of assaults may result in numbers they were not getting in years past, Modzeleski said.
"It's a complex situation," he said.
Mari Nemergut, 27, used to be a teacher but now expects to graduate from law school in a few months. She was in her first year at Smyth Elementary four years ago when one of her 1st graders charged her. He was angry about having to do his reading workbook pages.
Another boy stepped in to defend his teacher, and the two boys began to fight. When Nemergut stepped in to break it up, the first boy used the other one's head as a weapon and rammed it into her jaw.
She spent the next four months in pain, unable to speak or open her mouth. She had physical-therapy sessions four times a week.
The 1st grader was suspended for one day, Nemergut said. She wanted to see him get counseling, but that did not happen. The principal at the school, now gone, was less than supportive, she said.
"It seemed like the situation was blamed more on me than on the child, which I think is quite common in Chicago," Nemergut said. "They chalked it up to classroom discipline, not being in control of the classroom."
Nemergut came back for another year to teach at the same school.
"I felt like if I just left, I would be like a quitter," she said. "I'm wasn't going to just crawl out of the school."
Pena-Davis, who left Austin High School after being attacked, counts herself as lucky. As she jokes with and teases her new students at Clemente High School, she is totally at ease. Most of them, she says, treat her with respect.
On the day she was attacked, Pena-Davis was teaching an English literature class as a favor to the principal--the previous teacher had left in the middle of class one day.
She didn't even know the student who beat her; the girl had just come back from a 10-day suspension.
After the assault, Pena-Davis was gathering her things to go home when she was paged to the office.
The school disciplinarian told her to be careful because the girl who had beaten her up had a boyfriend who already was looking to avenge his girlfriend's arrest, Pena-Davis said. When she asked to fill out an assault report, she was told it was not necessary, she said.
When she called to follow up on the police report that was filed, the police told her to give up, she said. Nobody was going to pursue the case.
"So I just left it," she said.
For a while, Pena-Davis was considered AWOL from the district because she refused to return to Austin. "I wouldn't go back," she said. "I would [rather] go wait tables."
She says she did not get paid for months and suffered anxiety attacks that required her to seek therapy. A year later, the grandmother of two is teaching day and night classes at Clemente.
"When I say to you that I am happy to be here, I am very sincere," she says. "I love it. I love it where I am. I love my students and I don't mind getting up in the morning to go to work."
Still, Pena-Davis is looking forward to an early retirement next year and perhaps a second career writing for film. She thinks she has plenty of fodder for stories.
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Student-teacher incidents on the rise
The number of reported incidents in which a student assaulted, disobeyed or threatened a teacher has been increasing at Chicago schools.
From the beginning of the school year through the end of February 2000-01: 514 2001-02: 680 2002-03: 777 2003-04: 970 Source: Chicago Public Schools Chicago Tribune
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