Seattle Schools Community Forum: Criminalizing Child Behavior at School

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Criminalizing Child Behavior at School

Criminalizing Child Behavior at School

An audiotape and police report has surfaced about an incident that occurred at Van Asselt Elementary School earlier this year.   Here's the story as the Seattle Times reported it.

Basically, a teacher was threatened with bodily harm by a 5th grade student who is less than 5 feet tall - only threatened but it appears he leaned into her using foul language -  after she denied his request to leave the classroom.  There was no weapon involved. It ended up with her calling the police after he was sent to the office.

Before anything else I want to make clear - the teacher should not have called the police.  I'll say that again - she should not have called the police.  That the student was African-American (as is established in the police report) makes it much worse because of the disproportionality that we know exists for black children.  The teacher was a white woman.

I note that this story has gone national, with the story appearing in Education Week.  I also see that the Seattle Times - which has no stated policy on when they allow comments and when they don't - has no comment section for this story.

I also want to make clear that we are going to have a civil conversation.  Since this situation is so deeply upsetting, I am going to turn on comment moderation to keep things civil.

There are calls for this teacher to be fired.  That might seem an easy call but she is part of a union.

But the Number One action that should happen - and that means before school starts - is that every single person who works in the CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Criminalizing Child Behavior at School