Madison school officials on Tuesday said they ‘re strengthening security at Toki Middle School to calm concerns from staff members and parents that the building is becoming too chaotic.
Beginning today, Toki will get a second security guard and also will get a dean of students to assist with discipline problems. The guard is being transferred from Memorial High School, while the dean of students is an administrative intern who has served at La Follette High School.
“I think very shortly Toki will get back on its feet, ” said Pam Nash, the Madison School District ‘s assistant superintendent overseeing middle and high schools.
The moves come a week after about 100 parents, school staff members and top district officials attended an emotional, three-hour Parent Teacher Organization meeting at which speakers expressed fears about safety and discipline at the West Side school.
via Madison Parents’ School Safety Site.
Channel3000:
Police were called to Toki 107 times last school year for incidents that included 17 disturbances, 11 batteries, five weapons offenses and one arson, WISC-TV reported.
So far this year, police have been called to 26 incidents. The district security chief said the school is safe, though, and he warned the numbers can be misleading.
There was no way to compare those numbers to police calls at other Madison middle schools because the district doesn’t keep that data itself. But the district security chief said they are working on that.
Toki PTO President Betsy Reck said “it’s a start,” but she said she believe there needs to be a clearly defined “behavior plan” posted immediately that shows appropriate behaviors and the consequences if they are not followed.
Reck said she wants consistent consequences applied to negative behavior.
I’m sorry to see that the situation at Toki has come to needing more police and a discipline czar. I hope that in the future the district is more proactive in its approach. I also would be interested in hearing more about what was all brought to light at the PTO meeting. We definitely need more open reporting of what is happening in our schools in the WSJ and Isthmus.
Major incidents, yes. But reporting every tussle only leads to panic. These are kids, after all. It’s very easy to exacerbate the problem- just imagine all the attention the rulebreakers would get, which would then spur them on to “make the news” again. I’m glad Toki got more security and a Dean of Students. Having had kids at Blackhawk/Gompers during the trying years before Alan Harris and Mary Kelly, I know how ugly an out of control building can get- for both the parents/kids and the community….but Toki will bounce back, kids want discipline and pride.
The school has been devolving for some time now. Parents I have spoken to, say that the school administration has purposefully been failing to track incidents, track how they were handled, etc.
Kids who had been victimized stopped telling teachers and reporting incidents since “they never do anything about it.”
Kids were going to school in fear and resignation.
Both Arlene’s comments and David’s echoing of “kids will be kids”, and the “school will bounce back” is wrong, unless your only concern is with the school, as though it were some living and breathing entity with feelings. It is not — its just a building.
The questions to ask is: How much damage has been done to the kids who have been victims of other kids’ misbehaviors, how did it effect these kids’ learning, how did it affect the respect the kids have for adults in the school system.
Toki “will bounce back” — but will the kids? Of course, not! The teachers and administration have proved themselves incompetent, bureaucratic, blatantly dishonest.
Kids will always remember that their parents were unable to protect them; they will always remember that the adults in the school didn’t protect them and didn’t care. Seeing their parents and other adults incompetent to deal with just misbehaving kids will have a permanent affect on the kids. They’ve well learned that adults can’t be trusted, and can’t be turned to.
Too many parents are going to forget this, because they have been educated to have a large bag of excuses which they are willing to trot out at the right occasion.
More reporting of the incidents in WSJ, and Isthmus is likely the answer. Not to highlight kids misbehavior but to emphasize adult incompetence, and to force the irresponsible adults to change their behavior — which is where the real problems reside.
The dean and security guard sound needed, but what I think is most needed for long term and overall help are for MMSD to form extensive community partnerships that will help the troubled students’ families. I think this is a larger problem that the city needs to participate in addressing, not the sole responsibility of the school’s.
When I say kids will be kids, Larry, I mean that a lot of minimal stuff happens that ought not be reported. Middle school is a tough time, and you can’t “save” every kid from making dumb mistakes. They have to learn to navigate the social/behavioral system. I don’t think there is a school district out there that does anything more than react to issues like Toki (and a host of other middle schools before them) have faced. Competent leadership is a must, and strong penalties are a must. But you can’t stop kids bringing a flask or a joint to school. What you can do is make sure they know the consequences, and mete those consequences out equitably. And frankly, I don’t think it serves any good for the WSJ to report drug/alcohol possession in schools, or even when a staff member gets shoved breaking up a fight (like we saw with the Lapham/Alternatives this past year). That said, incidents like the Memorial assault by the mom/son/daughter on school staff, or the recent Lafollette brawl, or tasering of students, or rape/weapons violations, those things should absolutely be reported on (and usually are). But remember, it’s not news when kids do minor, stupid stuff. It’s that old journalistic adage that it’s not news when a dog bites a man, only when a man bites a dog.
I wasn’t suggesting that the newspapers should report every incident that occurs in the schools, but when the police are called 107 times to one school in one school year, I know there is a problem. That is over every other day. If the district actually tracked police calls, it might notice trends before things get out of control. I also have a lot of sympathy for the teachers who are made to work in these conditions. If the police were called every other day to your place of work, would you feel safe? Hopefully this is a wake up call, and maybe just maybe, the district will come up with a plan to keep our students and teachers safe. I applaud the work of Betsy Reck and the Toki PTO.
Toki has problems. Some of them stem from turnover in leadership at the top – the current principal is in her first year. She is the third principal in four years.
Police calls were high last year, they are down this year. I’m not sure that tells us much other than police calls are down.
There is a lot to respond to. It also mirrors what has happened at several other schools when the leaders change often, staff morale is low, and there are social changes that challenge behavior and learning environments.
Mr. Winkler is free to dismiss efforts to help get the school back to where it should be, but I’m not sure his take is particularly accurate or helpful.
As a parent who went through some rough years at East with 4 principals in 5 years, I can assure you that any effort to help is important and should be welcomed rather than trashed. I also can say that initiatives that could be carried out quickly – an additional security guard, dean of students, building safety audit, and staff meeting to review needs and changes – were completed by COB on Monday. The meeting was the preceding Wed. night. If you have ever dealt with a complex organization, you will recognize that this is a decent speed of response.
Toki can and will turn around. There are some great teachers and staff, a principal who is committed to staying, parents who are willing to help, and support from administration and the school board. There are no guarantees other than change will not happen unless the adults start working together to solve multiple problems, some of which go back for years.
I would do the same for any school that was feeling the stress that Toki was, and believe that others who have stepped forward would do the same.
Would more reporting help? Maybe. I’m not sure what the current coverage has gotten us. That is, the coverage is incomplete and designed to make it sound like the only response is a security officer when the response is multi-layered and far more extensive.
The coverage also doesn’t get anywhere near the complexity of a situation where parents report that some kids have had incredibly bad experiences and others were hearing of problems for the first time at the PTO meeting.
There are a complicated set of issues that are not new to Toki this year. They need to be resolved. It will go faster if all concerned parties work together.
Just because incidents REPORTED to the police decreased doesn’t mean there actually were fewer such incidents. It’s been suggested to me by employees of the school district that new principals are less likely to report problems, trying to keep their numbers low to impress higher-ups. Whether that’s true or not, who knows.
But when you have the high number of parents – and most notably, the high number of STAFF – who turned out for that Toki meeting, you KNOW something is seriously wrong. (I didn’t go, but a friend did and told me all about it. Said many teachers are on the verge of quitting, and that one even started to cry while telling of incidents she puts up with on a daily basis.)
Little stuff doesn’t need to be reported in the newspapers or to the police, but it DOES need to be reported and recorded. You can’t keep accurate records of what a school’s “climate” problems are if you don’t keep good records. You can’t see if situations are getting better or worse, and which consequences work and which don’t, if you don’t keep good records.
And while it’s great to have a second security guard and a dean of students, what will really make a difference is cracking down on ALL bad behavior. The school district’s code of conduct clearly states that students shall not be disruptive in class. The disruptive kids need to be taken OUT of class so everyone else can learn.
I’m sick and tired of hearing my kids (who go to ORE, in the same building as Toki) come home and tell me that music or art or gym or their regular class was wasted that day because “4 or 5 kids acted up, so we all had to sit there and wait for them to behave.”
I’m tired of having my kids threatened at school (a third grader told my third grader she was going to get a gun and come kill him; a fifth grader told my fifth grader he was going to go get a shovel and flatten my son’s head with it) – and having my kids say they didn’t tell an adult. (I then take them back to school and we tell an adult together.) Why? Because they say a) nothing happens, and b) they’re afraid of retribution from the kid. That’s not what I teach my kids at home. So this is a behavior they’re learning at school. I hear this over and over from other parents.
Notice that many of the kids at Toki now came from ORE in the past three years. And ORE has been declining, behavior wise, during that same period. These elementary kids grow up, get tougher, and the behavior gets worse in middle school. Wait and see what Memorial is like in another two or three years when these Toki kids move on. We’ve coddled kids and ignored bad behavior for so long that adults actually fear the kids. That’s just wrong.
It’s VITAL that the school district get tough on ALL bad behavior. If you let a kindergarten kid (yes, it’s happened) get away with telling a teacher to f— off, if you let a second grader get away with telling a parent field trip chaperone that “you can’t tell me what to do!”, if you let a fifth-grader get away with mouthing off to a teacher or not shutting up so the lesson can go on – then you’re just begging for all these bad behaviors to continue and to escalate. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Lucy, I can understand that bureaucracies are large and annoying in terms of how long it takes to get things done. And I appreciate that some positive steps are being made (and have been at ORE in this school year). But let’s get real: It’s not hard to tell the difference between right and wrong, between good behavior and bad. We need consequences that WORK. We need disruptive kids removed from classrooms (and maybe schools altogether – do we have a three strikes policy?) so that the well-behaved kids can actually learn. It doesn’t take years’ worth of studies to make this happen. It shouldn’t take a year or more for a school or a district to figure out what ‘consistent standards’ and best consequences should be. This isn’t rocket science.
And while the district or a school may have several years to invest in this, my kids DON’T have several years. My elementary school kids cannot stand their school – and they’ve spent four years here at a time when they should be learning to love school. My fifth-grader is petrified to go to Toki because he’s heard about (and seen) lots of the discipline problems. By the time ORE and Toki “teach” all the staff members their new “above the line” policy and get everyone on board, my kids will have left ORE, and maybe Toki, too. And some of those kids who’ve threatened them may have made good on their threats by then.
-DianeBH
Hello DianeBH,
I think you have posted here before about ORE. Were you able to talk to anyone from Mendota about their program? If yes, can you post about it?
Thanks!
Laura,
No, I didn’t talk to anyone at Mendota.
Several ORE parents got together and formed a group called ORE Partners, which is working with each other and the ORE staff to tackle school climate issues.
My previous postings here on SIS left a couple of people terribly bent out of shape, so I offered to step back entirely to ensure that the process moved ahead smoothly. I tend to pour my heart and soul and intensity into efforts I undertake, and consequently I like to move forward quickly. Partners isn’t going in the direction I would have taken it (I wanted to involve other schools/parents, focus entirely on behavior/discipline, and move straight to the district for discussions instead of staying just in the confines of our one school), but so be it.
I’ve been increasingly frustrated with discipline/behavior issues – and their effect not only on my kids’ social/societal growth but more important on their academic growth, or lack thereof. Another parent pointed out to me that our school has something like 20 or 30 educational assistants/aides, and every single one of them works with remedial or learning-disabled or ADHD-type kids (sorry; I’m not sure what the appropriate catch-all phrase is for kids with mental issues like that; I’m not trying to be disrespectful) – and not ONE works with the TAG kids. When we first moved here four years ago, the school had one aide who pulled kids out in small groups for more challenging math instruction one or two days a week. Last year, they took that help away; now there’s no one attending to the gifted kids outside of regular classroom work. And when you have multilevel classes (2/3, 4/5, etc.) and varying abilities, it’s a given that the smarter kids are going to be left to their own devices more often than not.
My youngest tells me that the kids in his advanced reading group rarely get any time with the teacher, because she has her hands full with the remedial and average groups – and because the gifted kids can be told to sit and read books on their own, and they’ll do so quietly. So they get maybe one hour a week of reading with the teacher in their group, and that’s it. (He’s only 9, so his time estimate may be a bit off. But from what I’ve seen and heard from other kids/parents, it’s not too far off.)
Before Xmas, I went in periodically to help in the class and was asked to help my son’s group research/write a report – their first one ever. But when the report came home several weeks later, there wasn’t a mark on it. The other parents said the same thing. So the kids (and I) did all that work, and the reports weren’t even commented on, much less graded. The kids just constantly feel like they’re only doing busy work. I’m not going to waste my time going in to help the kids with busy work. I’d rather work with the remedial or average kids so the teacher (who’s trained to do so) can spend more time with the advanced kids.
The few times this year that I’ve tried to talk to teachers about academics or discipline, they tend toward defensiveness (though the principal has done a MUCH better job of trying to listen this year) – no matter how sweetly and collaboratively I approach them.
Nothing changes, so it’s just not worth the headache. I’ve come to decide that’s the MMSD goal: Wear the parents down, and eventually they’ll go away. And because I said I’d step back on the Partners thing to appease a couple of people, I’ve felt rather stifled and hesitant to say/do much of anything. I’m sure if my posts on this thread catch the eye of some ORE people, it’ll piss them off again and potentially hurt any inroads the Partners feel that they’ve made. That’s just a shame; I just wish the powers-that-be could see posts like these and realize that it’s frustration speaking, not an effort to antagonize.
I heard that at the Toki meeting, one staff person tried to suggest that the parents’ and staff concerns were all about race. We heard that at ORE, too, last year when we had a meeting about discipline. It’s so offensive to have our concerns mischaracterized like that. It’s not about race at all; it’s about BEHAVIOR. Bad behavior comes in all colors and sizes. All we parents really want is to work together with the district to get good solutions going as quickly as possible. It shouldn’t be an adversarial relationship.
I’m so incredibly disheartened with this school system that I desperately want to put my kids in private school next year, but we can’t afford it. We could try to move, but the housing market stinks and we can’t afford to take a loss. I’m willing to try homeschooling, but my husband isn’t keen on that idea. So all I can do is try to supplement a little at home (though my kids spend all day in school; is it fair to make them ‘go to school’ all over again once they get home?). But mostly I sit back and watch my kids – who could be really brilliant if they were challenged and encouraged in the slightest at school – become average learners with no interest whatsoever in school. (My oldest kid’s WKCE test scores went from literally off the chart in third grade to average or just slightly above average in fourth grade. You don’t slide that much in one year if you’re really learning and being challenged…) Sigh.
-DianeBH
I’m not sure what “It doesn’t take years’ worth of studies to make this happen. It shouldn’t take a year or more for a school or a district to figure out what ‘consistent standards’ and best consequences should be. This isn’t rocket science.” refers to.
My comments about bureaucratic slowness were a more complicated way of saying that once we were invited into the conversation, we acted in less than three working days. This is a good start given that problems that have been festering for years do not go away overnight. There is no silver bullet as much as we may want to believe that all it takes is a willingness to impose order.
One of the questions that has been asked is why the board didn’t intervene sooner.
I would suggest that, rather than posting on blogs, which I read infrequently and other board members may not read at all, and talking to only to each other, concerned parents and staff need to invite board members and administrators to meetings where issues are being discussed. We are not in every school every day, nor can we be. As a result, people on the ground levels often are key to letting us know where problems are festering. We will respond if we are asked to come and talk about problems.
In the case of ORE, this post is the first information that I have had and it is only by chance that I am looking at SIS right now.
In the case of Toki, board members learned of the level of parent and staff concern about problems less than a week before the PTO meeting. As I understand it, this was not the first meeting this year on this issue; the problems are not new this year. It would have been helpful and appropriate to ask us to attend a meeting much earlier and we are glad that there was the contact this time. (To be honest, I found out about the meeting indirectly from a colleague and decided to go to see what the issues are.)
In past years, PTOs were much more proactive about inviting board members to their meetings. We are limited in the number of people from the board who can attend any one meeting, but that is very different from unwillingness to listen and learn from parents and staff.
Lucy,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lay blame at the foot of the board, but with the administration – who has heard complaints about discipline/behavior from various schools and parents for years now (at least judging from others I’ve talked to). I did talk individually to Arlene last summer about the ORE problems. As I said, if I were heading up Partners, I’d have gone right to the administration and board but that’s not the route the committee leaders wanted to go.
My comment about “years’ worth of studies” has to do with staff members telling us that not all teachers had been trained in ‘above the line’ yet, that they’re starting the training this year, that they’re working to get staff buy-in, that the code of conduct and disciplinary policies are being ‘reviewed’….. those and many similar statements that are various ways of saying it takes a long, long time to make anything happen when it comes to schools consistently, quickly and effectively dealing with behavior issues.
What I meant when I referred to this not being rocket science is that we either choose to enforce rules and punish bad behavior, or we ignore it, comment on it but let it slide, or spend too much time worrying about WHY it happens instead of STOPPING it in its tracks. (Not that we shouldn’t try to PREVENT problems and deal with social issues. But social issues are not an EXCUSE for bad behavior; they’re simply an explanation. Social issues should not give a student a free pass on bad behavior.
I think a willingness to impose order would be a great place to start. I’ve had teachers tell me that some staff members’ method of discipline is to sit kids down with a soda and candy bar and ask them if they were having a bad day. That teachers have taken away one of a child’s privileges because of misbehavior only to have higher-ups give it back and undermine the teacher’s authority. That some teachers try to handle behavior on their own in the classroom because they don’t like the coddling that goes on if they send the kids out. And that staff has asked teachers not to worry about filling out referral forms – even though staff told parents these forms are filled out for every offense. All those problems alone could be solved more efficiently just by having a “willingness to impose order.”
Our current code of conduct says students shall not disrupt classrooms. So when they do, why are they ignored or allowed to continue to disrupt? Why aren’t they ejected from the classroom? If my kid mouths off at me at home, he gets a consequence; I don’t just let it slide, thinking that at least he didn’t give his brother a bloody nose or steal from my wallet or some other more egregious thing that he’s done in the past. Infractions are infractions. A kid doesn’t have to be suspended for mouthing off to a teacher, but he can miss recess and have to WORK during that recess. (My kids note that the bad kids have been THRILLED to miss recess in the past few months, because it’s been so cold and they get to sit there doing nothing.) If it’s repeated behavior that disrupts the class, he or she should at least be getting a detention or an in-school suspension. And detention shouldn’t just be reading a book or sitting alone. What happened to writing reports, or picking up litter, or something that actually would make a kid NOT want a detention or suspension?
The district also is angsting over suspension and expulsion data. But instead of worrying that our numbers are too high, I think we should celebrate getting disruptive kids out of the classrooms. (And formerly disruptive kids should celebrate being allowed back in when they get their acts together!) The district has hired one new expulsion employee (I forget what we’re calling him) who’s going to serve something like 50 kids who get expelled every year. Frankly, I’d rather see our dollars go to help the kids who STAY in the classroom.
On the one hand – and this sounds far more harsh than I mean it – the part of me who’s passionate about my kid getting a challenging education doesn’t really give a crap what happens to troublemakers who get booted. On the other hand, the part of me who’s spent years volunteering for mental health agencies isn’t ignorant of the problems or suggesting these kids should be ignored. I’m just saying that such all-encompassing, overriding, complicated social concerns shouldn’t be a *school’s* responsibility.
Schools across the country have been entrusted with (and in some cases have chosen to take on) too much. It’s not the school district’s job to raise our children; it’s to TEACH our children. We keep trying to add more people to help with social service issues in our schools, and I at first thought that was great. But now that I’ve seen it in action, I think it just dilutes the education our kids get. (Maybe it works better at other schools, just not the ones I’ve seen and have learned about.) The U.S. and Wisconsin and Madison have social service agencies and police departments and all sorts of other resources out there to help with social issues. If they don’t do their job well, that doesn’t mean schools should adopt those tasks; it means those agencies need to be spurred to do their jobs better.
I’m sorry to sound like a bitch. I’m not angry, nor am I trying to point a finger at any one person. (I’m really actually a very nice person.) I’m just frustrated, tired, passionate in my beliefs and aware that I’m far from the only Madison parent who feels this way.
BTW, I don’t hope or assume that board members or school staff will read any posts on this site. (I’m thrilled that you all do the thankless job you do. Someone asked me to run for school board this go-round, and I looked at him as if he were insane. So I really do bow at your feet for taking it on…) Anyway, I look to this site as a resource for parents to talk to each other and share information and find solutions together.
-Diane
Thanks, Diane. Your explanations are really helpful and make a lot of sense. You are asking questions that I have heard (and asked as a parent) when people are talking about their concerns with any of a number of schools.
I also understand – and appreciate – the importance of parents starting first with school administration. Ideally, problems are talked through and resolved at the school level. At the same time, I am concerned that many parents and staff appear to be under the impression that they are ‘not supposed to’ contact the board or district administration when problems are not being resolved.
I also understand the frustration with hearing that not enough teachers are trained in above the line/below the line. I certainly am skeptical of approaches that excuse behavior without trying to change it, and have heard similar issues from people with kids in other schools. I just don’t see how it helps students if we are sympathizing to the point that we don’t challenge negative behaviors and help stuents to change.
My personal observation is that training is less the problem than everyone – staff, administrators, parents – being on the same page with consistent expectations, standards, and consequences from class to class and school to school.
Where there is buy-in from all or most staff, schools change. Where people aren’t able to put aside differences of personality or opinion to have the same baseline and consequences, schools fall apart through divide and conquer.
I applaud you for having the stamina to hang in there and keep working to get our schools to where they should be rather than where they are.
Diane,
You are not alone in either the academic or behavioral complaints you made. Thank you for speaking up. All of the things you mentioned at ORE happen at Thoreau Elementary School as well. Behavior (from children) has ranged from inappropriate sexually related comments to severe threats and violence. Some people don’t want to talk openly about what is going on because they are afraid it will discourage families from sending their kids to the school, or cause people to move away.
I hate to post, but I have to post and honestly, I don’t know where to begin. Ok, first of all, you as parents DO have a choice. We can not afford private, but because of all the reasons you mentioned, we decided to get “rid” of the luxuries and pay for our children’s education so that THEY no longer have to be impacted by other children not wanting to learn. THEY do not have years to wait. THEY need a quality education NOW.
And, Lucy, we did go to the board, more than once, particularly with the above the line nonsense. Why not try something research based, like positive behavior supports, because guess what, the same kids are below the line over and over and NOTHING improves!
I was a Thoreau parent for 5 long years, and it’s as bad or worse than described. And the behavior was happening from all kids, and much of it under the radar of the teacher and administration-it was not a race issue although I do know of one committee I was on that wanted all the kids that were naughty to sit together at lunch, but also talked about “embracing” our “Allied Drive Families”. Hmmm….I quickly learned they had a name.
Even though we are out, I keep informed and up to date, because I always hoped we’d be able to come back. Has ANYONE ever contacted the families who have left? Isn’t it time that the district begin to look at the flight from their schools?
Diane-you go get ’em, and while you are at it, your kids education is an investment, so get out the accounting books and figure it out-time is a wasting.
I would like to comment on a couple of the items above.
Lucy, first I would like to applaud you for reading and commenting on the SIS blog, and I support the work you have been doing on the BOE. I agree with you that merely talking amongst ourselves on blogs doesn’t result in change. But I am concerned that other avenues can be nearly as ineffective. A parent I know wrote the BOE a couple years ago about the violence at Thoreau. One of the BOE wrote her back instructing her to contact Sue Abplanalp, which she did, who then discussed the concern with the principal, after which Ms Abplanalp wrote the parent saying she had explored it and that there weren’t any violence problems! A year later I wrote the BOE with similar complaints and was myself advised to write Ms Aplanalp, which I didn’t both with given the previous lack of getting anywhere.
My second comment is regarding filing police reports. So much can happen at a school that parents aren’t informed about, let alone the police. And sometimes the teachers or principals also are unaware. I am not referring to rough housing. I am talking about kids getting ambushed and beaten in the bathroom, girls being “bitch slapped” and called whores, muggings, a child being nearly strangled at recess by 2 other children, kids being threatened on their walks home, chairs being thrown by children in rages, group fights and classroom riots involving violence from multiple children. I had a teacher fail to tell me or the principal when my child was badly attacked, probably out of fear of being perceived as not being able to control the class.
My children are at two different middle schools (Toki and Spring harbor – one guess which one sees more of this violence, intimidation, and outright assault). The one who is at Toki is not going back there next year. We do all the reporting, train him to stand up for himself, teach him to not let them get to him, and he still gets targeted over and over. That teacher at the meeting who tried to accuse us all of being racist because it is about race whether we want to admit it or not? He has been saying it for a long time, and he is full of sh**. My child has been verbally attacked, harassed daily (literally) and occasionally criminally battered by kids who are white, black, hispanic, and of mixed race. He is an equal opportunity target based on his race, his perceived sexual orientation, his intelligence, his anxiety, his perfectionism and eager-to-please nature, and more. Saying it is “all about race” is a complete crock.
When the most volatile 10% of the kids see literally only 10-15 individuals repeatedly attacking and threatening others and HAVING NOTHING HAPPEN (they are sent home to play vido games all day when suspended, or allowed to come back and put back in the same classes with the kids they have attacked, over and over), they get the idea that they can do whatever they want to, and nothing will really happen. And guess what? They are right. Should a TEACHER have to drop everything and deal with a child who opens her door in the middle of class and shouts that she is an f-ing b—- and then runs off? Repeatedly? When she knows that it will cost her 20-25 minutes each time, and nothing will really happen anyway? What is that kid doing wandering the halls during classes anyway? What is supposed to happen to the education of the kids in the class if that teacher does stop to deal with it? What message are they getting if she doesn’t stop to deal with it? And what on earth makes that kid think that they can get away with doing that to an adult? They have been doing it since elementary school and it has been excused for a variety of reasons, or allowed to be dropped after an insincere apology.
Why was only one of the eight kids who attacked my son as a group arrested, and is now apparently being charged with battery? What about the other 3-4 who had the most active role in it? No one will tell us, but it sure seems to us that nothing has happened. Our son was threatened his very first day back by “friends” of the one who was suspended. But nothing actually physically happened that first day back. So, what can they do? The administrators and teachers apparently feel they can do nothing until something happens AGAIN. IN the meantime, our son’s depression and anxiety are off the charts, he is STILL stuck in some of the same classes with the kids who attacked him, as soon as they are allowed back in school (and why ARE these ringleaders allowed back in school with other kids? Because “our alternative programs are full” – Say what?!). He was physically ill AT SCHOOL 3 out of 5 days he was even in school over the following 8 school days. He was so sick and scared that he stayed home 3 days completely. So, our son is denied his chance to get a free and appropriate public education because we have to let predators stay in school and continue to have access to their posses and gangs?
I do not blame the teachers at the school, for the most part. I do not blame the principal. I think she really cares and wants to make it better. But they are at a serious disadvantage when they are not allowed to have real consequences for the rignleaders, much less for the smaller infractions that lead to the gang attacks. Teachers there are tired and are verbally attacked daily, with no apparent consequence for the kids who do it. It must be terribly difficult to teach a class like nothing is wrong when a kid tells you in front of a whole class “Get out of my business!” or “Whatever!” when you repeatedly tell them to shape up or leave. The day my son was attacked outside, a student who had been sent from the room by a teacher who was trying to diffuse a situation stormed right back in behind her and slapped my son across the face in the middle of class. Why was that kid back in lunch period 20 minutes later? And why on earth was he outside with everyone else for recess? Why wasn’t he isolated immediately and not allowed to plan an attack with his ‘friends’? Because the teachers each assumed that hving reported what happened to the office, they would be kept apart, and it would be “okay”. It was not “okay”. Someone dropped the ball not once, but twice, in the following 20 minutes to allow that kid and his gang access to another child in an unstructured and virtually unsupervised situation. Then, less than a week later, a friend of our son’s was struck in the head and knocked down during class, semi-conscious on the floor, when the only adult present stepped from the room to deal with a student who had been sent from the room. Unbelievable. And not even the same group of kids involved.
We eventually get adults who care about our son in his classes and halls to try to protect him whenever they can, but they can do nothing to get these predators out of there, and they can’t always protect him. When he reports things, he is told “just ignore them”, “tell them to stop”, or “don’t let them catch you alone”. Are you kidding? Who wants to hang around our son when they are afraid they will be the next target if they try to step up and say or do anything? He was attacked by a gang on a full playground at recess, and the two caring and involved adults out there watching all those kids had no idea it was even happening until it was too late and he had been hit in the head and kicked on the ground. That kills those staff members inside, to know that they are “failing” him like that. And it is not them.
I am so glad that Diane can explain these feelings and experiences more clearly than most of us. I am not angry at the school, the teachers, the principal, or the school board members. I am angry that we seem to have no ability to get these angry and disruptive students away from the children who just want to be left alone, and make it through their day unassaulted. Half of the kids at Toki will tell you it is a good day if they do not see someone attacked, and they just “keep their head down” and don’t meet any of these kids’ eye. That is the saddest thing I have ever heard. And my son went from 98th percentile in reading on the WKCE one year to 39th the next? Gee, I wonder why. Could he possibly have been distracted, sick, or scared by all this mess? Gee maybe. And yet, he still scored “proficient”, so all is okay. Not.
I am a young professional who lives in the attendance zone for Falk, Toki, and Memorial. My husband and I already have a 5-year plan to move from this neighborhood and out of Madison to avoid sending our children to the Madison schools.
I am sympathetic with all these parents.
We are Jefferson parents and I have to say two years ago there was an incident at Jefferson at an MSCR dance that caused such a stir that a few parents left and we had a meeting that 60 parents showed up to discuss and hear concerns about violence. It was on the news, paper, parents called me upset. The ironic thing is this year Jefferson is viewed as a utopia. All the parents that have to shift their children to Toki are upset because they view Toki as violent and Jefferson as not. The truth is each school has a population of kids that are potential time bombs. The schools follow these kids around and wait for them to explode. I watch it with disbelieve. As a parent, my kid would be scrubing toilets, picking up trash, and grounded for life for these behaviors, but the sad truth is these kids have no one at home with higher expectation. I hear some of these parents response and they want their child to behave but have no control over their children.
I wish we had a magic wand to make all kids behave but we don’t. But I really hate how MMSD uses lots of staff time and energy to follow these disruptive kids around the school without any true discipline. Quite frankly if the MMSD really wanted to improve the middle schools and save money they would close Spring Harbor. This would politically kill them, as every involved parent with money attends this school on the West side but it might amaze them how those parents would get involved at Toki and Jefferson and improve both school. (But the 1/2 a million dollar savings is not worth the political suicide this would cause) It is not the kids fault that their parents are unprepared to parent but I again say it is not MMSD’s job to discipline and parent these kids.
We need more participation from the city and county on these issues and less from the school. Schools are suppose to educate, and I am ready for the funds to be spend on education and not warehousing.
DITTO!
Yet a few clarifications as well, I’m not so sure Jefferson is viewed “as a utopia” I empathize with folks who participated in the MSCR dance event discussions, follow-up and action items, only to have their community boundaries redrawn. Involved, dedicated parents were forcefully moved; they were not welcomed to participate or provide input or insight for boundary discussion. I also question the inference that all Spring Harbor families are high income. I don’t believe this true.
An item I find noteworthy is a lack of consistent leadership, now evident at LaFollette High School (Isthmus article reference from earlier SIS post). I commend families’ who petitioned for Mr. Gothard but I believe it left, yet again, another hole and scar at Toki.
I find it interesting that Mary thinks the solution is closing Spring Harbor. Why would we close the one school that is usually able to challenge the higher-achieving kids and motivate the less motivated ones? IN one sense, Spring Harbor has more of the involved parents because – by definition since you have to APPLY to go there – the kids are there by choice, and therefore, the families are. But that does not mean SHMS does not have some of these same problems. There are fewer “problem kids” to start it all, because many of the least committed parents self-select out of Spring Harror. There are still kids with issues, with IEPs, with anxiety (probably more of them!), with little social sense, a significant number of students with free and reduced lunch, etc. at Spring Harbor, and there is still some tendency to ignore the inappropriate behaviors unless they get “really serious”. But, because it is a smaller school, these incidents are more likely to be recognized easily as they escalate, and dealt with early, so they do not continue to escalate. And the kids who cause the most trouble do not have easy access to as large a group of “second-tier troublemakers” who are looking for someone to emulate.
So why – again – would we expect to solve these problems in MMSD by getting rid of the programs that work? That is like saying that if we make all the middle schools “equally desirable” by taking AWAY any schools and programs that are successful and challenging, that is “a good thing”. We should not make all schools equal by bringing them all down.
If we were staying in MMSD at this point, we would shift our child to Jefferson and out of Toki, for several reasons. Not the least of which is that Jefferson has fewer students than Toki does right now, and thus, outlier behavior sticks out more, and is dealt with more immediately and concretely. As for Toki? Maybe getting more parents in at Toki who may have more energy left by the time their kids get into middle school (they have not been dealing with Falk’s and ORE’s problems for the previous five or six years), will help make Toki more responsive and responsible when faced with repeated misbehavior from the same few kids who are allowed to believe they can do whatever they want because nothing happens to them. Or maybe dealing with the poorly behaved kids when they are elementary age, and not rewarding them with Happy meals and soda pop, and asking them why they are having a “bad day”, will repair some of their anger and self-control problems BEFORE they become big enough, scary anough, and old enough to be arrested for the same things that got them tut-tuts at 3rd graders, when they are in middle school.