Vic Ryckaert, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about a kindergartner in Shelbyville who had a pattern of aggressive behavior, kicked the principal, and threatened to kill him. The school called the cops and had the kid arrested.
Attempts to contact the family for this story were not successful.
In journo-speak, that could mean a few things; but I’ll go ahead and assume that this could be part of the problem. The paper was able to talk to a therapist and an autism advocate who said an arrest might not be the best thing for the kid; instead they recommended having the kid treated with counseling or seen by doctors.
I question whether those are options legitimately available to the school. The police are free, and they’re on call. (Which is why, in the absence of mental health options, the poor and mentally ill frequently end up in jail.) I don’t know if an arrest is the right thing, but I also don’t know that it’s fair to expect the school to be an extension of the mental health system. Maybe keep the kid out of class, tell the parents to come and get him, and don’t let him back in school until he gets a note from his doctor that he’s not going to be a behavior problem diverting resources away from the rest of the school kids.
I would say the school is and should be an extension of the mental health system, along with the medical system, the proper nutrition system, and whatever other system is necessary for the well-being and health of these children.
The administrators of this school are public servants that are supposed to do what is best for the children. I wasn’t there, but it doesn’t sound like that was the focus if they have a kindergartner arrested. This is absolutely ridiculous behavior over a kick and a threat.
My son is going to kindergarten next year, so I am kind of biased on this story. But any person that would subject a 5 y/o to this type of treatment for a kick and a threat deserves second guessing.
I sympathize with that – having young kids of my own. But I just don’t think we give schools enough money or authority to be an extension of the mental health system.
I could jump ship on the school depending on the details — for example, if they never tried getting in touch with the kids’ parents, the school would lose my sympathy pretty quickly.
Maybe I’m wrong, but if I were a school administrator, I’m pretty sure that my approach would be something like, “Here you go, mom & dad, we just can’t educate little Billy when he’s like this. And, unfortunately, we’re not therapists and we’re not babysitters. You should go get him some treatment. Bring him back when he’s under control.”
According to the news report I that viewed the school principal stated that they had already tried numerous avenues with trying to deal with this child. The principal stated that by getting the police involved that it would open up more opportunities for the boy to receive help. The police department did not handcuff or charge the child or parents for any misconduct. It also gets the school off the hook for any possible law suits if any teacher or administrator would be accused of using obsessive force against the child.
You have young kids of your own, you say? They must not be in school yet, or you wouldn’t say: “I question whether those are options legitimately available to the school.” I can tell you first hand that the majority of asperger’s/autism diagnoses are made by TEACHERS who aren’t even taught early childhood development when earning their teaching degrees, let alone being taught how to diagnose medical conditions. I completely agree, teachers should not be diagnosing medical and/or mental health conditions, but they are, and they do.
The reaction from Paul C simply demonstrates the disconnect between the general public and the reality of what schools are being asked to handle today.
Doug is also right in saying that schools are not provided funding to handle it.
Paddy: Your comment simply overreaches. This isn’t about “the overworked system.” This is about a single kindergartner that had the police called on him because he kicked and made an empty verbal threat against an adult.
Since it is a symptom of an overworked system there is no over-reach at all.
Continually alleging overwork does not make the allegations actually true. Please provide the additional facts to support your assertion. In specific, please share the number of hours the principal and teachers work each day. Thanks.
Hours in a day isn’t the proper metric as schools only have access to students a certain portion of the day.
This about the lack of resources available to accomplish all of the tasks mandated in the time allotted.
A teacher can work until midnight, but if the kids go home at 3, it doesn’t matter.
“This about the lack of resources available to accomplish all of the tasks mandated in the time allotted.”
Yet you haven’t provided one piece of evidence to backup your claim that the tasks mandated are too great for the time allotted.
Let’s revisit the list of things you want schools to do from your original post:
“I would say the school is and should be an extension of the mental health system, along with the medical system, the proper nutrition system, and whatever other system is necessary for the well-being and health of these children. ”
Extension of the mental health system: Funding for special needs children with emotional/mental health problems has been cut in the last 2 state budgets. That was from levels that did not support the programs already.
Extension of the medical system: Nurses are paid from the School General Fund, no other fund is legal or allowable. General Fund appropriation has was cut $300 million dollars outside of the normal budgeting process in 2010. Most schools now have 1 nurse in central office and they “train” aides or volunteers to administer daily medical needs. This is on top of the State shifting the enforcement of vaccinations form County health to individual schools with no funding.
Proper nutrition system: Funding is being held static at best while nutrition requirements have increased. The requirement increases have caused school lunch costs to go up ~15% in the last year.
Items you didn’t cover:
Decrease in General Fund has led to increased class sizes while State has:
1. Tripled requirements for individualized by student reporting required. Teachers have more reports to do about more children which require one-to-one evaluation processes.
2. Increased the need for remediation and differentiation which requires instructional aides and in creased one-to-one instructor/child interaction.
3. Increased administrative workload to evaluate teachers by changing the teacher compensation model.
4. Pushed special needs students in to main-stream situations while not funding instructional aides.
5. Increased goals for high-ability learners and AP/dual credit courses while cutting high-ability and AP funding.
6. Increased testing goals and curriculum metrics to make KG (which isn’t mandated in Indiana) the new first grade and thus making Preschool (which isn’t funded or mandated) the new KG.
This is just a small sampling of what has happened in the last 3-5 years and doesn’t even begin to discuss the lack of parent involvement and support.
FYI – I don’t teach, but I worked on the financial admin side of education for ~10 years.
Long post. Not surprised you work in education considering your strong defense of having the police arrest a 6 y/o because he kicked and made an idle threat. It appears the administrators were tied of handling this kid, and overreacted. Neither you nor I know enough to confirm that these administrators did not have the time on the day in question.
It looks to me like the administrators are simply trying to pass the buck. I note the principal has already said that “getting the legal system involved” creates benefits. What a joke.
questions are
1) will child now be suspended or expelled?
2) are the parents of the child any better in terms of behavior?
do the parents have an arrest record, their own jail/prison issues?
is dad in prison already? (yeah I know this is cynical)
3) how old are the parents, 21 or 33 years old?
4) is the child from an intact family or are the parents just
shacking up?
5) do the parents even care about their child’s future behavior?
School corporations have social workers to handle most of this kind
of stuff. But the social workers can only do so much. We have a
mistaken belief in our society that if 15 years olds are physically mature enough to make a baby, that they always have the emotional
maturity to properly raise the baby according to normal societal
expectations
My prediction is that the Juvenile Judge/Magistrate will be
dealing with this child at least 3 or 4 more times for other incidents before this child turns 18, because the child’s parents are knuckleheads (or worse).
that they have the smarts and 15 years
issues.
Hard telling on the parents. The only thing I’ve seen is that the principal described the parents as “cooperative” and that they shared in the frustrations.
“is the child from an intact family or are the parents just
shacking up?”
Really, because we ALL know how having some con-man say a magic spell over you while you hold hands makes you a “real” family…
This touches a bit on why schools can’t really be run as a business. Some kids are more costly to educate. In a business situation, you don’t do business with that client because your resources are more profitably spent on other clients. Generally, we’ve told schools that we don’t want them cherry-picking the easily educated students. We want everyone to have a base line education.
Too long for you to process?
Why should my direct experience be discounted?
Also, I never defended it, I simply said your reaction came from a position with a lack of understanding.
Now you appear to have no desire to understand.
Paul C., Paddy provided you with several pieces of evidence to back up his claims. You have no answer for any of his points, so you discount them all. Right?