Retired APS teachers detail ‘out-of-control' discipline problems

ATLANTA — Two retired Atlanta school teachers tell Channel 2 Action News the district struggles to manage disciplinary problems caused by special needs students and often reinstates them too quickly after serious incidents.

APS confirms that a disproportionate share of last year's disciplinary incidents involved special education students. They are 11 percent of the district's overall enrollment and were responsible for 19 percent of the incidents last year, according to Dr. Donyall Dickey, APS Chief Schools Officer.

Dr. Tish Glover and Jeannette Webster-Wythe retired last spring after 30 years and 22 years respectively with APS. Both say disciplinary problems are significantly worse that they were as recently as 10 years ago, and both say teachers commonly believe that administrators, from the central office down to the school level, are reluctant to act quickly and firmly enough to make teachers feel safe.

"I have been attacked three times since I was working with Atlanta Public Schools," Webster-Wythe told Channel 2 Action New investigative reporter Richard Belcher.

Glover says she tries to protect herself with a simple warning: "I tell students on day one, if you do something to me, I will prosecute.”

Glover says administrators subtly and not so subtly discourage taking firm actions against special needs students, and even when they are disciplined, they are back in school too quickly.

"If a child who has a disability harms another child, he can return to the class in 24 hours. It is scary," says Webster-Wythe.

Glover says when students return to school soon after serious incidents, she's been told, "We met our suspension quota, and, you know, they're special ed."

"When administrators tell teachers that they can do nothing, that's very scary. It's very dangerous,” Glover said.

Dickey is skeptical.

He told Channel 2's Richard Belcher, "I've had not a single teacher express a concern to me about fear of being involved in a physical altercation with a student." Asked if teachers should be afraid, he said, "No."

He says the claim that administrators discourage reporting all incidents is not a message that comes from his office.

Dickey says districts have to be careful how they discipline special education students, but it is not off the table.

"The laws are written to protect students from unfair discipline-related practices. It doesn't protect him from discipline, but it protects him from unfair practices."

For teachers, he said, "If a concern is brought to our attention, then we have a responsibility to respond to it, and we take that responsibility seriously."

Glover says the problem requires a fundamental re-thinking.

"It's time for us to come back to the conversation about how best we work with these students. Ninety-five percent of them are in regular classrooms, and many of them cannot handle it, especially the ones with severe emotional and behavioral disorders,” she said.

She flew to Washington this summer to meet with several members of the Georgia congressional delegation and an official of the U.S. Department of Education to discuss her concerns about disciplinary issues and special needs students.

In-school and out-of-school suspensions in Georgia totaled 581,919 last year.

State Sen. Emanuel Jones, of DeKalb and Henry Counties, a member of a special study committee that investigated school discipline, calls that number "alarming.” But Jones believes far too many students are suspended for what he considers relatively minor offenses, such as disobeying a teacher or administrator.

Long, out-of-school suspensions can be academically devastating for any student but especially special education students, he says.

"We know what happens when they get out of the school system. They are on the fast track, not just to the little jail, but to the big jail,” he said. "If you're getting too many suspensions in the school, that tells me there's more intervention that's required. That school needs more help. We have got to find a way to keep them involved in the system, because you never know when a child is going to have a breakthrough."

Finding schools with huge numbers of out-of-school suspensions is as simple as checking the database provided by the Georgia Department of Education. Some examples from the 2013-14 school year: Baldwin County High School in Milledgeville had 1417 students and 783 suspensions; DeKalb's MLK High School had an enrollment of 1826 students and recorded 966 suspensions; and Clarke Central High School in Athens had 1566 students and 812 suspensions.

By comparison, Atlanta's Maynard Jackson High had a relatively low percentage of out-of-school suspensions last year, 267 out of 1022 students.  But even that is too much for Glover, who calls it "out of control."

WJAX