By now, you’ve probably heard about the brawl last week at Vero Beach High School’s Freshman Learning Center, where a physical altercation between two girls erupted into multiple fistfights and resulted in the arrests of 16 ninth-graders.
Videos of the ugly incident, including body-cam footage posted by the Sheriff’s Office, still can be found all over the web.
These scenes, however, are mere snapshots of a troubling trend that challenges the school district’s administrators, puts students in harm’s way and threatens the safety of already-overwhelmed teachers who continue to walk away from a profession they once loved.
On-campus fights are becoming more frequent, schools and teachers’ union officials say.
And unless something changes – including a demand from the School Board for tougher enforcement and more severe punishment for the combatants – worse times are ahead.
“Kids need to know they can’t do this,” School Board Vice Chairman and retired principal Peggy Jones said. “Teachers and administrators need to know we’re going to support them. Parents need to know there’s going to be discipline.
“We’re responsible for providing students with a safe learning environment,” she added, “and we can’t mess around.”
Many parents complain that school districts are criminalizing adolescent behavior by summoning law enforcement – specifically, deputies assigned to campuses to serve as “school resource officers” – when fights break out.
They criticize the actions or inactions of teachers and administrators, accusing them of not trying hard enough to understand their children’s personal issues, today’s teen stresses and the circumstances that provoked the altercation.
Unlike parents of yesteryear, they side with their children and blame the bad behavior on everyone else.
Many of those same parents, though, don’t lay the proper behavioral foundation at home, where they should be embedding in their children’s character a respect for teachers, for other students, and for authority.
“There’s no one single cause for what we’re seeing, and I don’t want to blame parents, but there has been a change in our kids,” said Jennifer Freeland, president of the local teachers’ union.
“The way some students talk to teachers is a disgrace, so you can imagine how they talk to each other,” Freeland said. “You tell them to put their phones away, and they tell you to f— off.”
“For whatever reason, there’s more anger out there and less respect,” she added.
Less civility, too.
The tone of our personal and public discourse has become coarser, more confrontational and more hostile these past few years. You see it on television, on social media, in politics and, at times, even at School Board meetings.
So why should we expect anything different from our children, who are growing up in such antagonistic and truculent times?
We shouldn’t.
But we also shouldn’t tolerate it.
While on-campus fights are on the rise, most students here still go to school to get the education they’ll need to succeed in life, and we have an obligation provide them with a safe and conducive learning environment.
We owe the same to our teachers, who should not need to waste time dealing with behavioral problems, disciplining troublemakers and breaking up fights.
Teachers don’t get combat pay, but they can get sued for physically intervening and attempting to separate scuffling students who ignore verbal commands to stop.
“If I, as a teacher, step in and try to break it up – if I grab or hold or push one of those kids – I open myself up to a lawsuit, possibly a suspension and almost certainly an investigation,” Freeland said. “But if I do nothing, I know I’m ethically not doing the right thing, either.”
Back in 2015, Sebastian River High School teacher Joe Nathaniel was suspended with pay for more than two years and threatened with termination for physically subduing a violent, aggressive and out-of-control student in a classroom.
It wasn’t until an administrative law judge in Tallahassee shredded our school district’s trumped-up case in 2017 – he ruled the teacher “should be given a pat on the back, not a pink slip” – that Nathaniel was vindicated.
Five years later, Nathaniel is still teaching at Sebastian River, but he said if he found himself in the same situation today, he probably wouldn’t react as he did back then.
“Since then, a lot of teachers have told me they wouldn’t even try,” Nathaniel said. “And why would they, knowing that if they touch a kid the wrong way, they’re going to end up in the same situation I was in?”
According to School Superintendent David Moore, teachers receive “restraint training” and may physically intervene to break up fights, but they’re advised to not step in if they believe they’re jeopardizing their own safety.
Instead, they can seek help from the principal’s office or an on-campus deputy.
“You don’t typically see fights in classrooms,” Moore said. “They usually happen in the hallways or somewhere else on campus, often before or after school, and our faculty and administrators do a great job of being responsive.
“Most times, it’s a no-harm, no-foul situation, and we can deal with these incidents in-house, but ‘disrupting the function of a school’ can be a crime,” he added. “This particular incident (last week) didn’t involve any weapons or result in any injuries, but there were arrests because the brawl clearly disrupted school.
“The typical fight doesn’t.”
Moore, who took control of the district’s day-to-day operations in December 2019, said he doesn’t want to see students arrested for fighting, but he does want them to know they can be – especially if an altercation escalates.
He warned that such an arrest can follow them into adulthood, particularly when they’re applying for jobs.
“It’s not just something on your transcript,” Moore said. “Every job application you fill out will ask if you’ve ever been arrested, and you’ll have to check ‘Yes,’ even though you’ve long forgotten the name of the kid you fought with.
“We need to make sure students understand the consequences and be willing to walk away.”
Moore said he also urged students who become aware that trouble is brewing to “notify an adult,” so potential altercations – such as the brawl at the Freshman Learning Center – can be averted.
If they don’t, however, it’s the teachers who are on the front lines, where Freeland said they too often confront students who know the punishment, in most cases, won’t be severe.
The penalty for fighting is a 10-day suspension, which some students consider a two-week vacation.
That needs to change.
A person who hits another person against that person’s will, or intentionally causes bodily harm to another person, commits the crime of misdemeanor battery.
It’s illegal on the streets. It should be illegal in schools, where students should feel safe from such violence.
To be sure: We’re not talking about two teens pushing and shoving during a minor flareup, which deserves no more than a slap on the wrist; or innocent kids who justifiably defend themselves against hostile aggressors.
We’re talking about fights between kids who are trying to hit and hurt each other with no respect for the setting, no regard for potential escalation and no fear of the consequences.
We’re seeing too much of this thuggery in our schools lately, and it would be reckless to wait until something worse happens.
Now it’s the School Board’s turn to step in and put a stop to it.
