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Schools

In schools, violence starting at earlier age

Increasingly, teachers face the task of controlling kids, even kindergarteners, who lash out physically.

By ALEX LEARY and THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published March 18, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - The pupils were counting jelly beans as part of a math exercise when one of them started acting silly. Mrs. Ottersbach decided to take away her jelly beans.

The 5-year-old didn't like that.

She terrorized Room 13 at Fairmount Park Elementary, trashing Mrs. O's desk, smashing a candy dish and kicking another teacher in the shins, officials said.

At the principal's office, it got worse. The girl threw books and boxes, climbed atop the desk and started stomping. She drew on the walls, hit the assistant principal in the stomach.

Minutes later, the girl was in the back of a police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs.

"I don't want to go to jail," she said moments after her arrest Monday.

An overreaction by frazzled adults? Or an appropriate response in a time when younger students are becoming more violent?

While police say their actions were proper, school officials were not pleased with the outcome.

"We never want to have 5-year-old children arrested," said Michael Bessette, the district's Area III superintendent, who oversees a number of schools, including Fairmount Park. He said the district's campus police should have been called to help. The assistant principal was in the process of doing just that, he said, but another in a series of outbursts by the girl interrupted her in mid call. When she asked the secretary to call for help, the secretary called city police instead.

Bessette said campus police routinely deal with children and are trained to calm them in such situations. The school, he said, will take several steps to strengthen its procedures. Next time, Bessette said, "They can even call me," instead of calling city police.

The incident highlights a continuing problem for educators, who are required to use only nonviolent tactics as young students increasingly resort to violence.

The number of Pinellas students referred to administrators for discipline was down slightly in 2003-04 from the previous academic year. But referrals for student violence, such as battery on adults and fighting, are way up.

Pinellas elementary schools reported 406 referals for batteries on adults last school year, up from 272 the year before.

Another discipline category is suspensions. Last semester, the district reported 91 suspensions of elementary school children who had commited battery on an adult. That was more than the total for middle and high schools, which have more students.

Hillsborough County sees the problem too. Last year, that district reported 99 battery cases in elementary school, 467 in middle schools and 212 in high schools.

"We're just seeing more and more children at younger ages displaying very, very violent behavior," said Pinellas school spokesman Ron Stone. Pinellas has no written policies for physical contact when a student shows aggression.

As a rule of thumb, teachers and school administrators are counseled to avoid touching children. Beyond that, the district expects educators to protect children from hurting themselves and others, said Jim Lott, administrator of the district's Office of Professional Standards.

The district's contract with the teachers union allows teachers to use "such reasonable physical restraint as is necessary" to protect themselves and others.

Teachers should first try to talk the student into stopping bad behavior, Stone said. If it escalates to a dangerous level, Stone said, the teacher can try wrapping a student in her arms, perhaps getting on the ground with the teacher's legs over the student's legs.

Stone said he was told those strategies were tried with the Fairmount Park girl.

Under the district's code of student conduct, students are to be suspended for 10 days and recommended for expulsion for unprovoked attacks, even if they don't result in serious injury. But Stone said that rule wouldn't apply to kindergarteners.

"She's been appropriately disciplined under the circumstances," he said.

The girl was to return to the classroom today, but her mother said that won't happen. "She's never going back to that school," Inda Akins said Thursday evening from her apartment on 39th Lane S. "They set my baby up."

The 31-year-old single mother of three said she is consulting an attorney. Akins, whose last name is different from her daughter's, blamed the assistant principal, Nicole Ross Dibenedetto. She accused Dibenedetto of harping on the girl to the point where she "acted up" in class. "Ever since I told her to stay away from my daughter, there's been problems."

The police reports on Monday's incident raised some questions. The girl is described as wearing a "tan dress, white shirt, white shoes. Hair in braids." Height: 4 feet 6 inches. Weight: 60 pounds.

Akins laughed at the last part. Her daughter, she said, weighs 40 pounds. The girl stood next to a reporter and measured about 31/2 feet. "She's just a regular girl," Akins said.

As she spoke, her three children rambled through the apartment. The girl, the oldest child, rode a pink bicycle through the living room, one of the training wheels missing. Her brother got up on a table and swatted a light fixture, laughing.

"I wanted to play the jelly bean game," the girl said when asked what upset her at school Monday.

She said the handcuffs - "handcutters" in her words - hurt her and she was afraid. Then she bound off after her brother.

None of the four officers who showed up at the scene on Monday have been disciplined, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.

He acknowledged the unusual nature of the arrest, but said: "Our policy very clearly gives officers the discretion to use handcuffs or other restraining devices for juveniles, regardless of their age if they are unruly or showing the propensity for violence." An officer used handcuffs on the girl's ankles because she was kicking him in the car, he said.

"Is it safer to put them in handcuffs and seat belt them in the back seat of a cruiser with an officer watching? Or is it better to physically struggle with the child?"

The reports contained some discrepancies.

One states Dibenedetto wanted the girl prosecuted. Another said she told the School Board she did not want that, but officers on scene told her to. Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said she, indeed, wanted prosecution.

Dibenedetto did not return a phone call Thursday.

In the end, it didn't matter. The state attorney's office said no charges would be filed. And the girl went home from school with her mother.

[Last modified March 18, 2005, 00:44:06]