On December 19, 2021, the Chicago Tribune reported on violent student behavior in schools, and quoted, among others, Assistant Superintendent Marni Johnson:
At Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214, officials have seen “an uptick in disruptive behavior and fighting” since the start of the new school year, said Marni Johnson, an assistant superintendent for student services.
“It’s certainly the national story at schools right now, and the underlying piece is the increase in adolescent mental health concerns, which is contributing to the student behavior crisis,” said Johnson, adding area hospitals have reported a shortage of beds for adolescents in need of inpatient care.
“All of it seems like a perfect storm, first the pandemic, and now the uptick in mental health issues and trauma,” Johnson said.
Still, Johnson said district officials were not entirely unprepared for the increase in student behavior incidents this school year, and had predicted some teens would have trouble transitioning from months of remote learning to fully reopened schools.
In anticipation of the potential fallout, Johnson said the district used federal COVID-19 dollars to hire family outreach specialists for each of the northwest suburban district’s six high schools.
The district also has joined forces with adolescent mental health providers in the community, and offered additional training to teachers to help them identify and support students dealing with trauma, Johnson said.
Coincidentally, at almost exactly the same time as this article came out, a community member shared with me data received as a result of a FOIA request on school disciplinary reports so far this year (through December 10) and the same period in 2019. Here is that data, in two tables, first, the number of students reported (students fighting more than once are reported each time).
In total, the number of students fighting or behaving disruptively approximately doubled, taking into account all schools. (The Newcomer school is excluded as no such incidents at all are reported in 2021; however, they renamed themselves the International Newcomer Academy in October 2021, and the data may be flawed for this reason.) Surprisingly, counts vary considerably among schools, not merely along the demographic lines that one might expect, but in other ways as well; Hersey and Prospect are near-twins in terms of their demographics, test scores, etc., but their counts are quite different.
Looked at another way, in terms of incidents, we see another dramatic change:
Here I have counted the number of incidents themselves. To simplify the count, I have excluded “disruptive behavior” incidents involving three or fewer students. I am also assuming that students reported on a single day were a part of the same “incident” even though, of course, it is not possible to know.
What is clear is that in 2019, fights or disruptive incidents involving 10 or more students were exceedingly rare. In 2021, however, not only did these increase significantly, but fights/disruptive incidents began to occur involving more than 20 or even more than 30 students. In one incident, 40 students were recorded as being involved in a fight or fights in a single day.
Clearly, this highlights the failure of the school district in leaving it up to individual students to choose whether to attend in person or online, due first to an opt-in policy and afterwards to the reported very easy granting of permission to attend remotely. But can this all reasonably be attributed to “mental health concerns”?
What’s more, this raises fundamental questions of student safety. When asked, some parents reported that their children are aware of regular fights, and just try to stay away when they occur. But are our children truly safe? And should parents have a right to know when their safety is at risk?
(public domain image)
authored by Elizabeth Bauer
Kids of all aged have been receiving the messaging since COVID lockdowns began is that it’s good to loot, burn, incite violence “for a cause”. The school Crowley has been teaching students to “verbally attack first” and never ask questions as evidenced by the “debate team” and “journalism club” display at the pre-election Board meeting. Not to mention the looting and rioting images seen on The news. “If you disagree with me you are dangerous so let me burn , loot and destroy things to prove how righteous I am”.
Also locking these kids down and teaching them to distrust others because they might be “diseased”, and adults acting like children as well is a recipe for this very thing.
The schools got exactly what they wanted which is militant little soldiers.