School teachers across the country are being assaulted at alarming rates and find themselves powerless against bullies due to woke school policies which offer little punishment or exclusion in favor of restorative justice practices.
Steve Carpentier was sucker-punched by a student at Lamar High School in Houston, Texas, while he tried to take the teen’s cell phone.
“The next thing I know I have a solid right hook, or left hook,” he recalled, “in the face and cheek area.”
Carpentier said the student also took his computer and smashed it on the floor.
The pupil had previously been suspended for three days after a fight with a student, but was back in class a week later when the assault took place on April 6, Carpentier told The Post.
The Houston Independent School District, which includes Lamar High, has previously championed the success of its restorative justice program – a gentler approach to student discipline that typically involves fewer school suspensions or expulsions.
At its core restorative justice programs have students meeting with the people who their actions have affected to talk about their issues or meeting with counselors in order to reach a solution.
Materials promoting the woke practice talk about principals such as the “importance of building relationships”, “being respectful to all”, “involving all relevant stakeholders” and “addressing harms, needs, obligations and the causes of conflict and harm”.
In some schools following the practice, students are encouraged to share their feelings with their class and teachers, meditate and are greeted with hugs and high fives by their educators.
Five years ago Houston ISD was lauded for in-school suspensions dropping by 23% and referrals to alternative education programs dropping by 21%, attributed to the new approach to discipline.
But society has changed a lot since that time, with the global pandemic shifting children out of classrooms for up to two years, students more focused on their screens than ever and school violence getting more extreme.
Carpentier said kids are now often getting “a slap on the hand” or “in-school suspension” instead of more serious consequences, adding: “How much of that really teaches them anything?”
Whereas now Carpentier, the school’s director of theater who boasts over 18 years on the job says he has “to take an anxiety pill before I go to class.”
Sickening footage leaked in February showed 6-foot-6-inch student Brendan Depa, 17, stomping on a teacher’s aide at Matanzas High School in Florida.
The assault was allegedly prompted by an argument over his Nintendo Switch, and resulted in the aide, Joan Naydich, suffering three broken ribs and bruises.
“Being attacked by this student should never have happened,” Naydich told The Post, adding she could not comment further while the case was still open.
Twenty-one states plus Washington, DC had instituted restorative justice-type practices by 2020, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality reported.
Teacher Daniel Buck quit working at a public school in Wisconsin to work at a Christian school, saying the policies adopted by school boards meant schools “without boundaries and consequences” were “descending into chaos”
He wrote in The Spectator: “Across the board, they are removing punitive discipline from their school structure. Suspension rates have halved in some districts and others have outright banned suspensions.
“The real detrimental effect is the constant low-level disruption … the swearing in the hallway, the subtle bullying, the trash on the floor, the disregard for basic classroom rules that leave teachers unable to teach — it’s these factors that grind you down.”
New York City allocated $20 million to restorative justice programs in 2022.
One Principal put an uptick in pupils’ violent behavior down to how kids had suffered during the pandemic.
Lyons Community School Principal Taeko Onishi told Chalkbeat: “There’s a lack of trust that’s different than anything I’ve seen in years — it manifests in fights.
“The smallest slight can set it off. It’s like, ‘Why did you punch them in the face?’ and it’s like, ‘Because they looked at me.’”
But principals in most school districts still do not favor issuing suspensions, likely worried that a high number would be a damning statistic in the data-driven modern world.
However, the effects of bullies are increasingly profound, either on a whole class or their individual victims.
Felicia LoAlbo-Melendez, 11, hanged herself in a New Jersey School Bathroom in February according to police, after relentless bullying from classmates.
The pre-teen had written many emails seeking help from the school and met daily with its counselor as well as asking to be moved to a different class, her mother told The Post, but her requests were never honored.
Jack Reid, 17, took his own life in April 2022 after repeated bullying following a vicious rumor spreading at the esteemed Lawrenceville School in New Jersey where he was a pupil.
School officials released a statement Sunday as part of a settlement between administrators and Reid’s parents.
“The school acknowledges bullying and unkind behavior and actions taken or not taken by the school, likely contributed to Jack’s death,” officials write in a statement shared online.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers — the second-largest teacher’s union in the country, with approximately 66,000 members — told The Post changes to school policies have led to an “unintended consequence.”
“We should be doing some things to mitigate and intercept young kids,” he said. But “there’s been a lack of will to hold appropriate consequence (sic) accountable,” on the part of school officials.
Capo rejected the notion an uptick in violence could be connected to restorative justice programs.
Speaking about the incident involving Carpentier, Capo said: “Clearly, obviously, there’s still some serious anger issues going on with this kid if he moved from a student fight one week to punching a teacher the next.”
Carpentier said the student who allegedly assaulted him was charged with a third-degree felony and his parents ultimately removed him from the school.
“I don’t necessarily want to see him have a record that completely follows him for the rest of his life,” Capo said.
“But you know, there should be enough consequences that he understands the severity of his actions and never does it again.”
In one of the most shocking examples of student-on-teacher violence so far in 2023 Abigail Zwerner, a Newport News, Virginia, teacher was shot by a first-grade student in January.
Zwerner’s attorneys revealed the teacher had previously reported the student’s behavior and told administrators she was “uncomfortable” having the 6-year-old boy in her classroom — and it has also emerged he was supposed to be accompanied at all times by his parents in school.
After Zwerner’s shooting, Newport News teachers complained school administrators had become more focused on statistics and attendance than safety.
In Zwerner’s case, the student who allegedly shot her had previously choked a different teacher “until she couldn’t breathe,” Zwerner’s attorneys said.
Capo admits schools need to re-think their approach to discipline.
He added: “We’ve eased up on the punitive consequences, such as suspending first graders, which is probably the right thing to do,” Capo went on. “But we have not provided alternative supports.”
As for addressing “disorderly and disruptive” children in the classroom, Capo said he believes the necessary laws are already in place, but “we need to actually enforce the laws.”
“And we need to actually not shame people for exercising those laws,” he added.
Zwerner’s attorneys declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
