Teacher shot at Newport News elementary school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"responsible gun owner" "Gun secured"

These parents are awful with their statement. Unless you're telling me that the 6yr old loaded that gun, the gun was kept and stored LOADED, which is a huge no no. You store the gun and ammunition SEPARATELY. HFS!!!!

That BS PR letter is them desperately spinning “We’re not the Crumleys! Don’t hold us accountable!” Pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s really alarming how many of you think that the problem is the child being in a mainstream school instead of a “more restrictive setting”. I work in self-contained special education and it isn’t a dumping ground for dangerous kids. My students are extremely vulnerable. Many of them are nonverbal and most of them can’t read or write in a traditional way. Although they are in upper elementary, many of them are functioning on a kindergarten or prekindergarten level. We had a student transfer to my class who was of above average intelligence but disruptive and violent. The students in my class had no way to advocate for themselves around this child and I was terrified about what he could do to them. The children with the highest needs ALSO have rights and need us to protect them. Do better.

Why are they dumping such disparate children in the same classroom? It sounds like there’s enough need to justify separate classrooms or separate centers. When people say more restrictive setting, nobody is thinking of lumping a violent kid in the same room as one who uses a communication board. They are thinking of put all the kids who clearly violent in their own building with very good ratios. 1:1, even. There’s a public school in nyc with 1:1 ratios for autistic students. It has been done. The tax payers just need to be willing to pay for it.

The short answer is that there isn’t anywhere close to the number of sped teachers to staff that. They’re aren’t enough to staff just throwing all the kids together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher:

I’ve never heard the term “acute disability.” That’s some shady lawyer wording to avoid implicating the son as like PERMANENTLY disabled . There is no IDEA category that contains the language of “acute disability”

Kids with disabilities needing parental supervision at school should not be in a Gen Ed setting

Interesting he never brought the totally secured gun while his parents had to be in the room with him

Acute disability is a real thing. It’s a mental health disorder that has the potential to be treated. Google it. Just because you aren’t familiar doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I imagine that not too many of us have ever seen a child that young who is that severely mentally ill. I’m sure the parents, school and health care providers were really struggling to figure out how to help him.

What I mean is I have never seen it in an education setting. IDEA does not have a category for “acute disability” for an IEP. A child with a disability so severe they need a 1:1 aide as a parent attending would somehow have to be involved in the sped process but “acute disability” isn’t a category that can be used to define a student with social needs. If anything it sounds like the category under which he would receive sped services would be Emotional Disability. So the lawyer is using language to give the child a label that is NOT a disability under IDEA. It sounds like an “out” because it is. The child should never have been in a Gen Ed setting. He shouldn’t even have been in self contained. If his disability was this great he needed to be in a specialized school for students with severe mental disabilities.

Very rare for an EBD label on a 6 year old, I’ve never had one in my classes and I’ve taught some very violent dysregulated kids

[Anonymous]

With abortion being made illegal or severely restricted, this is only going to get much, much worse in about 5 years. Negligent and irresponsible parents, kids with issues that don't make them fit for group settings, and teachers are going to be leaving at even a faster rate than now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With abortion being made illegal or severely restricted, this is only going to get much, much worse in about 5 years. Negligent and irresponsible parents, kids with issues that don't make them fit for group settings, and teachers are going to be leaving at even a faster rate than now.

I’ve worked with these family. For the most part, they never even consider abortion. Often the pregnancies are unplanned, but wanted. However, some of the pregnancies are planned. They want a baby, they just don’t know how to rear children in a way that doesn’t replicate generations of dysfunctional behavior. Unless you want to offer big cash incentives to abort or legislate forced abortions, the legality of abortion doesn’t apply to most of these families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who decided the parent didn't need to be sitting next to this kid on that day? Hope that administrator who approved his attendace without them goes to jail TOO. Seriously. Kid never belonged there in the first place.

It was likely a perfect storm of factors. Just speculating, but here’s some possibilities:
He’s had 5 months of somewhat reasonable behavior while his parents supervised him in class. It seems safe to take the risk because that particular day, mom is feeling unwell and dad can’t take off work at such short notice because his boss has already warned him twice that his absences are a problem. If he goes to school unsupervised and gets into trouble, what’s the worse that could happen? He’s six after all. Mom would come pick him up. Meanwhile, she’ll take some DayQuil and nap until dismissal.

Again, this is just a possibility, but it’s a decision many of us should recognize that we might make under the same circumstances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who decided the parent didn't need to be sitting next to this kid on that day? Hope that administrator who approved his attendace without them goes to jail TOO. Seriously. Kid never belonged there in the first place.

It was likely a perfect storm of factors. Just speculating, but here’s some possibilities:
He’s had 5 months of somewhat reasonable behavior while his parents supervised him in class. It seems safe to take the risk because that particular day, mom is feeling unwell and dad can’t take off work at such short notice because his boss has already warned him twice that his absences are a problem. If he goes to school unsupervised and gets into trouble, what’s the worse that could happen? He’s six after all. Mom would come pick him up. Meanwhile, she’ll take some DayQuil and nap until dismissal.

Again, this is just a possibility, but it’s a decision many of us should recognize that we might make under the same circumstances.

Based on my experience it could also be that parents refuse a more restrictive placement because of the LaBeL and would rather go to extreme measures to keep them in gen Ed.

[Anonymous]

This is definitely at least partly on the school. The placement was totally inappropriate, as evidenced by the fact that the parents attended for the entire day for months!!? In all my years in education I have never seen that. And then to just stop cold turkey? No kid goes from that great a need to no need that quickly, if ever.

Also how in the hell did the school search his bag (as they said they did) and not find a GUN?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is definitely at least partly on the school. The placement was totally inappropriate, as evidenced by the fact that the parents attended for the entire day for months!!? In all my years in education I have never seen that. And then to just stop cold turkey? No kid goes from that great a need to no need that quickly, if ever.

Also how in the hell did the school search his bag (as they said they did) and not find a GUN?

Did they not find it, or did he hide it while they did? Probably the former, but who knows?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is definitely at least partly on the school. The placement was totally inappropriate, as evidenced by the fact that the parents attended for the entire day for months!!? In all my years in education I have never seen that. And then to just stop cold turkey? No kid goes from that great a need to no need that quickly, if ever.

Also how in the hell did the school search his bag (as they said they did) and not find a GUN?

And after bringing bullets to school the week before, it STILL seemed like a good time to dial back? I need to believe there is an explanation that makes this less insane, but the family statement certainly doesn’t help.

[Anonymous]

No offense, but a child bringing bullets to school should be a suspension, I don't care what age.

We don't know the circumstances of all of this and we probably will never know. But what we do know is that a problem had been identified and more extreme measures were taken to try and handle the situation. Based on the measures that were been taken AND his bringing bullets a week before, he should not have been in that classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Who decided the parent didn't need to be sitting next to this kid on that day? Hope that administrator who approved his attendace without them goes to jail TOO. Seriously. Kid never belonged there in the first place.


It was likely a perfect storm of factors. Just speculating, but here’s some possibilities:
He’s had 5 months of somewhat reasonable behavior while his parents supervised him in class. It seems safe to take the risk because that particular day, mom is feeling unwell and dad can’t take off work at such short notice because his boss has already warned him twice that his absences are a problem. If he goes to school unsupervised and gets into trouble, what’s the worse that could happen? He’s six after all. Mom would come pick him up. Meanwhile, she’ll take some DayQuil and nap until dismissal.

Again, this is just a possibility, but it’s a decision many of us should recognize that we might make under the same circumstances.

And this would have been a reasonable set of risks to take, had the parents not chosen to have a gun at home. This is on the parents. No parents of a child with this behavioral profile should have a firearm at home. No way, no how. I say this as a parent of a child with emotional dysregulation due to prenatal alcohol exposure. When my child was the age of the child in this situation, they would easily have tried to get access to a weapon when in an extremely dysregulated condition. Even though I grew up in a part of the US where gun ownership is common, and I grew up around guns, there was/is NO WAY I would ever have a gun in my home because of my child's disability. Children have a knack for getting at prohibited items. The risks are just too great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who decided the parent didn't need to be sitting next to this kid on that day? Hope that administrator who approved his attendace without them goes to jail TOO. Seriously. Kid never belonged there in the first place.

It was likely a perfect storm of factors. Just speculating, but here’s some possibilities:
He’s had 5 months of somewhat reasonable behavior while his parents supervised him in class. It seems safe to take the risk because that particular day, mom is feeling unwell and dad can’t take off work at such short notice because his boss has already warned him twice that his absences are a problem. If he goes to school unsupervised and gets into trouble, what’s the worse that could happen? He’s six after all. Mom would come pick him up. Meanwhile, she’ll take some DayQuil and nap until dismissal.

Again, this is just a possibility, but it’s a decision many of us should recognize that we might make under the same circumstances.

You lost me there. There is no way I would ever have a gun in my home, period. There is no need for a gun. I would also never live in a home with a pool either. No need for that. They are both dangerous and unless you watch your kid 24/7, they are accidents waiting to happen.

[Anonymous]

Again, this is just a possibility, but it’s a decision many of us should recognize that we might make under the same circumstances.

I agree that your theoretical scenario is certainly possible. But I think many people on this thread would, if they had a child who was so unable to function in a mainstream classroom that they required a parent to attend with them on a daily basis, choose not to send that child to school unaccompanied for an entire day. With no practice and no support, it is a recipe for trouble.

But the school’s role is a factor in my judgment, too. Why wasn’t someone assigned to the child in lieu of the parent. Perhaps someone was, but I doubt it. At my school when the aides for explosive students are out sick, they often just tell us to call for help when the situation gets out of control, as we all know it will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it common to have a plan under which parents must attend with their kid? I've never heard of this.

I have never encountered this in more than 20 years of education.

As a special ed lawyer I've seen schools ask for it occasionally, never as an official IEP requirement but something unofficial. We tend to push back on it (if a kid needs that level of support we're generally fighting for them to be placed in a different setting), but it's not unheard of.

So most likely he needed to be in a specialized classroom and his parents were fighting that placement.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of kids in general education classrooms with one to one aides. This tells me that the school knew the kid needed a one to one but was shirking its responsibility to provide it.

Any kid with the potential to shoot someone at school doesn't belong in gen ed with a 1:1. He or she belongs in a therapeutic school or a school within a psychiatric hold hospital. But yes, the administration did not do their job in making sure there was someone with that child every second, if his parent could not or would not be there, until the child was placed in the appropriate environment (therapeutic or psych hospital tutoring). My guess is this kid will now be placed at an inpatient facility for probably the next few years.