Reply to Bethesda Today: Behavioral issues, lack of support creating unsafe classrooms

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[quote=Anonymous]There's a long, in-depth, reported story on the state of special ed in elementary schools and how it's impacting families, students, staff and schools.

It's worth a read: https://bethesdamagazine.com/2025/05/23/behavioral-issues-unsafe-classrooms/

Here's a good excerpt:

[QUOTE]Jones Lane Elementary School fourth grader Raya Anolik doesn’t feel safe in her Gaithersburg school – not after several incidents involving students with behavioral challenges who ran away from their teachers and hurt her or her classmates.

“She has drawn a diagram of every classroom that she is in, and then she’s also drawn on that paper, a diagram of the bathroom and underneath the bathroom, she wrote ‘the only safe place at Jones Lane,’” Raya’s mother Alexis Anolik told Bethesda Today recently.

....

According to Anolik, her 10-year-old daughter has been subjected to harassment and sometimes physical violence by another student who was in her classes. Raya Anolik also has testified before the school board about the experiences of her and her classmates, saying that she had concerns about safety and disruptions to her education.

“I truly believe that MCPS has not only failed the safety of my family and the other kids around, but they are definitely not doing any good for that kid,” Anolik said, referring to the student who she says has harassed her daughter. “Nobody should go to school and feel so out of control that they have to seek out another student and harm them.”

...

Anolik, who has two children at Jones Lane, said she was made aware of behavioral challenges regarding students participating in SESES during the 2023-2024 school year when she served as president of the Jones Lane Parent Teacher Association. Some students were pulling the fire alarm consistently, tearing down bulletin boards and hurting or threatening to hurt other students, she said.

“It was very clear that the training and the resources given to at least Jones Lane [wasn’t working],” Anolik said.

Anolik said she began looking for information and asking MCPS for ways parents could support the SESES program, without much of a response from the district.

Then in October, a student in the program became upset in the school library, pushed Raya and another student into a bookshelf, elbowed Raya in the ribs and grabbed and shook her. After Raya told her about the incident, Anolik said she reached out to Jones Lane Principal Ron Morris, who contacted her and discussed the incident.

“We were told that things had been changed, that they were going to monitor it,” Anolik said.

Later in the fall, the same student left a classroom from a separate part of the building and ran along a hallway yelling for Raya and then grabbing her by the hoodie before teachers could separate them, Anolik said. The student was removed from Raya’s classroom, but Anolik said she still had concerns for Raya’s safety.

In December, the student again ran along a hallway, yelling Raya’s name and entered her classroom, according to Anolik.

“She hid under her desk,” Anolik said. “Her homeroom teacher stood between the student and Raya while it took two other teachers to restrain him and remove him from the classroom.”  [/QUOTE][/quote]

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