Local mommies concerned about violent students

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At the Athens School Board meeting on Tuesday evening, four mothers of Lynch Bustin Elementary School students expressed concerns about behavioral issues within the second grade class.

The mothers took to the microphone during visitor comments and shared that they collectively believe a fifth third-grade teacher should be added to Lynch Bustin for the 2024-2025 school year.

They noted that there are currently 87 second graders at the elementary school and that class sizes are at an average of 16 to 18 students each.

There are currently five second grade teachers at Lynch Bustin, but the students will be condensed to four third grade teachers for next school year.

Inside the classrooms, behavioral issues have been occurring, leading parents to be concerned about how well four teachers can handle the class next year.

The mothers stated that behaviors in the classroom by other students such as explicit explosions, desk throwing, foul language, refusing to do work or follow classroom rules, physically throwing objects, knocking over furniture, and assaulting others have been vocalized by their children to them.

One mother stated that the current second grade class are “Covid pre-schoolers” as they have missed out on important skills that are learned early on in life.

“While they were supposed to be learning how to interact with each other, how to share, how to sit and listen, how to make word sounds, they were forced to be six feet apart with their faces covered and not to play with their friends,” she said.

She stated that the second grade class are emotionally and educationally far behind where they should be and that the majority of the class is below grade level from the start of the year. (Probably mainstreamed tards.)

The mother added that although they have had many great experiences this school year and have had hardworking teachers, her son and his classmates have still experienced daily disruptions in the classroom.

“At this point it’s second nature that they (the students) just have to leave the room while that is being taken care of,” she said.

She added that after having a conversation with her son, he stated that he could not give an exact number of how many times he has had to leave the classroom due to behavioral issues.

“They have experienced so much beyond their years that it’s beyond their comprehension,” she said. “They don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Having 23 plus kids to a class (next year) is detrimental to the work that has begun,” she continued. “As you are running the ratios for next year, please take into account the high acuity of this class.”

Another mother stated that her second grader comes into school in “survival mode.”

“Behaviors that my son sees on a daily basis are disruptive to everyone’s learning,” she said. “To put it frankly, this class of students have struggled with properly being in a classroom.”

She noted that without a fifth teacher to assist this class of students next year, these problems will continue. (More staff will not fix the problem of ill-behaved sprogs.)

“This will not only increase the class size, but it will increase the behavior students to almost unmanageable numbers for a teacher,” she said.

An additional mother stated that over the past couple of years, her daughter has become increasingly frustrated with her classmates and the constant distractions that come along with the behavior problems that occur on a daily basis.

She noted that after serving as a substitute teacher for the last two years, she has seen these behavior problems first hand — which have carried over from the students’ first grade year.

“Teachers have had to been pulled from other responsibilities for extra coverage,” she said. “My child went from loving school to dreading it. She said that it just isn’t fun like it used to be.”

She added that due to teachers having to evacuate the classrooms for behavioral issues, the well behaved students do not get the attention they deserve.

“I believe this grade is in crisis mode,” the mother said. “And the second grade teachers have done so much this year to try and re-train the behaviors. They have made progress and I would like to see that continue. I think another year of a smaller class size will be necessary to do this.”

In addition, the mother read aloud a letter from her daughter that she addressed to the school board as she wanted to speak out about the classroom behaviors.

“The kids are loud and distracting, more kids will make it worse,” the daughter said. “My teachers spend so much time getting kids to listen and I don’t like when my teacher gets upset.”

Another mother became emotional as she shared that her son has not only witnessed the bad behaviors, but has been a target of some of them.

Following this, Athens Superintendent of Schools Dr. Craig Stage thanked the mothers for speaking at the meeting and expressing their concerns to the board. He then shared his thoughts on the behavior issues and the plans for class sizes next year.

“I’ll be honest, nothing this year has been finalized or planned so I’m a little concerned where all that information is coming from,” he said. “I know that it is anticipated that we typically have bubbles of classes and typically third grade we do increase the class sizes.”

Dr. Stage shared that he is currently looking at class sizes of 14 to 16 students for the third grade class next school year.

“I know that this an extremely difficult class,” Dr. Stage added. “You have to give us some time to maybe address the issue, while typically what we do is plan for that.”

“There’s a lot of other supports we do as well just outside of just adding a teacher,” he continued. “We understand what is going on in this classroom and this grade level is extremely challenging. It’s becoming notorious because it is talked about often.”

The Athens Superintendent stated that the board will look into these concerns and find alternatives.

“I don’t want to simply say no to you guys and I don’t simply want to say yes to you guys,” Dr. Stage said. “The picture is bigger than just adding a teacher, in my opinion.”

“Small class sizes are great and wonderful and if we can do it we will, but I think we might miss the root cause of the issue,” he continued. “So, it might be adding a teacher and/or there’s a lot of things that we really have to drill down to.”

Dr. Stage noted that the board has time to discuss these concerns before the 2024-2025 school year begins in August.

Following this, Athens School Board Vice President Kathy Jo Minnick questioned if this was the district’s first time hearing about violence in the classroom — to which Dr. Stage answered “No, we have dealt with this all year.”

“So it’s April, we started school in August, has any other board member heard anything?” Minnick said in response. “I’m sorry, but this is something that should have been brought up. I feel for these mothers. If we started school in August and we’re just hearing about it now in April that there’s been issues all year...”

Dr. Stage then stated that the district has been addressing the issues all year and have been working with it.

“We are not ignoring this issue, I want to make that very clear,” he said. “We address it every single day.”

“I knew nothing about this and I understand that they are handling it, but it’s getting to the point where we are almost done with school,” Minnick said in response.

Minnick then encouraged the public to send a letter and/or email to the Athens School Board in the future to address these concerns to everyone at once.