Teacher outcry leads to tougher policy

Terrebonne Parish students who commit assault or battery on a school employee will to have to appear before the full school board for re-admittance beginning this school year.

The school board unanimously approved the measure at Tuesday’s meeting. The rule also applies to students who serve out their time at an alternative school for a gun violation.

Under the new policy, the board will get input from the expelled student’s parents, school administrators, counselors and teachers before making a decision.

After several attacks during the 2007-08 year in which the perpetrating students were allowed back on campus, the matter gained urgency among teachers and the board.

“We’ve got to protect these people at school,” said board member Clark Bonvillain. “Right after the incidents at Evergreen, we had another incident at Ellender where the guy tagged the assistant principal over there.”

Two of the three students involved in a melee at Evergreen Middle School in March were allowed to return to school to finish LEAP tests before being arrested.

Russell Triche, who has taught 8th grade math at Evergreen for 12 years, spoke before the board to thank them for a rule designed to stiffen penalties against students who attack teachers.

“The teachers there were starting to get almost like a fear factor,” he explained. “We were wondering when another teacher was going to get jumped by a student.”

Triche told the board that over the years there have been nine such incidents involving eight students, but no assault and battery charges were ever filed.

Unless a School Resource Officer (SRO) witnesses the attack or collaborating witnesses came forward, assault charges were not filed, according to board member Ricky Pitre.

When pressed by board members, school superintendent Ed Richard Jr. said there was no policy against teachers individually pressing assault charges against students.

One teacher who did was Kathryn Miller, an adaptive physical education teacher at Evergreen for five years. She was attacked twice by the same student within a week last August.

“He should have been expelled that day (of the first attack),” she said, “and they let him back on campus the next day. I went to the police the next time to file charges, but the charges didn’t stick because he was a special education student. That’s how the system goes.”

Bonvillain hopes other school employees follow Miller’s example if law enforcement does not pursue charges.

“I don’t know what you call assault if that’s not it,” he said. “We should follow up on it and take whatever drastic actions necessary to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”

One proposal being floated is adding audio recording devices in schools buses and installing more surveillance equipment on school campuses.

“The School Resource Officer is not going to be at every incident,” reasoned board member Roosevelt Thomas. “So if you pull that tape, (it) is going to tell you what happened, who was the aggressor, was it intentional, was it non-intentional. That type of stuff will be helpful.”

Added Pitre, “If students know there’s a camera that can see what they’re doing, it’s going to be a different situation at the school.”

For victims such as Miller, having the new policy strongly enforced will be the biggest deterrent.

“I think this policy is going to prevent this from going on,” she said. “I think it’s going to help us be able to have a say so, and if (students who have attacked teachers) come in front of the board, the board is going to be able to hear the teacher’s side plus the student’s side.”