Federal Racial Discipline Quotas Create Chaos In St. Paul Schools
The city’s high schools have become menacing places where gangs prowl the halls and ‘classroom invasions’ are commonplace. It’s coming to your schools next.
Schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, are out for the summer, and kids are basking in the rare Minnesota sun. As families head to the lake, there’s an overwhelming sense of relief that school is over.
But this is not the usual end-of-school rejoicing, for it hasn’t been an ordinary year in St. Paul. Just days after the last school bell rang, a dramatic uprising of teachers, parents, and school board members ousted Superintendent Valeria Silva.
Silva’s approach to school discipline sparked the revolt. Her policies, initiated in 2010, launched the St. Paul schools on a downward spiral of chaos and violence. In December 2015, Ramsey County attorney John Choi labeled the situation “a public health crisis.” In 2015, assaults on teachers in St. Paul schools reported to his office tripled compared to 2014, and were up 36 percent over the previous four-year average.
Teachers, Students Fear for Their Safety
On Silva’s watch, the city’s high schools have become menacing places where gangs of out-of-control teens prowl the halls, and “classroom invasions” by students settling private disputes are commonplace.
Tumultuous brawls are a fact of life. Today, fights that “might have been between two individuals” can grow into “melees involving up to 40 or 50 people,” according to Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman. Roving packs often attack individuals, and police have had to use chemical irritants to break up what they call “riots.”
Teachers fear for their safety. In the last school year, a vicious student assault landed one in the hospital with a traumatic brain injury. Another was punched repeatedly in the chest, while another required staples for a head wound. One high school has issued emergency whistles to teachers and assigned a guard to every floor. A teacher who was crushed into a shelf in a classroom invasion now instructs her students to use a “secret knock” to enter her classroom, according to City Pages.
Anarchy also reigns at many elementary schools. A teacher caught between two fighting fifth-grade girls was knocked to the ground with a concussion. In the St. Paul Pioneer Press, former fourth-grade teacher Aaron Benner described young kids running screaming through the halls, cussing out teachers, and attacking classmates. “Safety was my number one concern, not teaching,” he wrote.
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