Middle schools in Portland are facing a student behavior crisis and need more dedicated staff to help navigate the issues, according to a letter sent this month to Portland Public Schools’ district leadership that was co-signed by all 15 middle school principals.
Sixth through eighth graders had more disciplinary incidents through the end of March than for the entire 2021-2022 school year, wrote Robert Gray Middle School Principal Lisa Newlyn, who penned the letter. Disruptive conduct, harassment toward fellow students because of race, disability and religion and physical altercations are on the rise among middle schoolers, she said, and school leaders are spending much of their time focused on responding to such behaviors.
They are petitioning for the district to hire at least 15 new full-time employees who would focus on student safety, mental health and alternative approaches to discipline that emphasize mediation instead of a more punitive system of detentions and suspensions. The district’s 12 K-8 schools were not included in the original ask, but would benefit from similar supports, Newlyn said.
“We need help,” she said in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday. “The things that I worry about as a building administrator are issues of mental health and anxiety that are exacerbated by interactions with kids at schools. Microaggressions towards students is something that we are problem solving all the time, along with threats of violence and actual fighting.”
There is no shortage of examples:
· Families at Da Vinci Arts Middle School in Southeast Portland were notified this week of a social media threat made against a group of female students that prompted an investigation by the Portland Police Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security. Parents at the school said some students threatened to bring guns into the school if a group of girls wouldn’t give them nude photographs. The students who made the threat were suspended, according to a letter to the school community from Assistant Principal Margarita Wilson and Area Senior Director Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse.
· A seventh grader at Beaumont Middle School in Northeast Portland described feeling terrified after a classmate held a boxcutter to her neck and threatened to slit her throat during school hours several weeks ago. Her classmate was suspended for a few weeks, but is now back at school without supervision, she told members of the Portland school board on Tuesday, adding that she’s experiencing regular panic attacks as a result. “My school is not safe, not safe while I know people in positions that can help are not helping me and probably not helping others,” she said.
· Police were called to West Sylvan Middle School in Southwest Portland after a fight broke out between students in early March. That follows an incident at the same school in January in which a Black student was attacked by two of his fellow classmates, who pushed a knee into his back, mimicking the police murder of George Floyd.
· Students at Ockley Green Middle School in North Portland walked out of school recently to protest two Black teachers being placed on leave. The situation is dire, eighth grader Otto Shambaugh told board members Tuesday night. “Many classes are falling apart at Ockley,” Shambaugh said. “Over a third of my classes are taught by subs instead of full-time teachers and many of the classes watch movies all day or do nothing that looks like learning. There is little or no structure at Ockley and students aren’t held accountable for their learning or behavior.”
Discipline issues in middle schools are not new but have been exacerbated by the lengthy school building closures during the pandemic, Newlyn said, which came right as the current generation of middle schoolers should have been gaining independence and social skills in their later elementary school years. Instead, they were confined to home and to screens, interacting via social media sites like TikTok and Snapchat, which Newlyn said have fueled some of the current spate of harmful behaviors.
Last year at around this time, it was middle school teachers who spoke up, making an impassioned pitch to the district to add more supports to their schools. In response, the district added 12 Restorative Justice coordinators to middle schools, focusing on those that served the largest concentrations of high needs students.
The principals say that hasn’t proved to be enough.
Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero’s proposed $832 million budget for the 2023-2024 school year, which was presented to the school board Tuesday, includes money for new instructional coach positions at every elementary, middle and K-8 school in the district, intended to help teachers with professional development and curriculum rollouts.
Middle schools don’t want to lose that position to free up money for student behavior supports, the principals wrote in their letter.
“Having to choose between additional instructional support, larger class sizes and school climate support is untenable and unsustainable,” they wrote.
School board members said they were sympathetic to the issues raised.
“Parents and students and staff all over the city know that these kids need more support,” said school board member Julia Brim-Edwards, who said she’d propose amending the budget to support the principals’ request.
It’s not immediately clear where the funding would come from, though potential sources could include state dollars should the final general fund allotment for schools top the current $9.9 billion proposed by the co-chairs of the Joint Ways and Means committee. The district could also choose to tap into its reserve funds, or shift money from other programs.
— Julia Silverman, @jrlsilverman, jsilverman@oregonian.com
