then there’s this happening in Calvert County
Schools Blasted for Violence Against Teachers
Thursday, December 14, 2023 Calvert county Times
By Dick Myers Staff Writer
County Commissioner Buddy Hance was elected on Dec. 12 to serve as the board’s president for the fourth consecutive year. And Catherine Grasso was elected vice president for the next year. Both used the occasion to strongly criticize the school sys-tem for its handling of violence by students against teachers.Grasso listed a series of events she had attended recently and noted, “Not once, when I did any of this, this past couple of weeks, did I ever feel afraid or frightened for myself. I knew if anything were to happen, my fellow commissioners have my back, staff has my back. I’ve never had to dodge a punch.”Grasso added, “I’ve never been pushed, I’ve never been shoved to the ground. I’ve never been dragged around on the ground. I’ve never had somebody get in my face and say, ‘F’ you. You better ‘F-ing’ let go of me. I’m going to hurt/ kill you.’ The teacher wasn’t quite sure when she was on the ground if it was hurt or kill you. I’ve never had to take assault leave like some of our teachers have had to take. And this is going on in our county, and I hear it all the time.“I was at a funeral and a teacher came up to me and she was enraged with the con-ditions that she has to teach under. We’ve lost a lot of teachers. Our teachers go into a combat zone every single day in a lot of our schools. And our principals are not holding the assailants responsible.”Grasso insisted, “We should have zero tolerance in our school system for the ver- bal and physical assaults that our teachers have to take. I’m appalled by it. I’m sick-ened for them because I get to come in a safe environment. I don’t have that anxiety. I don’t have to worry when I walk out the door. My husband doesn’t have to worry. But just imagine how our teachers feel. We
as parents are the rst line of inuence, of
love, of care that we give our children and our grandchildren. Next to us are our teach-ers. They play such an important role. And to have the inmates running the asylum is something I never thought I would see in Calvert County.”Hance took up the call: “We got a very disheartening email from a teacher last
week who is ve years from retirement,”
adding, “She’s contemplating leaving. She outlined, in this very lengthy email, the sit-uation in the classrooms today. And she said it all escalated after Covid. And you need to know, she was an elementary school teacher. That’s one through sixth grade. The students were so disrespectful to her last year, she transferred to a middle school because she thought those students were a little older and maybe they had matured more. What she found out was that wasn’t true. She was involved in a situation one day where there was a school event where the kids weren’t in class. They were allowed to participate in activities. And the activity that she was a part of became overrun with students and out of control. And she was physically, ver- bally attacked, dragged into a corner, and beaten by a student. And the other students stood around and laughed and joked about it. The principal popped his head in there, before she got beaten, and gave her no sup- port.” She reported the principal said, “Just deal with it.”Hance added, “I did contact the super-intendent last night and he said the student that attacked her was disciplined, although he can’t talk about it because, that’s what we do today. We protect our kids and can’t talk about what happened to him. I also asked him what happened to the principal, because I think he bears responsibility because she knew what was coming and he walked out.”Hance noted, “She contacted the teacher’s union and got no response from anybody. No support. She feels like she’s out on an island by herself.”Hance observed, “I will give the new superintendent a little credit. I think he’s trying to improve a little bit over the previ-ous superintendent. But she mentions in her email that you can’t teach a class anymore. The kids are on their phones, which should be banned, but apparently we still don’t have the guts to do that.”Hance said, “This is just horrible. And I tell everybody I’m old and I grew up in a different school system and I just can’t begin to comprehend how we put up with this. In my day your parents wouldn’t put up with it. Apparently today, parents are different. They didn’t take the same training my par-ents took, or they would not allow things to go on in the schools.”Hance praised school board members Lisa Grenis and Jana Post for seeking change, even though they are ignored by the majority.Grasso added, “This is impeding the education of your children and your grand-children. Our youngest son and our daugh-ter-in-Law took their children out of public school because our granddaughter in mid-dle school was frightened to go to school because ghts would break out and she’d get shoved into a wall and come home scared to death. They’re now in private school and they’re thriving and surviving. That’s crim-inal. Our tax dollars pay for this, pay for every darn bit of it.”