ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607090014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Betty Strother
SOURCE: BETTY STROTHER EDITORIAL WRITER
WHO HAS a tougher job, day in and day out, than teachers - who have to help kids acquire the basic skills they need to learn, get their attention, expose them to a basic level of knowledge about their world, get their attention, inspire them to want to learn more, get their attention ...?
Unless maybe it is Child Protective Service workers, who carry the heavy responsibility of ensuring the safety of children and making judgments that if too mild will leave kids at the mercy of abusive adults and if too harsh will unfairly damage those accused.
Both professions are dedicated to the well-being of children, and usually work hand-in-hand. But when teachers themselves are accused of abuse, the differences in their roles become starkly apparent.
Teachers' continued complaints that they dare not touch a child for fear of losing their jobs beg the question of whether efforts to protect children don't actually cause some children harm, when the message is sent that teachers, not the children, had better watch their step in school.
Education professionals close to but not in the classroom say the reality is not as bad as that, and changes in abuse investigation procedures since the early '90s have improved the situation. But teachers do face some professional hazards.
Deanna Gordon, superintendent of Roanoke County's schools, and Marshall Leitch, regional director for the Virginia Education Association for school divisions in the New River Valley, both said the state's law against corporal punishment works well. It bars school employees from inflicting physical pain as a means of discipline, but does not forbid minor physical contact to maintain order. Nor does it outlaw reasonable force to quell a disturbance or prevent injury to people or property.
The state's child-abuse law, though, can be a problem, Gordon said.
"Anybody who does inflict corporal punishment can expect it to be reported as an incident of child abuse. We'd rather have social services investigate it. Otherwise, it might look like we're not reporting child abuse." And no matter how minor school officials might consider the incident, Child Protective Services will have to investigate the teacher.
"The law ... does a good job protecting children from what adults can do to them," Leitch said. But typically, he says, school personnel are held to a higher standard than families, and the consequences they face are likely to be far more severe.
That's because any founded complaint puts the name of the person involved on a state registry, no matter the severity of the offense. Some school districts will dismiss any teacher whose name lands there, to guard against future liability if another incident occurs.
So the teacher can lose his or her job, without due process, over a minor incident.
What higher standard do teachers face, and how can any action characterized as abuse be "minor"?
Parents can spank their kid, a teacher cannot - "and we don't want that right," Leitch hastened to add. "It's too perilous."
But where parents who send a child to his room as punishment might be considered enlightened, a teacher who puts a child out in the hall or pulls his desk to the front of the classroom can be accused of abuse - for isolating a child in "solitary confinement."
Protective-service professionals scoff at that.
Judy Brown, director of Child Protective Services for the city of Roanoke's Department of Social Services, said, "I don't believe they would be founded complaints." Rita Katzman, Child Protective Services program manager for the Department of Social Services, agrees.
A finding of abuse for putting a child out in the hall? "It sounds like there's something missing there. For what? Three days? In a box? Overall, it's very difficult to substantiate a mental-abuse finding," Katzman said.
But Eugene Truitt, director of legal services for the VEA, said: "I can assure you each of the examples [Leitch cited], somewhere in the state has been a founded case" of abuse.
In 1991, a state Board of Social Services task force spearheaded changes in the law, including a requirement that caseworkers - who spend the overwhelming amount of their time working with families - receive special training before they can handle out-of-family complaints.
The changes have helped, Leitch said. "The risk is still substantial."
"There has been some significant philosophical difference over what is appropriate behavior modification" technique between schools and some Protective Services offices, he said. No one wants to protect a teacher who hurts students. But the most frequent kind of abuse teachers find themselves in trouble over is what is called "bizarre discipline," which can be any technique that strikes a caseworker as unusual.
Truitt says about 200 teachers a year are investigated, and about a third of the complaints typically come back as "founded." Among the thousands of teachers in Virginia, that's not a huge number.
But as long as accepted school practices put even a few teachers at risk of losing their jobs, some teachers are going to decide, figuratively, that they won't dare touch a child anymore. And that's not good for kids.
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