Two teachers in the Rutland City Public Schools system who say they suffered injuries at the hands of students filed grievances with the administration, according to attorney Jeff Fannon with the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association. The Rutland Education Association submitted a third complaint regarding what it views as an unsatisfactory response from school administrators.
The unfair labor practice charge, which alleges the administration retaliated against teachers after they made complaints to the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is before the Labor Relations Board.
Grievances are adjudicated between the administration and the union or the employee filing the complaint. Fannon said the process is designed to allow the parties to have a discussion and take steps to resolve the dispute themselves. Sometimes they find common ground, he said, but in this case the city school administration has contested the allegations.
“We’re all fairly stunned by the school’s response to all of this,” said Fannon. “Blaming us for student-on-staff violence is not helping anyone.”
In a news release recently, School Superintendent Mary Moran said the union’s complaint to the labor board contained “numerous misstatements and fallacies regarding how Rutland City Public Schools has addressed and is currently addressing the safety concerns of all staff and students in our schools.”
Moran said in an interview that the school has taken steps to address teachers’ safety concerns and that the school district is providing more specialized training for teachers and para-educators.
“The assertion that we’re not attending to this, not doing anything about this, is simply not true,” she said.
She also pointed out the district has day programs for children with emotional and behavioral needs. The majority of incidents have involved children with special needs.
In October the school board denied a grievance filed by the teachers union alleging that a new safety directive requiring employees to wear closed-toe shoes was a form of retaliation. The union felt it was inappropriate to include such a measure in a safety protocol responding to complaints of student-on-staff violence.
The school board’s decision said the “REA did not establish that such a directive, encompassing all district staff across all buildings, was in any way retaliation at all, and that the timing of the shoe directive was irrelevant to the REA claim of retaliation.”
The school board is the third stop for a grievance, if discussions with the administration fail and the superintendent denies the complaint.
“We issue the decision of the board based upon the facts presented at grievance by both parties,” said Dick Courcelle, president of the Rutland School Board. The board’s decision can be appealed to an arbitrator.
According to Rutland Education Association President Ellen Green, the board also denied two grievances by teachers who said they were injured in the schools.
Fannon said those grievances deal with related issues of student-on-staff violence but that he couldn’t discuss the details. Those two grievances weren’t made public.
Fannon said an arbitrator chosen by the American Arbitration Association would render a final binding decision on all three most likely early next year.
VOSHA investigated staff safety at Rutland’s Northeast Elementary School from August 2015 to January of this year and found 71 serious incidents during that period. VOSHA said “staff were exposed to the hazard of workplace violence by physically and emotionally challenged students.”
VOSHA recommended that teachers exposed to recurring injuries or attacks be separated from the student and offered counseling; that management affirm its commitment to worker safety; and that a “low-stimulation” environment for volatile students be made available, which the school has already done. If a para-educator or teacher cannot be separated from the offending student, VOSHA recommended the use of personal protective equipment such as a catcher’s vest, shin guards or arm protection.
Linda Taft was a para-educator at Northeast for more than 10 years. She said she left after experiencing severe anxiety and blood pressure spikes as a result of ongoing work with an emotionally challenged student. Taft said her appeals to administrators to have the student placed with another teacher or in a different setting went unheeded.
“I just don’t think they know what to do,” said Joanne Earle, a para-educator at Northeast who is on leave due to illness. “They’re not equipped to handle children with such severe disabilities.”
Fannon said the grievances and filing with the Labor Relations Board are both attempts to push the administration to address the issue in a constructive way. “It’s all by way of saying, ‘Work with us. We don’t want this problem any more than you do. How do we work together to stop it?’”
