I'm going to leave this here too

These events don't exist in a vacuum, connect the dots.

Me three!

TL; DR —Bennington school admins lick cop boots thoroughly and allow/encourage cops to enforce ‘patriotism’ in the classroom for its teachers. Knowing this prior behavior, not much of a stretch to find out they have contempt for kids by wanting to get them in the correctional system as early as possible.

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I don't know who's down-voting us, but these are just the facts.

It's astounding there are people who still don't understand what's wrong here.

I think we're going to be learning more about the effects of the COVID lockdowns on adolescent development for years to come.

So what are you saying? What does Kiah morris have to do with what’s going on at Bennington elementary?

There's an established pattern of documented poor behavior of Bennington law enforcement, who are being called to handle misbehaving children.

I think this is somewhat problematic.

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“As the police chief, I mean, I certainly have reservations about sending an officer to a school with a student that's experiencing behavioral issues,” Doucette said. “Especially at 5 years old or 8 years old, because certainly we're not going to use force on a young student like that.”

This quote is kind of funny. It reads like the police chief doesn’t want to send officers to the school because he knows they won’t use force on the kids.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would say anything to the contrary. Most literate humans agree that over time the scientific process produces more and better results.

It’s an article about a school struggling with kids mental health in the aftermath of Covid. It looks like you’re trying to make this about bad cops and not the kids.

Not in Bennington Cty, but even my tiny local elementary has had difficulty with students acting out in ways they have not, previously. I never thought I'd be a homeschooler, but damn if it isn't looking more and more attractive.

I'm worried about the kids because of the bad cops.

Powerful article. The challenges are Certainly not limited to Bennington.

If you’d like to read the article I linked, it indicts a Bennington culture of “education” which is quick to “back the blue” at the expense of health and welfare for children, in this case firing a teacher for kneeling during the pledge (after a cop ratted her out and raised a stink) and the teacher also complained about the police department’s policy of having the ‘resource officer’ agressively pursue those students who wanted nothing to do with them. So, essentially firing up the school-to-jail pipeline.

That’s a cop problem and also a criminally negligent and malignant school system problem.

Leaving all the controversial police drama aside, the COVID trauma to families with young children was substantial. It hit low income households the worst and caused a lot of folks to relapse or slip further into addiction and mental illness, igniting all the socioeconomic shit we’re dealing with now. Many of our communities are broken, hurting, and circling the drain.

Bennington is pretty much a Sundown Town. The Bennington Police are known for driving out the Mentally Ill as well.

Conservative Reactionaries attacks on Social Emotional Learning could not come at a worse time. For the ignorant lunatics out there, SEL is the educational technique that Mr Rogers used.

It is ridiculous that the Bennington Elementary School has called the police so many times! The school counselors and school based clinician should be much more involved and a school calling the police to handle every discipline problem suggests an incompetent principal!

Especially for young boys who historically have been taught to just man up and not e we ask for help or process feelings. We wonder why people who are not taught emotional skills have problems with emotion

There's always so much here that's not brought into the articles about schools.

1. There's WELL DOCUMENTED mental health side effects from having had covid. For all ages.
2. Families have to fight HARD to get the supports a child needs. To even get the schools to recognize the supports the child needs.
3. Even if the parents were able to get the schools to realize a student needs an IEP and a 1:1 aid the staffing is lacking SO BADLY at most schools that it's not even an option if it gets approved.

I feel awful for teachers but there are SO MANY aspects to this and it's always strange to see an article like this ignore some of these very real factors. It's going to be a huge problem going forward as it's going to get worse and worse if not remedied ASAP as more teachers/support staff leave Vermomt/the field of work.

My wife and I aren’t low income and we didn’t even have our kid until the very tail end of this all, but it still has absolutely wreaked havoc on our lives in ways it never would have pre-pandemic. Just the amount of time we have had to take off of work due to illness, daycare closures, etc is asinine. In the past two months I’ve had to “work from home” (which is a joke when you’re caring for a baby) or straight up not work at least 2.5 weeks. Luckily my job is understanding and I have a lot of CTO, but it’s not even remotely sustainable.

Add onto that the fact that everything is expensive as hell and daycare is literally as much as our mortgage and it’s a wonder any family is holding it together.

Props to those teachers. I sure wouldn't risk getting punched in the face everyday for 60k a year.

The Vermont public school system employs 1 staffer for every 2.2 students. I’m not sure that schools lack staffing so much as they are not prioritizing hires towards directly working with students.

"Staffing" and "1:1 aids" are entirely different things.

Yes, that’s why I think schools should be prioritizing roles that work with children. I think it’s pretty clear that they hire plenty of people, they just aren’t using them effectively.

I mean, what’s the fun in being a cop if you can’t crack a few skulls?

Yo we are in the same boat! "Work from home (with baby)" is like.... "make jam (no fruit challenge)"

meanwhile daycare is impossible if you're immunocompromised, because it's basically paying for a new virus to come into your home every week

It's revealing! It's almost like there's nothing else they have in their toolbox anymore. There's one tool in there and it's: fuck 'em up.

Yup. Kid started daycare 11/1, by 11/7 he had COVID and daycare was shut down. He went back and it's like a symphony of coughs, sneezes, and sniffles when I pick him up.

Conservatives have no business getting involved with education, especially the reactionary anti-trans/anti-LGBTQ mouth-breathers.

Can’t fathom having children and being addicted to drugs. Maybe just pick one?

r/whoooosh

As a teacher in Vermont I can tell you the biggest issue teachers have to deal with is parents.

This was also an issue before the pandemic, but it seems to have amplified tenfold when it comes to behavioral issues of students. There are certain students who are simply insane or would not have as many issues if their parents had any discipline or treated their children as kids and not as friends.

You read these articles thinking "why call the police on elementary students?!" until you have children throwing scissors at you, cussing you out, or saying I quote "I want to stab you and see your guts come out" as they're charging you with sharp objects. We're trying, all the SEL, parent communications, etc.

If a parent doesn't think their kid can do anything wrong, or isn't involved, you're basically screwed.

Amen.