Comment on ‘Teacher-Bashing’ Worries School Workers : Education: Community activists say they mean only that uncaring teachers deserve verbal pressure, but those on campus fear the rhetoric will prompt even more assaults against educators.

When Principal Anita Calhoun heard talk of “teacher-bashing” last week by frustrated community activists, she took it personally.

Calhoun herself was punched in the jaw last month at King Elementary School in Southeast San Diego by a woman angry that her sister’s children had been taken from school by Child Protective Services after the students had shown up in class with signs of physical abuse.

The assault was the third incident since September involving a parent threatening the staff at King, underscoring the danger that school personnel face citywide and that the thinly stretched school police must try to handle. There were 26 batteries on school employees in the 1988-89 school year--defined as actual force used on a person--compared with 16 a year earlier.

Calhoun’s case particularly bothers many teachers and administrators because it brings home the effect of jail crowding and an overloaded legal system on education.

Even though the assailant confessed to an officer, she nevertheless was issued only a misdemeanor citation--akin to a traffic ticket--and told to appear in Municipal Court last Friday. She failed to show up and a warrant was issued, adding to the more than 500,000 such misdemeanor warrants already outstanding countywide.

Educators are finding out that parents and others who harass and threaten them rarely go to jail because of crowding.

“Our people are bothered because the worrisome message we see being sent to the community is that a principal can be mashed on the jaw and nothing happens to the perpetrator,” said Irv McClure, executive director of the Administrators Assn. of San Diego, which represents principals.

They find the message being strengthened by the comments Thursday from black activists advocating “teacher-bashing” if necessary to get improved achievement for black students.

“Absolutely, comments like that make teachers apprehensive, especially since I was just bashed,” Calhoun said this week. “It’s already hard for many of us to get past the hostility and anger we often find when we reach out to parents--we work at staff meetings all the time to overcome this--but I’m sorry to say that this will only make it harder.”

No matter that activists such as Walter Kudumu say such statements are meant to convey only legitimate “verbal pressure” against uncaring teachers, Calhoun and others fear the rhetoric could both embolden other angry parents to violence and put psychological barriers in the way of those teachers wishing to work more closely in the community.

“I think such statements (by community activists) are counterproductive,” said Jim Roache, a San Diego city schools board member and county sheriff’s captain. “A verbal barrage raises defensive barriers and stops open communication. I would not be surprised at all if teachers are worried. . . . They have legitimate concerns when they hear highly emotional accusatory outbursts.”

Calhoun was slugged in the face by the sister of the woman whose three children had been taken from the school by the county’s Child Protective Services. School police reports say the incident escalated from cursing and name-calling to the physical attack.

“We have volatile situations from time to time, but in the past we have usually been able to defuse them,” Calhoun said. In the past months, a vice principal was threatened with violence by a parent, and a teacher was later chased across the school campus by the same woman but was not hurt.

“What upsets my staff and many supportive parents and aides from the community is that there doesn’t seem to be any punishment for these people.”

Until Jan. 1 of this year, almost all cases of battery against school officials were recorded as misdemeanors, since state law required “serious bodily injury” in order for felony charges to be considered. And, since jails are so crowded, the sheriff refuses to take in those arrested for misdemeanors.

The woman arrested for Calhoun’s punching the day after it happened confessed to the incident, according to police reports, saying to the officer, “I knew I was wrong, but I was (angry).” But she was only given the citation to appear in court after officials at the women’s jail at Las Colinas said not to bring her in for booking.

Under a law sponsored by State Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) that took effect Jan. 1, battery against any school official that causes any type of injury treatable by a physician can be prosecuted either as a felony or a misdemeanor.

But officials do not see the change as a panacea.

“We tell our own officers as well as teachers not to be mad if the person is on the street the next day,” Alex Rascon, chief of the city schools police, said. Rascon said a major problem in pursuing a felony charge involves intent, since “the majority of our batteries and assaults are spontaneous, by adults against adults, where parents get hot, throw phones at an administrator or otherwise” attack physically.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Nickel said that, because of the law’s newness, there is no experience in how it might be applied. But Nickel said he expected the law to apply only in a very few cases in which prosecutors believe the intent and seriousness of the assault is “to the level where a judge or jury would believe it deserving” of felony charges and a state prison sentence.

Misdemeanors within the city of San Diego are handled by the city prosecutor’s office, which was ready to prosecute Calhoun’s case Friday if the assailant had shown up in court.

“Realistically, unless she gets in trouble again or voluntarily decides to come in, she probably won’t get served” with the warrant, said Susan Heath, chief deputy of the criminal division.

The school board added armed police and unarmed community service officers at five schools last fall to beef up security because the 34 regular police officers under Rascon cannot begin to cover the district’s 179 facilities. King Elementary has a full-time community service officer, but he was off-campus when Calhoun was assaulted.

“An officer on site definitely minimizes incidents, it does deter and prevent,” Rascon said. “While he is there to keep bad gang and drug elements off, he also can deter parents and others to think twice about attacking a teacher.”

But, although almost all of the district’s 15 high schools have full-time police officers, only 10 of 107 elementary schools have community service officers.

“I personally believe elementaries are the most vulnerable,” Rascon said. “We are doing everything we can to seal them off” without making them armed camps.

Calhoun fears that such vulnerability could increase because of the comments about “teacher-bashing” from Urban League of San Diego education director Jacqueline Jackson and others.

“Is (the term) bashing going to help or hurt?” Kudumu asked rhetorically. “Well, we are the ones over and over who have extended the olive branch, to the point where people don’t take you seriously, . . . If teachers can’t understand that we don’t like our kids being at the bottom, and if they really care about the children, then the things we are putting on them in terms of verbal pressure should be no biggie.”

Calhoun, who has spent almost her entire career at Southeast San Diego schools, said, “I knew this anger and bitterness had been building, but I’m distressed at the language because it tells some parents that schools aren’t doing the job at all, and that really upsets a lot of good teachers.

“Many of us do have high expectations for African-American children, for Hispanic children, and we do work hard. And yes, we need to do better, and we are trying new things, believe me.

“But I can’t agree that you can totally ignore the environment--when you get kids who sleep on the floor at night, have no place to study and no food . . . some of those children are so tied up in anger that it does affect their learning. That’s not an excuse but reality.”

Calhoun, whose jaw is still bothering her more than a month after the incident, said she temporarily lost some confidence in herself.

“Am I still frightened? Well, not specifically of the woman,” Calhoun said. “But I am a little more nervous now, I’m more cautious, and of course my family is a lot more concerned. And you have to work harder now to counter those who say, ‘Who wants to work at a school where this is happening?’ ”