Schools to crack down on violence, revise student discipline policies in Clarksville-Montgomery County

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – In response to an uptick in violence at schools, the Clarksville-Montgomery County Director of Schools Angela Huff announced this week the district will crack down on violence and revise their discipline policies.

At Tuesday’s School Board meeting, Huff said the school system had received feedback from families about “the increasing level of incivility, disrespect, anger and violence of both students and adults” at schools.

Recognizing an uptick

Huff said the problem has been reported across all schools, and she particularly noted last week’s assault of Glenellen Elementary Principal Emily Clark during a meeting with a parent.

That parent, identified as Tandrea Laquise Sanders, has since been charged with assault.

“I have to admit that in almost 38 years in public education, I cannot ever recall a parent physically assaulting an employee,” Huff said Tuesday.

While stating that the overall uptick corresponds with a national trend, Huff said the urgency to address the issue locally has reached a head.

“There are headlines about this crisis from across the nation, and we are at a critical point to address this in our own community,” Huff said.

And there have been several headlines about the violence locally: several students were charged this year with making threats against schools, students have been found with guns on campuses, and vandalism inspired by TikTok challenges resulted in $20,000 worth of damage to school property.

“Let me be clear, no student or employee should ever have to go to school or work in fear of their personal safety. We’ve had comments from parents throughout the school year about students and their safety. And so I want to be clear that that is not the expectation – that students or families or employees should fear that,” Huff said.

How bad has it gotten?

After a fight between students at Kenwood High this year ended in the deployment of pepper spray, Clarksville Now requested data about the frequency of fights in schools.

Based on numbers starting with the 2019-20 school year, the discipline log entries for this year did not appear to reveal an increase in fights. In fact, the numbers appeared to be on par.

However, when asked for updated totals, CMCSS Communications Director Anthony Johnson said searching the discipline log entries with the keyword “fight” would not result in an accurate picture of what’s happening.

“There are other keywords that could have been used by administrators that weren’t captured. Additionally, there could have been log entries that weren’t an actual fight but had that word in the description (e.g. ‘he said he was going to fight me’ or ‘student X yelled ‘FIGHT’ across the cafeteria’),” Johnson said in an email to Clarksville Now.

Therefore, there’s no real way to gauge just how severe the situation has gotten.

“There is not currently a way to get accurate data pulling from keywords that does not require an extensive manual review of each log entry. However, our technology and instruction and curriculum departments are working towards transitioning to a new system that will help to provide more accurate data beginning with the 2022-2023 school year,” Johnson said.

More transparency

Huff said that along with organizing meetings with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and the Clarksville Police Department, the district plans to address privacy laws that prevent parents of students that have been victimized from knowing the outcome of discipline for the offender.

“Because of federal and state privacy laws, I know it can be frustrating when victims and their parents can’t know the school-based consequences for a student offender. However, as a district, we have listened to stakeholders, and reviewed feedback over the past several months, and will be proposing changes to the Student Code of Conduct based on our community input, and changes to state and federal laws,” Huff said.

“Additionally, I want to ensure that we partner with law enforcement to help all stakeholders know their rights if they’ve been a victim of an assault,” Huff said.

At next week’s School Board meeting on Monday, May 2, the district plans to present the revisions to the district’s Student Code of Conduct for next year. While Johnson could not comment on specifics about the changes, he did tell Clarksville Now he anticipated the concerns being addressed.

Huff said CMCSS has been pushing for the resources to address the problem.

“As I mentioned a few weeks ago in the 2022-23 budget, we have proposed additional social workers, counselors and psychologists as well as additional supports for alternative school and other student support programs as we address these challenging behaviors,” Huff said.

“So what I know, in my soul, is that we are stronger and better when we all work together. So I am looking forward personally to what we can accomplish as Clarksville-Montgomery County and as a school system as we do this together,” she said.