You’re now a racist if you say schools need to be safer

Under pressure from Obama educrats, public school districts are no longer suspending even violent students; but now, under pressure from Black Lives Matter, they are suspending teachers who complain about not suspending bad kids.

In St. Paul, Minn., a high school teacher was put on administrative leave last month after Black Lives Matter threatened to shut down the school because the teacher complained about lenient discipline policies that have led to a string of assaults on fellow teachers.

Last month, two students at Como Park Senior High School punched and body slammed a business teacher unconscious, opening a head wound that required staples. And earlier in the year, another student choked a science teacher into a partial coma that left him hospitalized for several days.

In both cases, the teachers were white and the students black.

Theo Olson, a teacher at the school complained on Facebook about new district policies that fail to punish kids for fighting and drug-dealing. Like dozens of cities across the country — including New York — St. Paul adopted the policies in compliance with new discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration. The Education Department has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds racial “disparities” in suspensions and expulsions, arguing such disparities have created a “school-to-prison pipeline” for African-Americans children. The agency claims such disparities are the product of racism in schools.

“Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt?” Olson wrote. “Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology.” 

Complained Olson: “Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, we’re screwed, just designing our own classroom rules.”

For these mild opinions, Black Lives Matter called Olson “a white supremacist” even though he had once marched with the group. Two days after Black Lives Matter met with the St. Paul school superintendent — and agreed to call off its protest — the 10-year veteran teacher was put on leave.

The world has gone mad.

To lower suspension rates, St. Paul tied principals’ bonuses to discipline stats. Suspensions are down, but assaults have explode by 62%. In 2015 alone, 14 students had to be arrested for attacking school officials. Even the liberal Minneapolis Star-Tribune is drawing a link between the hug-a-thug policies and recent thuggery: “St. Paul school officials should be questioning whether recent changes in disciplinary policies have, in fact, emboldened some students to act against teachers.”

An alarming number of other school districts are coddling violent kids, while punishing the teachers they attack.

In February, a Colorado teacher sued Thompson School District for firing her when she called the police to report death threats from a 13-year-old student. Carrie Giesler claims superiors warned her against documenting attacks by the boy, who allegedly punched her in the ribs and broke her thumb. “I’m going to kill you, bitch,” she said he told her one day. The district discouraged punishments, she says, after adopting “restorative practices” whose goals, according to its website, are to “reduce suspensions and expulsions (and) reduce (the) number of discipline referrals.”

Last month, a 16-year-old high school student in Syracuse slugged not one but two teachers in the mouth after they asked him to put away his phone, something Obama educrats say is a big no-no. The Education Department states that even if the only reason a school happens to punish more black students for unauthorized “use of electronic devices” is because blacks actually “are engaging in the use of electronic devices at a higher rate than students of other races,” it can still be liable for discrimination under so-called “disparate impact” theory.

A recent survey of 830 Syracuse teachers by the New York State United Teachers union found that more than a third say they’ve been assaulted at least once in the classroom, with more than 70% of victims saying they’ve suffered cuts and bruises or broken bones. Overall, two-thirds of teachers say they fear for their safety, and 43% complain their schools are no longer committed to protecting them. As a result, nearly half say they’re “seriously considering” quitting.

Most teachers blame the district’s new code of conduct. “Negative student behavior is being tolerated at the expense of safety,” a local union spokesman said.

In New York City public schools, classroom assaults have become so common that parents last week filed a negligence class-action suit against the education department, which last year adopted “restorative practices” in lieu of suspensions. The complaint says the department “refuses to discipline or transfer” violent classroom bullies.

“New York City’s public schools are in a crisis of school violence,” plaintiff Families for Excellent Schools said, adding that “2015 was the most violent year ever in the New York City public school system.”

What’s happening here is emblematic of a national trend. The American Psychological Association calls student-on-teacher violence “a silent national crisis,” and recommends schools prepare to replace teachers who leave the profession “prematurely.”

In fact, national data show assaults on teachers are on the rise after several years of steady decline. A 2015 report by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 6% of all public teachers have been physically attacked by a student — the highest rate ever surveyed by the agency.

“Federally promoted discipline practices are wreaking havoc in schools,” former Education Department civil-rights attorney Hans Bader said. “Students who are threatening or engage in fights deserve more than a mere talking to.”

Yet even as Obama’s national school discipline policy turns classrooms into war zones, 22 Democrat senators last week asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to increase the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by almost 30% so it can better enforce this insane policy.