Woodland Hills Teachers Assaulted By Elementary School Students

WOODLAND HILLS (KDKA) -- Teachers getting assaulted in the classroom is an all-too-common story.

But it usually doesn't involve the teachers of young children -- until Woodland Hills.

"Eleven different teachers have reported being assaulted in some manner by students in the building," Woodland Hills Education Association president Adam Forgie told KDKA's Jon Delano on Friday.

Forgie confirmed that students from kindergarten to third grade in the Edgewood Primary School have bitten, scratched, kicked and thrown chairs at their teachers.

And it's impacting the classroom.

"Teachers have been struggling to get what they have to do to the other remaining kids in the room," Forgie said, "and that's what their concern is. Number one priority is making sure that students are safe and being able to teach them."

The teachers union has filed a grievance with the school district, asking for a disciplinary committee with a plan that works to stop these assaults.

Woodland Hills School superintendent Alan Johnson says the district has confirmed the assaults.

"There were an unusual number of incidents where staff members were subject to physical injury from a student," Johnson said. "Our understanding is that injuries were not severe, but they were recurrent."

The Woodland Hills School District has put Principal Reginald Hickman on leave and put in place a new acting principal.

"We became concerned that there were some potential issues that weren't being addressed appropriately, so as of today we have put a new acting administrator in charge of Edgewood Primary," Johnson said.

They're also adding some classrooms so they can reduce the number of students in some rooms, and they're giving some teachers another adult in the room to help out with the kids.

Johnson says this is a product of a changing society.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that there are young, very young children, sometimes kindergartners, sometimes before kindergartners, that are entering school with some serious emotional needs, serious social emotional issues," Johnson said.

He says they're also looking at individual students to see if some of them may need a special type of attention that they're not really equipped to provide in that building.

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