Christine Handy, who is the head of the Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals, said that junior schools are seeing this more and more.
“Increasingly aggressive behavior towards our staff,” Handy said. And that aggressive behavior isn’t from students — it’s “parents and community members.”
Handy told the Montgomery County Board of Education at a meeting on June 27 that a male parent had entered the personal space of a female principal in a threatening way and had to be kicked off the property.
Handy said that after that, the principal “had to call the head of security for her cluster to help when this parent picked up his child.”
Handy told the board about another time when a male parent told a female director, “I know that you work late.”
Handy said that middle and high schools have full-time security assistants, but “our 136 elementary schools do not have security assistants.”
Handy asked that some of the jobs for new security assistants in the MCPS budget for 2024 be put to use at “certain” elementary schools.
“It is imperative that we prevent our schools from becoming places where visitors can intimidate or endanger our dedicated staff members,” she told board members.
WTOP called the school system for a comment and asked about middle and elementary school principals’ safety worries.
“We’re coming out of the school year where across the nation, there has been an increase in hate or violent incidents and dangerous trends to illicit substances by our youth. Unfortunately, MCPS is not immune to this trend,” said Jessica Baxter, spokesperson for MCPS, in an emailed statement.
The statement outlined actions the school system has taken, including deploying additional assistants to secondary schools, but made no mention of issues at elementary schools.
Baxter also mentioned that the school system, “shared ongoing student, staff and family messages about safety,” and that MCPS had hosted “listening sessions” to hear “various perspectives of stakeholders,” regarding the issue.
“The criteria for security allocations will be based on student enrollment, building square footage, campus layout, considerations for programs, serious incident data, and current use of school-based security staff,” Baxter told WTOP.
Handy told WTOP in an email on Monday that her group had not heard back from the Board of Education about her request.
“Presently, we see a need in some, if not all of our elementary schools, as we are seeing an increase in concerning adult behaviors in visitors to schools,” Handy said.
