Philly parents are increasingly coming to school to settle student fights, threaten teachers

Student behavior has changed since the pandemic started — more kids are anxious, more act out, more are addicted to screens — educators around the region and across the nation say.

But in Philadelphia, schools are witnessing shifts of another kind: more troubling behavior from the adults. Students’ parents and other family members are increasingly coming to schools not to help calm situations — whether it’s arguments among students or acts of bullying — but to seek retribution, either against school staff, students, or other parents.

At Edison High School, a Nov. 10 fight inside the school escalated when irate family members showed up in the middle of the day. A student’s grandmother was Maced; she then stabbed another family member in the shoulder and a student in the finger. Philadelphia police arrested the 58-year-old grandmother and a 17-year-old student. At another high school, an angry parent came to school to confront a climate manager — and a gun fell out of the parent’s pocket, said Kevin Bethel, the Philadelphia School District’s safety chief.

Family members are not threatening or harming school staff or students every day, Bethel said, but it is “happening on a regular basis, and we’re worried. There’s an increased tension, an increased level of activity from parents. Increasingly we find that we can’t even get the parents to come to the table, and then there’s an expectation that this lands on the feet of the school district.”

Last school year, there were a total of 98 incidents of assaults, threats, or harassment by students’ family members, according to district data. So far this school year, among the district’s 217 schools, there have been five assaults on employees by parents and 35 threats by parents to employees. By the same time last school year, there were two assaults, four instances of harassment, and 41 threats by family members.

And although Philadelphia is seeing a spike in troubling behavior from parents, the pattern is national, according to the American Psychological Association. In a survey of teachers, administrators, and school psychologists conducted between summer 2020 and 2021 by the organization, 42% of administrators and 29% of teachers said they had been threatened by violence from parents since the start of the pandemic. Those rates are “extremely problematic,” the APA said in a policy brief.

Kirby Wycoff, a school psychologist and associate professor in Thomas Jefferson University’s counseling and behavioral health department, said many city families “are in crisis mode. Historically marginalized communities like Philadelphia experience even higher levels of trauma than other communities, and when they do, they may devolve to behavior that’s not helpful.”

With gun violence, inflation, the lingering effects of the pandemic — “these families are stressed out, overwhelmed, and not sure how to get their needs met. It’s not OK, but I can understand where it’s coming from,” said Wycoff.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan last week approved transferring a teacher to another school after a student used their cell phone to alert family members after the student had assaulted the teacher.

“Adults just marched right into the school, ignored the rules of checking into the office, walked right into the classroom, and attacked the teacher [physically],” Jordan said.

The teacher was “absolutely terrified to remain there,” said Jordan, who believes these kinds of incidents are happening with more regularity. It’s not clear why, he said, but a lack of support staff who might better calm young people and parents exacerbates the problem.

“There’s a shortage of all types of personnel; there’s really a need for more non-instructional personnel in schools,” said Jordan.

Robin Cooper, a longtime Philadelphia principal who’s now president of the union that represents district principals and other administrators, has seen incidents of poor parental behavior increasing in the last several years — a double-whammy for educators already often acting as both teacher and counselor to children traumatized by violence in their neighborhoods.

“In the course of carrying out our responsibilities, we should not have to deal with being threatened or possibly physically assaulted,” said Cooper. “Where is our sacred zone? Do we not have one?”

Cooper, and some other administrators and staff, say there’s often an absence of accountability in the district, too.

“Why would I act appropriately if there’s nothing in it for me, if I know I can come up and act a fool and my kid still gets to terrorize a school?” said Cooper. “Our schools are not bad if the supports are there to hold people accountable for behavior. You’ve got to be able to call out poor behavior.”

One district principal said they’ve had their life threatened by a parent.

“And I don’t know a principal who doesn’t have a story like this,” the principal said. “Administrators and teachers have been attacked and assaulted by parents.”

The principal, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said they did not think the district took seriously enough this kind of behavior by parents.

“They tell us, ‘We need to be more patient. We need to be more empathetic.’ The idea is that parents, because they’re our customers, we’re supposed to withstand and take whatever they throw at us without any kind of consequence. They treat it like it’s an occupational hazard — if you work in the city, you’re going to get threatened.”

District spokesperson Monique Braxton said that was not officials’ intent. Staffers can and should report to the district’s school safety office or, when appropriate, city police, if parents’ actions feel unsafe, she said.

“No one is supposed to endure that behavior,” said Braxton. “We have made it very clear that it is unacceptable for school district employees to be subjected to physical violence, or to be harassed.”

Bethel, whose school security force is not armed, said the district is increasingly relying on city police to help calm situations with parents.

“We’re not out there trying to arrest parents. That’s not our goal, but they have to understand the sanctity of the school,” Bethel said. “We want parents to come and support and defuse, to not come with gasoline to act as an accelerant to the situation. At some point we do have to hit a reset button — how can our parents be more involved in our schools, more active in our schools, working with us on safety?”

The answer to the problem, said Wycoff, the psychologist, is “resources, and promoting trauma-informed practices across systems. Until we address those underlying needs, we’re going to be struggling to get into a more safe, healthier place.”