Teachers in Georgia Stand Up for Safe Working Conditions

John McCrary, principal of Lindley Middle School in Mableton, Georgia, liked to boast about the significant decline in discipline referrals in the 2006-07 school year. But many teachers at Lindley say there's a simple reason for the drop: incidents of student misbehavior were being ignored by the administration.

Lindley has had a long problem with student violence, including assaults against school staff. Most teachers will testify to the effectiveness of building positive relationships with the students that in part can help reduce the chances for confrontations in and out of the classroom.

But at Lindley, says Tana Page of the Georgia Association of Educators, "the students run the school. Teacher safety was not being taken seriously. In fact, they were even blamed most of the time."

Page says her office was receiving a call a day about the working conditions at Lindley. The problem was McCrary's over-emphasis on "bonding" with the students at the expense of discipline and safety--to the point where many teachers no longer felt the school provided a safe working environment. By the fall of 2007, enough was enough.

In November, Page filed an ethics complaint against Principal McCrary with the education division of the Professional Standards Commission, citing grievances related to working conditions, including student misbehavior being blamed on staff and gang activity in school being ignored.

In response, Principal McCrary issued a new discipline plan to address these concerns, promising to respond to every teacher concern or problem with any student. Teachers at Lindley, their voices now being heard, are waiting to see how and when this new plan actually unfolds.

--Tim Walker