Officials are noticing a rise in incidents such as bullying and teachers being assaulted by students happening both in Washoe County and nationally.
They're saying the biggest factor in Washoe County resulting in these instances is being an underfunded and under resourced school district. They say the increase in these problems we're seeing in schools could be caused by the pandemic because of the impact it had on the mental health and wellbeing of young people.
Experts say it's causing residual effects on student behavior. They also say bullying stems from a compound of issues such as the pandemic resulting in under socialized students, large class sizes and under staffing in schools.
Calen Evans, the President of the Washoe Education Association says, "We have a lot of the issues that are leading to more frequent occurrences of behavior because we're trying to monitor and make sure that all of these students have the resources, they need but we don't have them in our school district."
He says bullying isn't just a problem for schools to solve, they need the community to be involved just as much as the educators and school district leaders. "We need to start looking at how are we using the resources that we do have in the district in different ways, meaning shifting our priorities and making sure that student behavior and mental health are one of our top priorities."
Experts say teachers being assaulted happens frequently in all grades. Making teachers feel unsafe in their classrooms, even more so when the same student has to rejoin the class after the incident.
Evans explains that "A lot of times they're back into the general education classroom and teachers don’t necessarily feel safe because there could be incidents of violence towards students to students or students on teachers that are reoccurring from the same student."
Evans also mentions a driving factor for bullying could be the lack of socialization for students the pandemic brought on. But he says bullying in general has been an issue for a long time. "I think everybody should be speaking up. Students, educators, parents everybody who has a vested interest in public education needs to be speaking out on these issues." Adds Evans.
Officials tell us of these issues within schools isn't going to be one solution solving all problems. It’s going to take work from all sides. Evans explains "There are so many factors that are hindering our school district because of the lack of funding and resources, we struggle in terms of just a general culture, right? a general culture and environment of learning at our schools." He also mentions the better relationships educators and adults in schools have with students, the better they'll be able to help students feel safe.
