American Association of School Administrators (AASA)

November, 2000
 

Acts of Aggression - against school superintendents and officials

Ruth E. Sternberg

Recent threats and violent actions against school leaders have some taking precautionary steps in the workplace

It was just supposed to be a handshake. But when James Adams reached out to greet the man who said he was an old friend, he received gunfire.

Larry Shelton, a former employee of the Lee County, Fla., school district--a man, it turned out, with a host of financial and personal problems--took a pistol out of the pouch he carried, aimed the barrel at the veteran school superintendent and squeezed the trigger six times. Then he left the district's central-office headquarters in downtown Fort Myers and turned the gun on himself.

No one else in the school district's central offices was hurt in the Feb. 7, 1994, shooting, which fatally wounded the 58-year-old Adams. The tragedy stunned everyone in the school district of 65,000 students and sent shudders through his colleagues nationwide.

"There weren't any threats," recalls Ande Albert, who then served as the district's facilities manager. "There was absolutely no reason to believe this could happen, and no one could have anticipated it occurring. They didn't know one another. The gentleman was kind of striking against the organization."

Bryce Cummings was more fortunate last year when he encountered the wrath of an angry community member. Cummings, who retired in July as superintendent of the tiny Mooresville, N.C., Graded School District, located 25 miles north of Charlotte, was talking to the district's elementary school curriculum coordinator. Midway through the meeting, the father of a high school student who had been suspended for selling drugs rushed past the secretary and burst into Cummings' office.

"He came in swinging and hitting and attacked me in the chair," Cummings says. "I blocked most of the blows. I finally got to my feet and when I finally came back at him, he ran out making statements like, 'I'm going to kill you.' I had cuts, one above my eye that was swelling pretty bad. I had several bruises on my forearms [and] several cuts on my left forearm from his fingernail."

Contentious Encounters

Sadly, such acts of violence and threats of bodily harm against superintendents and other school leaders, while still rare, dot the landscape today and raise some fundamental questions about safety and security among top decision makers.

Superintendents don't expect their days to erupt in violence, but the climate surrounding school administration seems to many to be perceptibly different these days. School leaders say they have noticed a greater tendency toward verbal backlash, even abuse, from some adults when they disagree vehemently with a decision or a personnel move. Today, a disgruntled employee or a disagreeable parent is almost as likely as a rebellious teen-ager to lash out at the superintendent or principal.

Some assailants are defending their children, whom they believe to have been unfairly disciplined by school officials. Some are employees objecting to work-related disciplinary measures or dismissals. Some are individuals acting out a rage that seems perfectly permissible under the rules of the Jerry Springer Show.

"This whole thing in America today, so many people are living at a level of frustration and they honestly believe that they're never responsible for what they do," says Peter Blauvelt, director of the National Alliance for Safe Schools and former head of security for the Prince George's County, Md., schools. "No one wants to take responsibility for being a poor employee or that their kid screwed up. We've got the stage set for unreasonable acts of aggression."

Over the past year, aggressive acts and threats of violence have shown up in districts of all sizes and in various types of locations:

* In March, Carol Parham, superintendent of the 74,000-student Anne Arundel County schools near Annapolis, Md., received death threats laced with racial epithets after she announced plans to temporarily relocate a group of children from a mostly white school to a predominantly black one while a new school was being constructed.

* During the same month, Rosa Smith, superintendent of the 65,000-student Columbus Public Schools, one of the largest districts in Ohio, received threatening mail and phone calls after suspending without pay two principals suspected of doctoring invoices to fund a colleague's retirement party.

* In May, a teacher in a small North Carolina school district, upset that she had not been rehired, tracked the assistant superintendent to his home and shot at him in his driveway, barely missing him.

* In January 1999, Steve McIntosh, superintendent of the 575-student Iron County C-4 School District in Viburnum, Mo., sat in his office catching up on paperwork on a wintry Sunday afternoon when a parent, accompanied by his teen-age son, barged in and assaulted him. The father was upset because McIntosh had called his home to ask about the boy's possible involvement in an incident in which several students used vulgar language.

"I was caught off guard," McIntosh says. "He sucker-punched me and knocked me down. I was bleeding. He knocked my glasses off. He pinned me up against the copy machine. ... I was scared to death because he was making threats. I didn't know if he was going to kill me or what he was going to do. His son just stood there and watched."

Caused by Stress

Even in the small district of Rainier, Wash., which serves 950 children, Superintendent John Dekker is aware of increasing tension in a town where folks tend to know one another.

"We have not seen the assaultive and threatening behavior from our students, but we have noticed an increase in aggressive behavior of the adults we work with," he says. "In the verbal behavior, it's almost an anger-to-rage kind of behavior."

He blames the increasing burdens people face in their homes and professional lives.

"I think we have more and more families under more and more stress," Dekker says. "Both parents are trying to meet the demands of their workplace as well as issues with their kids in school discipline and attendance. And nobody's home to monitor those things. They have to take time off of work, and that puts them in a financial bind."

Fred Yancey, superintendent of another small Washington state district, the 240-student Mary M. Knight School District 311 in Elma, says he constantly thinks about the effects one of his decisions might have.

"When I deal with a discipline issue, in the back of my mind is the thought, 'Is this going to be the one that will come back in and blow me away?"' he says. "We're way beyond 'Father Knows Best' and the world is happy and cheerful. ... I think in society as a whole, parents have abdicated responsibility in giving control to children at a very young age. They say, 'My kid doesn't want to do that.' Well, what made you give your child that personal power?"

Yancey hasn't been the target of a physical attack, but he is ready. "I keep a bullet-proof vest behind my door," he says.

The shots that killed Adams in Lee County, Fla., weren't fired at him because of any decision he'd made or a matter pertaining to the school district itself. The gunman, who worked as a special education teacher in the school district, was lashing out at someone in charge, says Albert, the former assistant superintendent.

"He was broke, basically bankrupt. We didn't fire him. He quit. He went to apply for unemployment and found he couldn't get unemployment when he quit.

"I don't see this as a matter about violence in school. It's society. It didn't matter that Jim was superintendent of schools. He was the CEO of the organization."

Fearing Fallout

It is difficult to quantify trends in violence against administrators because few surveys have attempted to document all types of incidents. The National School Safety Center, based at Pepperdine University, compiles a list of school-associated violent deaths gleaned from news reports nationally.

The center has logged 269 shootings and other attacks that occurred in schools between 1992 and 2000. Most involved students against students. Some involved teachers. Only six listings described attacks against superintendents or principals.

A school social worker, Charles Jaksec in Tampa, Fla., says he has found evidence of a growing concern about verbal assaults against school leaders (see related story, page 14). Jaksec asked 301 administrators in 191 schools of the Hillsborough County Public Schools, one of Florida's largest with more than 163,000 students, to recall situations in which they felt threatened. Nearly 71 percent cited occasions when parents or guardians threatened them, usually by telling them they would take the matter at hand on to some higher authority. About half of the administrators said they had been the targets of profanity.

Around the country, school administrators, especially those who have encountered threatening situations or been victims of assault, report they now think about the ways their decisions might come back to haunt them later, especially as they deal with an increasingly critical public.

Rosa Smith, who had worked as an administrator in Minneapolis and ebit, Wis., before coming to Ohio, says she always took for granted her role as a front-line representative of the school system answering to members of the public.

"People are always talking about you or maybe might say something that's not complimentary. But I never felt vulnerable. I actually never thought about it very much," she says. "In Columbus, the people here are friendly. They come up to you.

"We went to the movies and this gentleman all but ran down the stairs to say something to me. It was something positive, but it's that kind of thing I never thought about."

Now, Smith has extra security lights at her house. For a couple of months, she had a full-time bodyguard, but public pressure forced the school board to remove the costly extra protection. However, the board hired a consulting firm to study the layout of the central office to make it more secure. A key-punch system now prevents non-authorized people from walking in off the street.

David Larson, despite his 6-foot, 210-pound frame, took to carrying a cellular phone and pepper spray on his nightly neighborhood walks for a time last year after a former employee of the Middletown, Conn., schools, where he was superintendent for eight years, was calling his home with threats. An educator of 29 years, he now directs the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.

"He kind of went off the deep end," Larson says. "He would show up at board meetings.... We installed video cameras and buzzer systems in the entrances of all our (district) buildings."

Some school leaders say they have learned to watch people for threatening body language. "You learn to look over your shoulder," says Cummings, superintendent in Mooresville, N.C. "You say, 'I'd better watch that door.' ... The police chief brought me a can of Mace and I keep it in my desk drawer."

Jaksec, who surveyed the administrators in Hilisborough County, Fla., on their hostile encounters, believes many school administrators take the stresses that come with their jobs for granted. Over time, principals and superintendents tend to forget about their encounters with community members if they don't result in violence. Run-ins with parents and employees often are discounted as part of the job.

Cleveland-based security consultant Ken Trump, who speaks nationally on school safety issues, believes administrators tend to shy away from talking about these events because they initially don't seem serious and because any discussion about spending money to safeguard a district's top-paid school officials often becomes politically charged.

"The public and those within the district tend to look at it as, first of all, their focus is on the children in the buildings," Trump says. "If we do anything to upgrade the central office, we're going to have to do it in the buildings first or we're going to get attacked politically.

"Then there's the false sense of security and denial. It's never happened before. This is an office environment, and if there's anything with an irate parent, it'll be buffered at a lower level," he adds.

Most people view schools as welcoming places, not highly secured fortresses. They can't imagine having to take security measures.

"We're so offended to have that culture in our schools," Trump says.

Julie Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association, says boards of education often have to wrestle with issues involving safety, even as they strive to maintain an open atmosphere that invites participation.

"We are public officers and we should welcome the public. But we should also protect the public," she says. "We don't want to discourage people. We want to encourage them to be an active part of the public schools."

Last year, the school board in Cerro Cordo, Ill., banned a parent from school property after she produced a toy gun and a knife from her blouse during a board meeting. Two courts upheld the district's right to maintain a safe environment by blocking her access.

Albert, former Lee County assistant superintendent in charge of facilities, says he often thinks about the conversation he had with Jim Adams a few days before the superintendent died. The men were talking about building security after hearing of a shooting at a superintendent's home in Georgia.

Adams considered making changes in traffic flow and monitoring of visitors, but Albert recalls him saying, "It's a public building. Don't worry. What are they going to do?"

Today, the Lee County central office has a buzzer that visitors must use to gain admittance. Visitors can't just come in and wander around anymore. They come in through one main entrance and approach an information desk and a receptionist directing visitors.

"You are routed through the building with an appointment or a need to talk to someone specific," Albert says. "You don't just walk through the building."

Every school district employee has a security code, allowing the system to record who enters and exits and when. Many also have been trained in security procedures.

"You need to know who's around when you need help," Albert says. "It's especially true on the weekends. The building is locked on the weekends. You have to have a code."

And he adds: "People need to be careful where they park. They need to park close to the building, especially at night. I go out and go through our parking lot, and when I see people's cars I know I'll call them and remind them about being careful when they leave."

A Call for Training

When he's brought in by school districts as a consultant, Trump advises school administrators to carefully assess basic items such as doorways and traffic patterns.

"Central offices should be treated as any corporate office," he says. "In a larger district, you may want a security person. Visitors should be greeted. A receptionist should call and contact the person where these individuals are supposed to be going. I look at the locations of the higher-risk offices, the superintendent's, the treasurer's, the personnel office. Even just having applicants coming in. Heaven knows who those individuals might be. You might consider having personnel enter from outside and have a separate area or a separate counter."

Kevin Dwyer, who just finished his term as president of the National Association of School Psychologists, believes training in handling conflicts wouldn't hurt either.

"It's always confusing to me that we have skills we teach kids, teachers and parents. We need to make sure people in administrative responsibilities have those same kinds of skills," Dwyer says. "We don't do enough on managing interpersonal behavior and understanding the motivation behind why people are doing what they're doing and ways to change that, ways to address that in a positive way. This whole business of mediation is like an in-service program. And even if it is taught as a course, it's not practiced. It's harder to implement that than the teaching of algebra."

Ed Richardson, superintendent in Chelsea, Mich., takes considerable precautions since the shooting death of his predecessor, Joseph Piasecki, in December 1993. Piasecki was killed by a guntoting high school science teacher during a disciplinary hearing on complaints he had harassed some female students.

As a result, Richardson often conducts personnel hearings away from the school district. "They sometimes meet off campus, at local hospitals or restaurants, to remove them from the office area," he says.

After each personnel matter, Richardson says, "we try to find out who the friends or other supervisors are and have them call the person after they meet, just to ask, 'Hi, how are you? Can we do anything for you?'"

For several years following Piasecki's death, Richardson dispatched police to follow administrators home after they dealt with sensitive personne issues. "We don't do that every tim . Only when we really are concerned," he says.

When a parent recently threatened one of the district's principals, Richardson handled it himself. "I met him on the sidewalk. I shook his hand so I got a chance to see what he was doing with his hands. I got a chance to see his other hand."

Additional security measures include hanging visitors' coats and other outer-ware to ensure nothing is concealed beneath them. "And we make sure everybody else is aware we are dealing with an employee who may be difficult," Richardson says. "If they choose to leave, they can leave."

Radical Self-Protection

Rich Voltz, superintendent of the 1,200-student Sullivan, Ill., schools, finds video cameras an important security investment because the tapes can remain on file for months and serve as a record of events.

"Look at what's happening today," he says. "And I'm only in a rural district in east central Illinois."

But Voltz hasn't been able to forget the day in October 1985 when a former student came to the high school to confront him while wearing a head-to-toe Ninja costume and waving a 3-foot-long, double-edged sword. Unable to find Voltz, who was in a classroom evaluating a teacher, he briefly took a guidance counselor hostage before another teacher talked him into dropping the sword.

On another occasion, Voltz was alone in a school locker room with a junior high school boy who pulled a knife on him.

As a result of these dangerous confrontations, Voltz today believes superintendents should be trained to use and allowed to carry firearms on the job and off. "It's a real radical idea, but an officer might not be there when you need them," he says.

Despite the changing climate in and around schools, most educators who seek advanced certification in educational leadership receive no training in how to handle unstable personalities or diffuse explosive situations involving angry parents. Graduate courses focus on politics and union negotiations, says Terry Orr, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College. But the day is coming, she predicts, when safety and security and mediation skills will be added to the requisite coursework for graduate degrees at schools of education.

"More and more programs require conflict resolution--understanding the dynamics of conflict and how to work through it," she says. "Not only has decision-making brought the community in, but it also involves staff. You've got a lot of different perspectives that have to be negotiated. So the superintendent moves to a much more facilitating role."

Ruth Sternberg, a free-lance writer, covers education for The Columbus Dispatch

When Duty Calls, You Can't Run Away

MARY MARGARET KERR

A colleague and I had just begun an afternoon meeting in the central office when a uniformed school police officer suddenly appeared at my office door.

"Dr. Kerr, you have to get out of here. Dr. Manning overheard a woman in the lobby saying something about a gun in her purse. She is looking for 'that Dr. Kerr who's going to pay for all this.' He and the chief are down there now, trying to calm her down. But she keeps saying you were the one who threw her kid out of school."

I was stunned, but responded immediately. "Of course, Joe. I'm coming right now," I murmured, grabbing my notes and trying to sound calm as I reassured my startled colleague. We hurried to the nearest stairwell and took refuge in a building across the street from the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Rarely Risky

"Why would anyone threaten you?" my visitor asked in disbelief.

"Good question," I replied. After all, a pupil services office hardly sounded like a risky workplace. And most days it wasn't.

Yet parents inevitably questioned school district policies. Decisions about student transfers and discipline often were unpopular. At times, visitors would issue threats, usually for decisions we had not made. So I figured the irate parent in my midst probably spotted my name on a school district form and blamed me for her son's suspension.

I flashed back to previous situations: the angry letter that referred to my baby son; the threats to school board members and administrators during late-night, emotionally charged public hearings; the gunman we apprehended at the district's community meeting on drugs. Was this unusual? Hardly.

Colleagues around the country had shared their close calls with me. "Risk is the natural partner of effective public service," one pupil services veteran had advised. "Your job is to face it, prepare for it and then remember why you are here-to help kids and families."

Applied Advice

To pass the time in exile across the street, I recounted the advice about personal security that Stan Rideout, the school district's police chief, and I had given to our central-office colleagues.

* Be alert to your surroundings--the parking lot, corridors, public meetings and schoolyards. Pay attention to people and what they are doing. Don't be caught off-guard.

* Anticipate, anticipate, anticipate. Imagine a scenario and how you could handle it. Enlist the advice of others. Practice your strategy.

* Plan your exit. Don't arrange your office furniture so that you can't get out quickly. In a heated public meeting, sit near the door.

* Tell close colleagues where you are going. Take your pager and cell phone.

* Don't be a lone ranger. If you suspect a problem, take along another person.

* Don't advertise your whereabouts unnecessarily. Remove your name from your office door. Think twice about listing your name on the building directory; list the office instead. Paint over the name on your parking space.

* Consider security measures for your office, such as visitor and employee name tags, protective clothing for employees in high-risk situations, body alarm buttons that allow staff to call for help, under-counter buzzers that alert security, two-way mirrors, security cameras and controlled entry systems.

* Require the reception desk to announce visitors before they may proceed to an office.

* Plan how you will communicate in an emergency. Ask yourself, where is the nearest phone? What's the access code to use it? Where is the fire alarm?

* Schedule a meeting that might be troublesome in a safer location (such as the school police office or a conference room with multiple exits and security nearby).

* Study your own office if that's where you must meet. Put away heavy paperweights, desk accessories and photographs under glass; they could prove dangerous in the hands of an angry visitor. Hide your purse, keys and personally identifiable information about your home or family. Offer your guest a cold beverage, never hot coffee.

* Most important, learn how to deescalate an agitated person. Practice effective strategies such as honoring personal space, monitoring your body language and gestures and using active listening.

Duty Calls

Recounting this list was comforting. An hour had passed, and I was told by security it was OK to return to my office. There, the familiar pink phone messages awaited me: A principal had called to say thanks for my help. Her meeting with that angry community leader turned out fine. The mother I'd met with yesterday called to apologize for swearing at me. She wanted to tell me things are much better now. She was following my advice.

Another phone slip read something like this: "This parent is very upset. He wants to meet with you today. He wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Can you call him?"

I remembered why I was here. I picked up the phone.

Mary Margaret Kerr is an associate professor of psychiatry and education at the University of Pittsburgh.

Security Experts: Be Savvy to Signals

Security consultants who work with schools to help create safe environments believe administrators need to be as savvy about the danger signs as those working in the classrooms and corridors. Recommendations and cautions from two leading authorities follow.

Security consultant Kenneth S. Trump, in his new book Classroom Killers? Hallway Hostages? How Schools Can Prevent and Manage School Crises, provides this advice:

* A person who might cause harm has no particular "look." Potential offenders don't necessarily look crazy.

* A threat alone will not necessarily lead to a violent act. But the absence of violence doesn't mean there is no threat.

* High-profile violent offenders spend time planning their crimes, Often, a progression of events signals the tragedy. Look for signs of depression and changed behavior.

* Take all threats seriously.

* Learn how to assess a threat: Identify reasons for a threat; note the intensity of the threat; and pay attention to any previous behavior that might indicate the individual is planning a violent act.

School security consultant Peter Blauvelt makes these recommendations for delivering a negative performance review and terminating an employee in his book Making Schools Safe for Students: Creating a Proactive School Safety Plan:

* Get all your facts in line. Conduct a thorough investigation and assemble all material pertinent to the review.

* Select a private site, other than your office, with minimum distractions.

* Consider having a third party present.

* Give the person a chance to respond and present evidence.

* Allow the chance for a written response.

* Notify each employee privately and separately of termination.

* Prepare an informational packet that describes other jobs, severance pay, job counseling, benefits and how to file for unemployment compensation.

* Arrange to meet with the employee once again after informing him, to see how the person is doing and answer questions.

* Call later to check on the employee.

-- Ruth Sternberg

In Hostile Company, Stay on the Move and Fix Your Gaze

DOUGLAS J. FIORE

School leaders have more control than they think over their confrontations with unhappy parents, especially if they apply some communication strategies known to diffuse anger and hostility.

These strategies have gotten me and scores of administrators I have worked with through some otherwise threatening ordeals, which fortunately have not led to acts of violence. In the absence of any hard data, many administrators have told me that they believe these strategies are a major reason why the parent did nor become violent.

When dealing with a difficult parent, it is essential that any nervousness or fear you may feel remain under control. Difficult parents, in many cases, are overgrown bullies, used to making people sweat.

If you consider times when you are feeling nervous, one of the places that this nervousness likely reveals itself is in the shaky, trembling tone of your voice. These vocal intonations are obviously more pronounced when your voice is loudest. Therefore, to compensate for this shakiness, simply lower the volume of your voice when speaking with an angry parent.

Subtleties, such as a shaky quality, become much more difficult to realize at this point. The fact is, many times people who are speaking loudly or boisterously only realize how ridiculous they sound when they have an opportunity to compare their voice with somebody else's quiet voice. Their loudness becomes much more apparent and they begin to feel self-conscious.

Perpetual Motion

Another trademark of a nervous, unsure person involves uncontrolled body movements like wobbling knees and shaking hands. While a difficult parent may rarely make you feel this degree of nervousness, it may occur at times. Telling yourself not to be nervous and to stop shaking only seems to make the problem worse. Consider, instead, increasing other body movements to make the uncontrollable ones less obvious.

For example, while listening to an angry parent I often would put away things that were lying on my desk or I would pace behind the desk clasping my hands as if I was working through an important idea in my head. If these motions seemed inappropriate for the moment, I might jot down a note or just tap my pencil.

While these movements may have appeared rude and uncaring if I took them to an extreme, I always felt that it was better than the alternative of appearing to be nervous with wobbling knees or shaking hands. The goal in these situations is to never let the angry parent see you sweat.

Just as in the case of lowering your voice, the extraneous movement carries another benefit--it may cause the parent to become nervous or uneasy. As the angry parent follows your actions while you move around the room, you may gain some self-confidence. This, in turn, allows you to gradually stop moving, assume your position behind your desk and regain control of a conversation that clearly began with you on the defensive.

A Square Look

A third technique in preventing difficult parents from seeing you swear involves forcing yourself to look the difficult parent straight in the eye. Though uncomfortable at first, particularly if you have been taken by surprise, looking at a person directly gives you an air of self-confidence and self-assuredness.

In my experience, this technique often turned things in my favor and put me in control of the conversation. Note that many parents are much more intimidated by a school administrator than they would like you to believe. Their anger, or the inherent need to protect their child from perceived harm, may lead them to your office with an air of confidence, but this confidence can quickly give way to feelings of nervousness or apprehension if you employ the right techniques.

Looking the parent squarely in the eye is one such technique. This may even cause the angry parent to calm down somewhat. If nothing else, looking a parent squarely in the eye shows the parent that you are listening. Many times, this is the only thing the difficult parent wants from us. The perception that one is not being listened to often transforms anger into rage.

When you use these communication techniques to regain control of a difficult conversation, you appear confident and you diffuse anger. This is a gradual process, but it can lead to a dramatic shift in communication. Once the parent has been heard and feels understood, then the administrator can begin carefully setting the record straight. Other useful techniques can help you effectively maintain the offensive and lead the conversation now that you have already played a little defense.

Douglas Fiore is the assistant dean in the College of Education at State University of West Georgia, 1600 Maple St., Carrollton, Ga. 30118. E-mail: dfiore@westga.edu. A former principal in Indiana, he is the co-author of Dealing with Difficult Parents and with Parents in Difficult Situations and the author of Creating Connections for Better Schools: How Leaders Enhance School Culture, both published this fall by Eye on Education.

Study Examines Parents Who Become Aggressive

CHARLES M. JAKSEC III

While numerous studies have focused on violence by and against students in academic settings, surprisingly little attention has been paid to aggressive acts toward school leaders by parents or guardians.

For various reasons, parents may target a school administrator when venting their frustration, which sometimes leads to verbal or physical confrontation that may affect the administrator's physical and emotional well being.

I recently completed a study of parental aggression toward school administrators in Hillsborough County, a large central Florida school system. My research identified three types of aggression: verbal threats/intimidation, non-contact threats/intimidation and physical contact.

The most notable discovery was that school administrators experienced significant amounts of verbal aggression from parents and guardians. This aggression came in the form of threats, accusations and profanity. To what extent the presence of verbal intimidation negatively affects the work of school administrators remains unclear. Such effects include increases in absences from work, premature exits from administrative positions, career changes and health-related concerns.

Major Contributors

The following factors may contribute to parental aggression or hostility toward school administrators.

* Patterns of family violence.

In much the same way that children learn violent behaviors from their own

parents, parents themselves may have been predisposed to violent behaviors through their own upbringing. These learned behaviors, which may include aggressive resolutions of conflict or challenge, are unfortunately often used by parents when encountering an undesirable school situation.

* Poor economic conditions.

Economic pressures can place great stress on parents or guardians who incorrectly view the school as a source of provisions (food, clothing, health care) for their children. The school administrator, whether at the building or district level, is incorrectly targeted as the reason why the child does not possess whatever it is that the parent may feel is justified.

* Unstable family environments.

Single-parent families, separation, divorce and lack of out-of-school supervision all contribute to parental stress, which in specific situations manifests itself in hostility toward school administrators. The school administrator occasionally must interact with parents or guardians who may be overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising children with little or no spousal or family support.

* Alienation from the school community.

When a parent is uninvolved in school activities and is unfamiliar with school administrators, these individuals may be more prone to react to the school administrator in a negative fashion. The parent who is more familiar with the administrator's personality, role and function may be more receptive and willing to address difficulties that may arise.

* Inaccurate perceptions of administrators.

The parent's perception of the school administrator can determine if subsequent communications are appropriate. The parent who views the school administrator as aloof, arrogant or non-caring may be more prone to communicate in an aggressive, unproductive manner. Parental perceptions, which are often inaccurate, may dictate the parent's level of hostility toward the administrator.

Joe Brown, assistant principal at Monroe Middle School in Tampa, put it this way: "Parents become very aggressive when they feel that administrators aren't listening ... that we don't really hear them. This is unfortunate because we are listening and truly do hear them."

Parents may also become aggressive when they feel their children aren't being treated fairly, he adds.

Greater Awareness

Many other factors may strongly influence a parent's disposition toward school administrators. Parental aggression toward school administrators is a topic not customarily addressed by school administrators. While most administrators have been trained to handle student conflict, they may be challenged to effectively deal with volatile parents.

Just as no amount of research can totally preclude student-perpetrated violence, school leaders, in much the same way, must be prepared to react to parents who act aggressively toward them. Parents will always have issues with those in authority.

Charles Jaksec is a school social worker with the Hillsborough County, Fla., School District and a member of the district's crisis intervention team.

COPYRIGHT 2000 American Association of School Administrators