Year of Learning Dangerously : From Violence to Teacher Suspensions, Chaos Has Ruled at Isbell School

During 28 years as a teacher in the Santa Paula Elementary School District, Norma Paillette doesn’t remember a year quite as bad as this one at Isbell Middle School.

Insulted, ignored and sworn at with regularity by students, the 63-year-old math teacher also has been punched in the arm by a student and had her classroom trashed at lunchtime, she said.

No students were caught or punished in these incidents, she said, but Paillette was suspended--for allegedly scratching a student’s arm while forcibly returning him to his seat.

“The principal always believes the kids over the teachers,” said Paillette, whose broken intercom prevents her from calling the office for help during emergencies.

The only middle school in Santa Paula, Isbell has been beset by controversy, touched by violence and seemingly besieged by unruly students and rebellious teachers this year.

In March, an eighth-grade boy was beaten on campus; bomb threats and an arson fire have emptied classrooms; more than 2,200 reports of student misbehavior have been filed by teachers, and, capping the disturbing year, the district superintendent was suspended for five days after an altercation with an eighth-grader.

“Things are out of control at the school,” said Michael Marlow, whose 14-year-old son, David, was involved in the incident with Supt. David Philips.

Philips had been visiting the aging stucco school for only a couple of hours on May 27 when the incident occurred. Responding to a disturbance, Philips noticed boys hanging from second-floor windows, he said, and saw David preventing a girl from entering a classroom.

Philips yanked the door open, pulling the boy out. Philips said he grabbed David’s arm to keep him from falling, but David said the superintendent picked him up under the arms and slammed him against a wall.

Philips finished his suspension last Friday and is back on the job, awaiting word from the school board whether he will face further discipline. Teachers said they hope his experiences will make him sensitive to the problems at the school.

“If anything, it makes people realize that Isbell is a very frustrating place to work,” said literature teacher Barbara Myers. “If (Philips) can become that frustrated in that short amount of time, imagine how working there all day can get you stressed.”

Earlier this year, another teacher at Isbell was suspended for showing--inadvertently, teachers said--her class a videotape of an R-rated movie. The 1986 film, entitled “Hell High,” is about demonic students who terrorize their classmates.

Even Isbell Principal Arvid Brommers can’t help but laugh at the irony.

“What a year,” said Brommers, a former Isbell vice principal who is finishing his first year as chief administrator of the 950-student school.

Brommers, a bearded, dapper dresser, has been at the center of the storm. With 300 parents signing a petition calling on him to tighten discipline, the faculty, already on the warpath over the suspensions of Paillette and two other teachers, puts the blame on him for what they regard as a breakdown of order.

“There was no written, coherent disciplinary policy that everyone understood,” said Mike Weimer, an Isbell life-science teacher and president of the Santa Paula Federation of Teachers.

The faculty also accuses Brommers and district officials of waging a “witch hunt” to force teachers to quit, Myers said. Two weeks ago, teachers picketed a school board meeting and voted no confidence in Brommers by a 28-2 margin.

Brommers dismissed the faculty uprising as a power play by the teachers’ union in an ongoing labor dispute. Although Brommers said there have been plenty of student suspensions--he declined to give exact numbers--he said teachers have exaggerated discipline problems at Isbell.

“Some teachers want to punt their students down to the office,” Brommers said. “But punting problem students to others is not the answer. It’s like shooting the wounded.”

Brommers also said teachers “have been complaining about supposed problems which are mostly complete distortions of the truth. For years, teachers here haven’t been held accountable for the way they treated students in the classroom.”

Students contend that teachers are too hard-nosed. “There’s too much discipline,” said Ilene Holder, a seventh-grader. “If you laugh in class, they kick you out of school. In two weeks they suspended me six times for laughing.”

To teachers, the incident between Philips and student David Marlow is an example of a double standard at the school.

The three suspended teachers weren’t given due process, teachers said. Paillette, for example, was suspended for five days and temporarily demoted to yard duty even though school officials didn’t investigate the charges against her, she said. In Philips’ case, the district hired a law firm to investigate the student’s allegations.

“We fought a long battle over these three teachers to get justice and fairness,” Weimer said. “We objected to the way (the suspensions were) handled. There was no attempt to find out what happened. At least the superintendent can now understand how these things can happen in the heat of the moment.”

Brommers, who as a joke keeps the book “Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun” in his office, said he is responding to concerns about discipline by implementing a new policy next fall based on a model at De Anza Middle School in Ventura.

Brommers sent faculty members to De Anza to study the program and also had De Anza Principal David Myers speak to Isbell teachers earlier this month.

“It’s a great program,” Brommers said. “I think our program is pretty good, too, but if De Anza’s is better, I’ll go for it.”

Explaining the De Anza system, Myers said it is based on a six-step program in which “you want the kids to experience the consequences of their decisions, either positive or negative, so they know, ‘My behavior creates outcomes, and I have the power to choose which one.’ ”

The six steps, Myers said, “are a series of contracts and agreements reached very much like in the adult world.” The first step is a reminder that the student is out of line, followed by a warning, then a written contract in which the student agrees to behave. If that fails, the student is sent to a school counselor, then an administrator. The last step is a trip to district headquarters.

“In this system, whatever happens to the kid is a learning experience,” said Myers, whose 650-student school has been selected as a California Distinguished School.

But Isbell teacher Barbara Myers is “absolutely not optimistic” that the program will work at her school.

“There have been no committees formed,” she said. “Nobody has contacted teachers to work on the program during the summer. In order for that model to work, there has to be active participation on the part of administrators who want to work hard. I don’t see that commitment.”

Brommers, however, said a committee of teachers, parents and students will meet next week to discuss the De Anza program, which he hopes “will bring everybody together.”

Brommers contends that discipline at the school has improved, and students back him up.

“Everybody’s calmed down now from the beginning of the year,” said honor student Carlos Magdaleno, an eighth-grader. “In the beginning, kids snapped at teachers: ‘So what if I don’t want to do something?’ Kids know better now.”

Carlos attributes the turnaround to a springtime campus visit from a former gang member who gave an inspirational talk. “After listening to him, all of us started getting along and working out our lives,” the boy said. “You didn’t hear guys saying, ‘I want to get this person or that person.’ You can walk around now enjoying yourself and feeling secure.”

Brommers hopes that kind of attitude carries over to next fall, so he can forget about this year’s problems.

“At least,” he said, forcing a smile, “things can’t get any worse.”