Recent fights lead to questioning of protocol

The school environment is supposed to be one of learning and peace, yet there’s always that time of the year when fights start to break out. Last week was Westside’s time with four fights in one week, as well as one this week already. While each fight was broken up, they were all handled differently, which begs the question, does our school have a procedure for breaking up fights?

We wanted to find out. Throughout this week, the Wired staff has surveyed teachers asking if they knew about any sort of protocol or policy regarding how to break up a fight. Surprisingly, out of the ten teachers surveyed, only three had known about any sort of procedure. Of those three, no direct training or information was given, they had only read about it in the Certified Staff Handbook discipline section. This section states, “An employee of the District may use reasonable physical force against a student only in self-defense, to protect other persons, or to protect District property.” Although most of the teachers interviewed don’t know of any procedures to restraining fights, all of them said they would intervene.

The only formal training in the building is Mandt training. Mandt training involves learning about levels restraint and how to separate violent students. It’s purpose is to teach staff the proper way to handle a situation when a student is endangering themselves, or others.

Westside has a team of around five to six adults in the building at a time who are Mandt trained. The program is one day of restraint and seclusion type of training. The training teaches the trainees how to be safe with people that may need help or assistance. Student violence is not the purpose of the training but the program could be used in the situation. It teaches how to separate students physically if necessary.

“The program teaches the de-escalation of behaviors and situations,” Assistant principal Jeff Wagner said, “Safety is most important.”

While the Mandt training is in place, its primary purpose isn’t for fights according to Wagner. It’s mainly meant for those students who are at-risk of endangerment. Wagner believes fights can be broken up and prevented by the students.

“Any time dealing with behavior, rules, culture, climate, our student body has a big responsibility in that also,” Wagner said. “I think students that video tape it and post it, and broadcast it should bear some fault or some burden. […] If that’s the culture they want to have, then that’s unfortunate. I think we do have some students that intervene, that break it up and report things so you can stop those things. Unfortunately not everybody feels that way and I would hope as a student body it’s concerning to students also. Not only for safety reasons but also for the perception of your school and our student body.”