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Classroom conflict

The unsettling case of the handcuffed kindergartener underscores the need for parents and educators to work together in the child's best interest.

Portions of the videotape of St. Petersburg police officers handcuffing a 5-year-old girl after her extended tantrum at an elementary school have been broadcast worldwide. The images trigger strong responses, but the entire story is more complicated. While police should not handcuff kindergarteners, the incident underscores the challenges facing teachers dealing with unruly students and no support from parents.

In the full 28-minute tape, a teacher and an assistant principal at Fairmount Park Elementary patiently try to calm the girl. The incident began when the teacher took her jelly beans because she was not listening. Within moments the girl pulled papers off the wall and books off shelves, smashed a plastic or ceramic apple and kicked a teacher. When she arrived in the school's office, she climbed on a desk and tried to hit the assistant principal in the stomach.

The girl's mother created an adversarial relationship with school officials before this incident. Police had been called and talked to the girl on a previous occasion. The mother's attorney said the mother had told school officials then not to touch her daughter and the assistant principal not to talk to her daughter. The mother responded to this incident by hiring an attorney (and later firing him). She traveled to New York City to tell her story on the TV tabloid show A Current Affair.

The broken partnership between the school and the mother made it more difficult for school officials to help the girl, who needs a counselor more than a lawyer. School district administrators do not defend calling police or the officers' decision to handcuff the girl. But teachers and administrators face increasing incidents of violence in an environment where intervention can lead to charges of brutality or to lawsuits. Neither campus police nor resource officers patrol elementary schools, and counselors are sometimes unavailable or ill-equipped to deal with severe emotional attacks.

The incident underscores the importance of parents and educators developing cooperative relationships and working together in the child's best interest. That was not the case here, and the result was unsettling. St. Petersburg police should not have handcuffed the girl, and the department should explain how it will respond to incidents involving such young children in the future. But before police arrived, school officials did their best to calm a troubled youngster whose mother had chosen to become an adversary rather than a partner.

[Last modified April 27, 2005, 00:47:14]