Acts of Aggression - against school superintendents and officials

School Administrator, Nov, 2000 by 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.