A Texas school administrator severely injured by a student is calling on Governor Greg Abbott to make changes to the state’s education code.
Candra Rogers, assistant principal at Collins Intermediate School, was airlifted to a Dallas hospital on Aug. 15 after a student threw a wooden hanger at her, ABC reports. Rogers said a behavioral teacher called for help in her classroom after a student attacked a classmate. When Rogers arrived, she said the alleged assailant was still “irate” and that the room was “ransacked with overturned furniture.”
“I knew I had to be as calm as possible, and I spoke lowly and slowly so as not to enrage him any further,” she recalled.
Rogers said the student threw multiple chairs at her and another employee but neither was injured. The student then threw a wooden hanger at her, hitting her in her right eye and knocking it out of its socket. Rogers underwent surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital where doctors had to “re-insert” her eye. However, they expect her to be permanently blind.
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“I will have to have an additional surgery to repair my eyelid, and because doctors are believing my blindness to be permanent, removing my eye may have to be an option,” Rogers said. “I’m still believing God for a miracle for restoration of my sight.”
The student was immediately detained and the incident was referred to the Navarro County District Attorney’s Office, according to Corsicana ISD. The student was released to his parents and has been barred from campus. Corsicana ISD said it expects the DA’s office to handle the matter through juvenile court.
During a press conference Tuesday, Rogers called on Governor Greg Abbott to update the Chapter 37 discipline code of the Texas Education Code, noting it must take into account “the mental, social, and emotional well-being” of students and that “no teacher should fear being in a classroom with an aggressive student.”
Rogers also called on Abbott to allocate some of the state’s $32 billion surplus to schools.
Michigan Educators Call for Increased School Safety Funding
Educators in Michigan are also calling on state leaders to increase school safety and mental health funding after it was reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars, Fox reports.
According to Bridge Michigan, the state cut Section 31aa funding by $301.5 million. Districts have largely used those funds to expand mental health services and add security technology to buildings.
“We were slated to receive over $700,000 and that’s been reduced to over 90%,” said Mason Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Gary Kinzer. “Almost half of that money was to be spent on school safety priorities and the rest on mental health.”
In the past two years, Mason Public Schools used the funding for a district-wide safety assessment and hired five mental health employees. This year, the district relied on its general fund to keep those positions.
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Leaders at East Lansing Public Schools said they anticipated there would be a decrease in funding but that it “did not predict a 72% decrease in those funds allocated specifically for mental health and school safety.” The district also used its general fund to keep new job positions, including a dean of students, a director of health and safety, and a mental health coordinator.
Despite the decrease in funding, Pamela Pugh, president of the State Board of Education, said this is “not the time to take our foot off the gas pedal.”
“We need to continue staffing up with helping professionals so that we make sure that our children are receiving the mental health services that they need and that our schools are safe.”
