Disciplinary incidents are rising among Washington County students, report shows

Molly Adams said she's "lucky" to teach third grade at Salem Avenue Elementary School.

Salem Avenue is of Washington County's nine Title I elementary schools and one of the most impoverished in Washington County. But Adams used to teach in Baltimore City, where she said she had very little behavioral support in the classroom by comparison.

"It is not that I had terrible daily bloodshed in my classroom in Baltimore or anything like that," she said. "But [here] I can wear my teacher hat more often instead of my mediator hat or my comforter hat, or whatever other hat teachers wear to help dispel a situation."

According to the 2023 Maryland Report Card , an overview of school performance and composition released by the Maryland Department of Education, nearly 82% of Salem Avenue's students are "economically disadvantaged," qualifying the school for Maryland's concentration of poverty grant. The grant, in part, pays for board certified behavioral analysts — support personnel trained to diffuse conflict and help students in crisis.

These supports, along with small class sizes, are why Adams thinks she hasn't seen heightened behavioral issues.

But Adams' experience is atypical. Behavioral issues increased in schools nationwide, including Washington County Public Schools.

The county saw an uptick in middle school behavioral issues and increased physical outbursts in elementary schools, according to district data.

"There is a rise in instability and disruptive behavior that I have not seen in my 37 years," said Carol Mowen, the president of the Washington County Teachers Association. "Students are coming to school without the social emotional skills they develop in that birth-to-5-year span."

What's going on in Washington County Schools?

Increases in dysregulated behavior, defined as the inability to control and regulate emotional response, are reflected in a disciplinary report presented June 4 to the Washington County Board of Education by Associate Superintendent Jennifer Webster and Student Services Director Jeremy Jakoby.

The report provides information on suspensions and referrals, or staff-documented infractions, from 2018 to 2024. It found changes in student behavior through elementary, middle and high schools, including a significant increase in referrals for middle schools.

In elementary schools, incident numbers rose minimally. But the report found an uptick in referrals for physical behavior.

Classified in the report as "physical attack," these behaviors include any sort of physical contact, Webster said. But she said fights are uncommon in elementary schools, and the increase is caused primarily by students reacting physically to emotional situations.

"It is just really more students who are unable to verbalize their feelings," Webster said. "There is an increasing need to support the development of expression for our young ones."

In middle schools, students are generally causing more disruption in classes, and county schools gave out nearly 13,500 referrals this past school year compared to 8,898 referrals during the 2022-23 school year.

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It's more than just the pandemic

While these numbers increased generally in part because of the pandemic, there are additional factors contributing to student behavior. Mowen and Webster both attributed some behavioral issues in middle schools to social media and phone usage.

"[Students] are used to spouting off on the phone as a response, so when you put kids' fact-to-face, what does that look like?" Webster said. "We have a responsibility to teach them how to use their phones."

Webster said students in middle school are generally quicker to react both verbally and physically. Through outreach for the district's strategic plan , a community-focused revamp of the district's vision and values, many students asked for help developing their problem-solving skills.

In elementary schools, there's a slew of issues facing students.

"Our youngest learners are coming to us with severe impacts," Webster said in her presentation. "There's a wide range of reasons; there's mental health concerns, there's impacts of poverty, there's just skill deficits, there are students who were born drug-addicted."

Adams agreed, and said these issues were exacerbated by the pandemic.

"These kids come with a whole lot of trauma and a whole lot of baggage," Adams said. "Their brains aren't fully developed, and they don't have the tools to understand and deal with adult problems that truly affect them."

Adams said sometimes a student's home life can cause them to have trauma responses to situations in school. But because Adams' class is small and Salem Avenue teachers have dependable access to behavioral analysts, she can defuse situations other teachers in the county don't have the resources to deal with.

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Intersecting issues from a healthcare perspective

Dr. Anand Budi is the chief medical officer with Meritus Health, where he works in pediatrics and helps with the neonatal unit. Like Webster and Adams, Budi attributed numerous factors to the overall change in student behavior.

"Unfortunately, some of these things coexist, so it's very difficult to say which one factor is leading to more of a problem," Budi said.

But sometimes, he said these issues intersect.

"There's problems with poor education in the parent, there's a higher incidence of poverty, malnutrition and poor prenatal care," Budi said. "All these things tend to be much higher in moms who are exposed to opioids or addictive drugs."

Washington County, like many areas across the country, was hit hard by the drug epidemic.

Opioids are the leading cause of fatal overdoses in the county, which rose almost 20% from 2012 to 2022, according to the Maryland Department of Health . And through his 26 years at Meritus, Budi said the number of moms he sees for prenatal care with some form of addiction has "steadily gone up."

"It mirrors the increase in the number of deaths and of opioid-related overdoses in the county," Budi said.

Budi also has experience working in the Fredrick NICU and at Holy Cross in Germantown. While he is still observing an increase in expecting mothers taking prescription opioids or illegal drugs in all three counties, Budi observed that the Washington County numbers are "much higher."

These babies may initially experience slower mental and physical growth, but Budi said there are long-term effects of prenatal exposure to drugs.

"We see kids with problems early on with developmental delays and cognitive difficulties," Budi said. "These infants and toddlers tend to have learning disorders and learning disabilities."

These children are also more likely to develop hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorders, said Budi, and some cognitive development problems may leave children with impaired judgment.

In recent years, the county saw a steady increase in special education students, according to the Maryland Report Card .

In 2019, 9.8% of the district's student population, or 2,231 students, had a registered disability. But by 2023, there were over 300 more students with reported disabilities, making up 11.4% of the student population.

But Budi said the physical manifestations of the opioid crisis are only one factor contributing to the district's behavioral issues.

Webster agreed, saying there is a "range of factors" in the community that contribute to a heightened number of young students struggling to verbalize their feelings.

"You have students who have diagnosed disabilities that contribute to this, there are students who have trauma that contribute to this, there are students who experienced things in their home that create more stress on them and lead to this," Webster said. "It's really hard for me to put my finger on specifically what it is."

WCPS initiatives to support students and staff

Webster said one major solution for these issues is more support staff in schools. She said the behavioral analysts are crucial and successful in managing behavior of students, but the county is also working to realign teacher responses to match the changes in behavior.

Webster said a lot of the professional learning occurring outside the classroom deals with de-escalation tactics teachers can bring back to their students.

"We really embrace this idea of learning about how we as professionals need to be aware of our window of stress tolerance as we're engaging and how we need to engage our students and where they're at," Webster said. "We don't all need to be (behavioral analysts) but there are some things that we can learn as professionals about how to respond to students when they're dysregulated."

The shift in behavior management in schools has been evident, Webster said. Back in 2018, the district saw around 900 incidents of restraint as a behavior management, she said, but recently, there have only been a little more than 100.

But Adams said there is only so much teachers can do to address the behavior.

"We're stretched pretty thin doing a lot of different things already," Adams said. "I think pretty much everyone I've ever talked to would prefer to have a well-trained adult as a support."

Adams said she doesn't need a staff member in her classroom at all times, but thinks teachers should be able to "consistently count on" access to behavioral staff if needed. She also hopes her class sizes remain low, a factor she said is crucial in behavior management.

But she is grateful for the supports that have been provided for her at Salem Avenue.

"I can't stress enough how much I appreciate in this district, and specifically at my school, how the administration supports getting those extra people and structures in place to support the kids and the staff," Adams said. "I think if we support the kids that it also supports the staff and supports the county."

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Disciplinary incidents are rising among Washington County students, report shows