This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It was a normal field trip, fun and outside. Copper Hills High School math teacher Tony Romanello took his class to the Great Salt Lake for a physics day near the end of the past academic year.
One student decided not to go. He also decided he wouldn't do the makeup assignment.
" 'You can't make me,' " Romanello recounts the student saying. " 'And, if you try to make me, my mother will sue you.' "
That is only one example of incidents public school teachers regularly experience. A 2003 survey conducted by Public Agenda, a New York-based nonprofit research organization, showed nearly all teachers feel they must cope with more discipline problems than they had to in the past.
Yet, it is not unruly pupils who madden instructors. It is the lack of support from parents and administrators when those pupils become disruptive.
More and more of teachers' time is consumed by explaining their actions to principals who have received calls from angry parents, instructors say. Too often, administrators seem to stand by the parents.
That situation frustrated former teacher Jay Williams so much that he quit teaching and joined the Foreign Service. He taught in Utah during the 1997-98 academic year.
"The pay isn't the issue for a lot of [Utah] ex-teachers. It's the lack of control in the classroom," he wrote in an e-mail. "I for one would have been content with a $23,000 salary and a fulfilling job. However, my hands were tied in matters of classroom discipline. I received very little support from the administration or the parents. Frankly, were Utah to match my State Department salary, I still wouldn't come back. It's demeaning to have children abuse you in a public setting, knowing that neither their parents nor the administration will back you up."
Utah Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, says he has been aware of the problem for several years.
"It's one of the most common concerns I hear," said Stephenson, chairman of the Legislature's Education Interim Committee and president of the Utah Taxpayers Association. "We have a handful of parents who treat schools as baby sitters for their children. They say, 'When my child is in my home he's my problem. But, when my child is in your classroom he's your problem.' It's horrible."
He plans to introduce a bill that will establish the teacher's "primacy" in the classroom. Under this law, a teacher would have the ability to remove a misbehaving student indefinitely. As in assigning grades, that decision could not be challenged by anyone, including the principal and the school board. However, there would be an appeals process. And schools would receive the same amount of state funding as if the student were in class.
Stephenson says, "After one or two occurrences, word will spread like wildfire that the teacher has absolute power."