Late yesterday members of the Asbury Park Education Association received this email from their teacher union leaders:

“On behalf of the entire APEA membership, I am forwarding our most recent demand of the Superintendent to bargain the impact of the unilateral change in instructional time and increased workload to staff who had their class size significantly increased. For example, the decrease in lunchtime, decrease in prep time, and increase in class sizes. We understand how this has increased the workload to our staff and the impact it has on the children we educate. We are working hard to remedy our issues and maintain the integrity of our contract.”

What is going on in Asbury Park?

Let’s ask the teachers.

According to staff members, some of whom spoke to the district school board at last week’s public meeting, the kindergarten classes at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School are overcrowded, the last thing you need in a school where 13% of third-graders are at grade level in reading and none are proficient in math. Sean Hamilton, a twenty-five year veteran teacher, told the school board, “I’m here to talk about the children…It’s insane we collapse two kindergarten classes into one, which is terrible for kids and we’re not saving a penny.” He added that the reading specialist is split between two schools and there are “no special education services at all in the kindergarten class.”

The issues at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, which serves grades 5-8, are more complex: according to teachers, the building is in a constant state of mayhem, largely due to administrative decisions about scheduling and “out-of-control” student behavior. Last month, for instance, two students jumped a teacher and punched him in the face, leading to an all-school lockdown while security tried to get students under control. (The teacher went in an ambulance to the hospital with a serious eye injury.)

This is not an Asbury Park-only problem: educators across the nation are struggling to manage what news reports call “a surge in post-pandemic misbehavior,”  largely due to shuttered schools during COVID closures and a rise in mental health disorders. Last Friday a Virginia school closed down because teachers called in sick due to fears about escalating violence.

Yet it’s hard to find a district like Asbury Park, where some argue administrative decisions have made school climate worse.

For reasons that remain unclear to staff at MLK Middle School, Superintendent Rashawn Adams (or someone who reports to him) decided, two months into the 2023-24 school year, to move from daily 40-minute classes to a block schedule of 80-minutes classes. Students now receive math and reading instruction every other day, surely questionable given that the state database redacts all student proficiency levels at this school because the percentage of children who can pass reading and math tests is below 10%.

During last week’s public board meeting, one teacher said the “rise in the number of fights” and “teachers brutalized and sent to the hospital” are “the result of new block schedules arbitrarily imposed in the middle of the school year.” Adams is responsible for forcing kids to sit for 80 minutes after they’ve been accustomed to 40 minutes, he said. “We have below average math and reading scores,” he said. “When will classes be back to five days a week?”

Within the school, I’m told, teachers have to stand by their classroom door to control student behavior, which takes away time for preparation or even a bathroom break. There is not enough security, says one staff member: “it’s like a playground out there, kids running through the hallways, knocking into each other.” 

Bathrooms are locked to keep students from gathering.  The lunch room scene is “horrific,” says an APEA member, with students “walking out of class to parade in the hallway,” some strolling into classrooms they’re not enrolled in.  When teachers tell students to put their cell phones away, they challenge the teachers to “come and get it.”

Parents are told little. At the board meeting, one parent lambasted Adams, “If kids can’t play football you have a press conference. If there’s a lockdown [referring to the incident where two students punched a teacher], I don’t even get an email.”

At the time of the lockdown last month, Adams told News12,  “We hold our staff to the highest standards of conduct and professionalism, and we are deeply committed to ensuring that our schools provide a safe and respectful environment for all. Rest assured that we will not tolerate any behavior that jeopardizes the welfare of our students and our staff.”

Yet, teachers say, unsafe behavior is tolerated while students and staff remain in jeopardy. Reportedly the district is transferring an elementary school teacher to MLK Middle School to be “Dean of Discipline.” It remains unclear whether this new position will do anything for safety or, for that matter, support teachers who are trying to teach and students who are trying to learn.