SANTA ANA – Santa Ana Unified has beefed up staffing and hired private investigators to look into safety concerns at Spurgeon Intermediate, where teachers say teens and pre-teens are accosting adults, turning desks over and smoking marijuana in class.

The problems have become so bad that 36 teachers and classified employees filed a “hostile work environment” complaint earlier this month.

The complaint was the first of its kind ever sent to the district, said Art Jimenez, director of constituency services at the district.

“I don’t want to sugar coat it or say the concerns are not valid,” Jimenez said. “They are. There are concerns about student behavior that we need to address.”

Students at the school physically accost teachers, regularly trip fire alarms, argue with security staff and throw objects in class, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Orange County Register. They make sexual noises in class and run through the hallways banging on doors with little or no consequences.

In perhaps the most brazen incident, a student smoked marijuana in a classroom, undeterred by the presence of a substitute teacher, according to the complaint.

“It’s a lot like ‘Lord of the Flies,'” Spurgeon language arts teacher John McGuinness said. “They’ve allowed the rough element to take over and run the place.”

Jimenez said the district has taken swift action to intervene since receiving the March 1 complaint.

In addition to assigning two extra security guards—which doubled the safety staff at the school—the district has also sent two retired principals, an administrative clerk, additional custodial staff and substitute teachers. It also launched an internal review that included interviews with every teacher on site.

The external investigations firm, Alvarez and Associates, will also look at the extent of the problems, Jimenez said.

“Where was the breakdown that made teachers feel the way they feel right now?” Jimenez said. “What happened?”

ESCALATING PROBLEMS

Spurgeon, which enrolls around 1,100 students, has always had its share of tough students and discipline problems, several teachers said. But behavior problems have gotten worse in the last few years, said McGuinness, Spurgeon’s representative to the teacher’s union.

Students throw eggs at teachers, set fires in urinals, and even threatened to stab a teacher this year, McGuinness said. Just last week, a student spit on him, McGuinness said.

“You feel like there is a weight on your shoulders all the time. You feel defeated,” McGuinness said of morale at the school. “And a lot of us feel sad, because there are a lot of good kids not getting the education they deserve. We have great teachers, we have great technology, but these other students with their constant disruptions are stealing our time.”

Jose Gonzales, whose son started at Spurgeon this year, said he is not concerned about his son’s safety at the school. But he worries about the presence of drugs on campus.

“He says there is a bathroom that always smells of marijuana,” Gonzales said.

Teachers say many factors are involved in the problems plaguing Spurgeon. They say few disciplinary measures are in place at the school, and security staff is often too busy to respond to calls for help from classrooms. According to the complaint, school police told staff “Don’t call us anymore.”

“What happened at Spurgeon is the whole discipline structure collapsed from the administrative perspective,” said Susan Mercer, president of Santa Ana’s teachers union. There were no consequences for inappropriate behavior that started to escalate.”

Mercer said the principal was relatively inexperienced and didn’t have the strong leaderships skills needed.

“(The principal) didn’t know how to address all the discipline problems they were having,” Mercer said.

The school’s principal, Lillian Soto, is on a leave of absence and could not be reached for comment. A district spokeswoman said the leave was not related to the teachers’ complaint.

Barney Martinez, a music teacher at the school, said Soto did the best she could. He thinks the problems stem from a lack of support and clear directives from the district. “We have been requesting support from the district through the union, and the district has denied any problem here,” Martinez said.

Teachers were told at the beginning of the current school year to reduce suspensions, which is the primary form of disciplinary action at the school, McGuinness said. But little was done to improve behavioral issues in other ways, he added.

Students who misbehave are often sent right back to class, teachers said.

In the 2010-11 school year, Spurgeon issued 261 suspensions according to state records; 130 of those were for violent or drug-related incidents. Several schools in Santa Ana suspended more students during the same school year, including Gerald P. Carr Intermediate, which issued 427 for a student population of just over 1,600.

A spokeswoman for the district said the school has handed out 206 suspensions so far this year.

McGuiness said teachers are also tasked with caring for more students. Last year, after the school’s test scores failed to meet improvement thresholds, it lost a state grant that reduced class sizes. Now some classes have as many as 37 students.

And then there’s the shift in discipline philosophy. A few years ago the district implemented a Positive Behavior Intervention Strategy, or PBIS, which emphasizes setting behavior expectations and using positive responses instead of negative ones.

“We have a thing where for every negative thing you say to a child, you are supposed to say five good things,” McGuinness said. “But when a kid says (expletive) to your face, how am I supposed to come up with five good things to say to that kid?”

McGuinness said he is a fan of PBIS, but believes it only works when there is a proper structure in place. There is no structure at Spurgeon, teachers said.

For a start, there are not enough staff members to properly monitor the students, said Martinez. More importantly, there are no clear consequences for what happens when a student misbehaves, he said.

“PBIS would work if we got direction from the district office regarding discipline and the parents were aware of it in writing and we actually follow through,” Martinez said. “But if the parents aren’t aware of what is going to happen, and staff isn’t aware, it’s not going to work.”

The district said it is examining PBIS policies at Spurgeon as part of its review.

“I think it is an excellent model, but there are different levels of implementation,” Jimenez said. “We need to analyze the support systems that Spurgeon will need to successfully implement PBIS.”

GETTING HELP

Teachers say student behavior has been improving since the district stepped in. Students have noticed changes too.

Elizabeth Martinez, an eighth-grader at the school, said she has seen more staff on campus, and these days there are fewer fights during lunch, she said.

But when she talks with her friends about the changes, they all wonder why no one did anything before this.

“It’s like they barely noticed there was a problem,” she said.

The teachers union also argues the district should have taken action earlier.

Staff sent the complaint – a legal document that the district must respond to – only after repeated efforts to get assistance from school and district administrators went ignored, Mercer said.

“It was a last recourse because they didn’t know what else to do,” Mercer said.

Jimenez said concerns are often raised at a school level, and the district’s assistant superintendent of secondary education had been meeting with the principal prior to the complaint to advise her on addressing safety concerns, among other issues.

“I don’t think the level of concern was expressed the same way it was expressed now,” Jimenez said.

Jimenez said he hopes the variety of actions taken by the district demonstrate the commitment of the district, and its relatively new superintendant, to supporting its students and teachers. Superintendent Thelma Melendez was appointed in July, 2011.

“The district is taking very serious steps,” he said.

Alvarez and Associates is expected to finish its report in the next week or so, Jimenez said. Then the district can determine how best to move forward.





Register Staff Writer Melody Petersen contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: jterrell@ocregister.com or 714-796-7767