TURNER – The mother of a first-grader at Greene Central School vowed she will not send her daughter back to the school in the fall unless officials deal with the extreme behaviors in the class.
School volunteer and parent Sandy Laliberte, in a letter to Superintendent Thomas Hanson last March, described behaviors she witnessed from the first-graders in her daughter’s class this past year.
“Every time I am in the classroom as a volunteer: Hitting, punching, shoving, kicking desks, pulling chairs out from under peers, inappropriate talk, and consistent inattentiveness,” she listed.
“I have not seen improvement in behavior. I was in the first-grade class on May 23rd (as a volunteer) and saw three children get hit,” she told the board.
Laliberte said she has gone “right up through the chain of command from the teachers, to the principal, to the guidance counselor, and now the school board,” with her concerns for her child’s “academic, emotional, and physical well-being.
“I can’t send my child back to Greene Central School in the fall,” she said.
In a letter to the school board, Laliberte spoke of Principal Thomas Martellone and his assistant, Kim Spencer, “seeing seven to eight first-graders a day being sent out of the classroom for exhausting behavior protocol,” and reporting that “six or seven substitute teachers refuse these two first grade classes due to extreme behaviors, and seven to eight first graders have been suspended from school this year.”
Parents at Thursday’s meeting said the trouble comes from about 12 very bright students in the class, who are simply uncontrollable.
“I have seen children get hit in the head,” school volunteer Wanda Michaud told the board.
Martellone acknowledged the situations outlined by the parents.
He described the students’ conduct as having gone from “threatening” to “disruptive” during the year. He detailed a list of actions he has taken to try to control the problem. He said the class, as a whole, improved in May assessments far above any other class in the school.
Martellone is to report to the board Aug. 1 on what he has done and will do to deal with the problems.
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