NEWPORT NEWS, Va. – Since the shooting at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6, dozens of current and former teachers from Newport News and from outside the area, have been speaking out about behavior problems in the classrooms.
Parent Brenda Coles said Richneck Elementary is very different—more violent than when she was a PTA president there two decades ago.
“In my experience at Richneck, I did not see the level of violence that is going on in the schools today,” she said.
Since then, Coles said school policies have changed after horrific shooting after shooting played out in multiple schools across the nation.
Coles, a former social worker for 20 years, added that more red tape was put in place making it harder for teachers to discipline students.
“Parents used to be able to walk into the schools and to check on their children. If the parent was called, the parent immediately came to the schools. More importantly, the parents were involved,” said Coles. “We’ve got to put the discipline back into the hands of the parents. It’s been taken out of the hands of the parents. I think we have to go back to some basics of disciplining you children.”
Major concerns were sparked across the district and nation following the incident where Newport News police said a 6-year-old Richneck student shot his first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner.
Zwerner’s lawyer now plans to sue school administrators. In the letter of intent, Zwerner’s lawyer claims the assistant principal didn’t respond properly to three threat warnings that day by other teachers and staff about the boy.
Julianne Marse, a former educator and assistant principal in the school district, said she retired in 2019 after repeated physical and verbal attacks by a kindergarten student were ignored.
“Educators have somehow gotten conditioned to believe that they have to deal with this; they have to deal with being assaulted,” Marse said. “That is just wrong on so many levels. Teachers should not have to deal with being assaulted. And when a child like that is allowed to continue, then you are exactly right, it's a disaster waiting to happen.”
Coles said there are solutions.
As a former social worker, she said she used to work with high-risk children and their families. She said more people, not just parents, need to be involved to break down systemic barriers.
During her four-year term as a PTA president, she said she brought the entire community together.
“It wasn’t just the parents. It was the entire community, and it was the local businesses that was around that school that took care of that school, so it was like a village,” said Coles. “The parents was involved; the community was involved and businesses was involved. This is the difference in what it was then and what it is today.”
Coles, who now volunteers as an advocate for social justice as a family and emotional support advocate, said school administrators dropped the ball at Richneck, especially since they knew the 6-year-old student had a history of violence.
“This child should have taken out of the school a long time ago,” said Coles.
The school district’s spokesperson said they can’t comment on the ongoing investigation.
