Dealing with physically aggressive students

By Jay Hammond, staff counsel

One of the more unpleasant aspects of being a school employee is finding yourself in a situation where a student is being physically aggressive. Such situations can create danger to you, other students and staff, or to the aggressive students themselves.

You may encounter such situations whether you are a teacher, a teacher associate, bus driver, secretary, or any other type of school employee. School employees are, justifiably, hesitant to use physical restraint or force in such situations for fear of being accused of assault (an offensive touching) or otherwise being sued by the parents of such a child. The age-old dilemma is whether you intervene in a fight between students and risk being accused of inappropriate contact, or you fail to intervene and then risk being accused of negligence when another student is injured.

There are obviously many other situations where physical restraint of a student may be advisable or clearly necessary in your opinion, and each generally appears to be a no-win situation for the employee.

Fortunately, ISEA-sponsored amendments to the Iowa Code over the course of the last several years provide some direction and, therefore, relief to employees in these situations. Currently, if a school employee encounters a fight, or other "disruptive situation," the criminal assault statute (Iowa Code, Section 708.1) allows the employee to intervene and use physical force to break up the fight, or otherwise quell the disruption IF the amount of force used is "reasonable" in relation to the severity of the situation. This calls for an on-the-spot judgment call, and there always exists the specter of the Monday-morning quarterback.

However, until recently, no exception to the assault statute (proscribing offensive physical contact) existed. It has already proven to be very valuable to school employees on a number of occasions.

Likewise, exceptions now also exist to protect school employees from civil liability (suits for damages). Section 280.21(2) of the Iowa Code provides school employees with immunity from civil or criminal liability for "reasonable" physical contact with students under clearly defined circumstances. Those circumstances include, but are not limited to: encouraging or disciplining a student; protecting the employee, the student or other students; protecting property; removing a disruptive student from class; and self-defense.

Thus, while the best advice is still to refrain from touching students, in those situations where the employee believes that physical contact with a student is clearly necessary, defenses now exist to later claims of inappropriate contact. When you find yourself in such a situation, try to remember these general guidelines:

• Do the student's actions constitute a danger to any person or property?
• If so, is physical intervention necessary to prevent harm to a person or property?
• If so, make every attempt to use only that force reasonably necessary to eliminate the threat.
• Immediately report the incident to the administration.
• As soon as practical, make a list of any witnesses (particularly adult witnesses) to the incident.

As a final note, if the conduct of the student poses a true threat to your safety, DO NOT HESITATE to use physical contact in an effort to defend yourself. Not only does the statute authorize physical contact in such situations, but it is far better to run a risk of a claim of inappropriate contact than to be severely injured by the student. Such situations have already occurred in Iowa, and we need to do whatever is necessary to prevent them in the future.

October/November 2006 Communiqué