Analicia Gomes moved her family to Bettendorf years ago so her children could go to school in that district.
Now, Gomes said, she and her husband are having second thoughts because of student disciplinary problems that teachers and parents of children in the middle school described to the board last week. A mother of five girls, Gomes has four girls in the district, with the oldest getting ready to enter sixth grade in the fall at Bettendorf Middle School.
“We hand-selected this district for the education of our children, and I am gravely disappointed where the secondary education is heading,” Gomes said. Parents and teachers are being shut out by the upper echelons of the district’s administration and the school board, she said.
Simply, she said, the horror stories coming out of the middle school have her eldest daughter scared, and Gomes and her husband are considering a Plan B, “either a Catholic education or home schooling. At this point, the options are open.”
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Gomes was one of several parents, teachers, counselors and paraeducators who on Thursday addressed the school board about disciplinary problems at the middle school.
Michelle Bruty, a Bettendorf Middle School counselor who has a 28-year career in the district and has twice won the Superintendent’s Award, told the board she was leaving the district earlier than planned because of the disciplinary problems at the school.
Talking to the administration, Bruty said she felt “hurt, disregarded and betrayed.”
Administrators could not immediately be reached for comment.
This year, Bruty said, disrespect for teachers and other students “went rampant.”
“Students do not feel safe to walk the halls,” she said.
While COVID-19 was a factor, “it is not the major factor behind what is taking place,” she said, adding that the poor behavior of students is a nationwide problem.
Bruty said many of her sixth-grade students had skipped over 100 classes, spending time “roaming the halls with their friends without fear of consequence. Fights occurred almost every day.”
Teachers and students are verbally accosted every day, staff members have been physically attacked, she added.
“I’ve been called more profane names this year than in the previous 27 years combined,” she said.
Bruty said while other districts around the nation acted proactively to stem the problem, Bettendorf’s school administration did not.
"I fear for the safety of my students, and I fear for the safety of my colleagues,” she said.
But, Bruty said, “I do not feel I was able to assure their safety this year.”
Bettendorf Middle School paraeducator Mary Ellen Wernsman said she's considered telling friends to avoid the district.
Wernsman described the use of foul language and disrespect by the students as a daily occurrence. Many paraeducators and teachers have stopped telling students to put phones away, take hoods down, take earpods out, walk, keep hands off others or go to class because there are no consequences and the students will simply ignore the staff member or curse them out.
“On top of all this, I have never seen in all my years here the amount of vandalism and lack of consideration of things belonging to others,” Wernsman said. “This is my 10th year here.”
Wernsman said the district failed students when the students were promoted despite having failed one or “up to all of their classes.”
“We fail students when we allow them to skip or be late to class multiple times without any real consequences except maybe being talked to,” she said. “We fail students when we allow them to roam the halls all day and not go to any classes, and that does happen.
“How are these students going to be educated?” Wernsman said. “How are they going to transfer what they learn in school to the world outside these walls?”
Counselor Beth Douglas Hafner said there was a feeling of repercussions when one spoke out, adding that she already has spoken to the building principal, human resources director and superintendent with little or no change.
Hafner described fighting in the halls and the locking of the doors to the main offices to keep students out, which has never happened before.
The policy in the building is “we do not hold students accountable” for their behavior.
Staff of Bettendorf Middle School go into a toxic environment where they are kicked, cursed and assaulted with food, said Gomes, who once was a teacher and has a degree in education from St. Ambrose University.
The building, she said, “is like the Lord of the Flies.”
Physical education teacher Rod Moeller said he attended Davenport West High School and had been a teacher for 26 years.
“As a West graduate, Bettendorf is what we aspired to be,” he told the board.
Now, he said, “This isn’t Bettendorf anymore; this is Davenport West.”
Moeller said the district had lost 29 staff members, with 10 of those being 30 years old or younger.
“It’s a young staff that’s leaving,” he said. It’s tough to find replacements for quality, young teachers, he added.
Moeller told the board that if his now 21-year-old daughter were of the age to attend Bettendorf schools, she would instead be going to Pleasant Valley.
Social studies teacher Beth Laughbaum told the board to come to the building to see what they were dealing with.
Science teacher Kevin Roling said the board needed to come in and see what’s happening, telling them, “It will take a matter of seconds for you to see exactly what is going on.”
Roling described two mob situations that occurred twice this year and involved 300-plus students.
“I was afraid for myself,” he said. There were so many kids in the hallway, he added, and it was five minutes after the students were supposed to be in their classes.
“Somebody’s going to get hurt,” he said.
Angie Bridges, a reading interventionist, told the board that for 20 years she was not afraid to walk outside of her classroom.
This year, she said she was told to “F-off for the first time. In my 25 years of teaching I have never been told to F-off.”
She has tried to tell the older students to not use profane language in front of her sixth-graders, to no avail.
Bridges said she had witnessed students harassing and calling teachers names, running and yelling and disrupting others again and again. She added that she would discourage any teachers from teaching at Bettendorf.
“The BMS ship is sinking, and there won’t be many survivors unless something is done,” she said.
Jennifer Miller said her son was in eighth-grade at Bettendorf Middle School and did not know a curse word until he went into sixth grade at the school. Now, she said, her son describes fights as being a common occurrence, and her son comes home with food on his shirt.”
Cynthia Diercks said she had a grandson in seventh grade who has told her he has witnessed violent fights. If the kids try to video the action, she said, the administration takes the child’s phone and erases it.
“Not the teachers, the administration,” Diercks said. “You don’t want the parents to know what’s going on in that school.”
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