Sleepy Maine elementary school becomes hotbed of violence and bullying after influx of migrants

Teachers and staff members at a Maine elementary school claim it has become plagued by violence and bullying amid an influx of migrants to the community – with one teacher even breaking down in tears as she recounted how she was assaulted.

She and many other staff members at Montello Elementary School in Lewiston pleaded with school district administrators on November 18 to take action amid the violence they say traumatized migrant children are bringing to the school environment.

They have argued that the trouble at the school has left them short-staffed as a number of teachers quit amid increasing class sizes, as literacy coaches are forced to plan the lessons, according to the Sun Journal. 

‘I have 22 students in a room made for 16. If four to six of my students are out during a day, I can teach,’ fourth-grade teacher Jae Zimmerman said at the school board meeting last month. ‘But otherwise, I manage behaviors morning through afternoon, every day.

‘These behaviors are grounded in trauma – the trauma of poverty, migration, war-torn families, domestic violence, the opioid epidemic [and] homelessness,’ she said, explaining that ‘refugees and immigrants’ are moving into the neighborhood zoned for the elementary school, where the houses are cheaper.

‘My students come to school with this as their context, and I’m expected to teach them fractions and how to be a good reader.’

Another staff member at the school told how she has two new migrant students, one of whom is from Syria.

She said their class has been without a permanent teacher since Columbus Day, and when she asked one of the migrant students whether she is learning math, the girl replied, ‘No, I haven’t done any math for forever.’

She and many other staff members at Montello Elementary School in Lewiston pleaded with school district administrators on November 18 to take action amid the violence they say traumatized migrant children are bringing to the school environment

‘These students are not in the right placement,’ the staff member argued.

‘It’s wrong. It’s overcrowded. It’s violent. It’s unsafe.’ 

Another teacher claimed at the meeting that she, herself, was assaulted by students.

‘I found myself caught in a violence act with two students that were fighting, and when I intervene, I got assaulted,’ she said, as she broke down in tears. 

‘Violence is not OK and it is a daily problem at Montello.

‘There are too many fights in the halls, on the buses in the bathrooms and at recess,’ she claimed, arguing: ‘It is not getting the urgent attention it deserves.

‘Staff and students do not feel safe and I would beg you to please consider prioritizing [the] safety of Montello and in the public schools at Lewiston as well,’ she pleaded with Superintendent of Schools Jake Langlais.

She and others have claimed that the school administration has thus far ignored the problem.

Another teacher broke down in tears as she recounted how she was assaulted by students

‘You would leave for a meeting and hope it was quick because you knew you were coming back to a mess and even second-graders knew “I can get away with things for the next 40 minutes.” It was very unsafe,’ said Jamie Wrobel, a former sixth-grade teacher who left the school after 11 years last year.

‘There were so many times that we would say “I had this unsafe thing happening and I called the front office, no one came – no one came for a long time or no one came at all.”

‘The kids knew that,’ she claimed. ‘And that’s where teaching sixth grade started getting scary, because the kids knew they were going to have a good time before someone came.

‘It was scary that the kids were figuring that out,’

Wrobel added that she used to love working at Lewiston schools but ‘the secondary trauma piece of working with kids who came from difficult circumstances’ became ‘too much stress.’

‘I was finally like “I can’t make that much of a difference here and I know that this [work environment] is not healthy.’

Stephanie Poulin, the school’s social worker, also said she had sent emails to administration about particularly rowdy children and conflicts at the school that were never responded to, while multilingual second-grade teacher Erica Gunderson claimed administrators would often tell her they ‘don’t have time’ to respond to the issues.

‘Immigrants and refugees’ who move to Lewiston are mainly moving into the neighborhood zoned for Montello, where the houses are cheaper

Meanwhile, Poulin argued, the ‘traumatized’ students were negatively affecting those who were trying to learn.

‘I’ve seen it multiple times,’ she said. ‘A kiddo is sitting there thinking, “My teacher can’t control the room, it’s not safe…

‘I have stepped into rooms where this is in fact happening, and I’m pulling [aside] the kid that is in the corner silently crying. Nobody else is noticing that kid because there’s too many crazy things going on – there’s a bit of peers fighting, the language toward adults.

‘They know that teacher has no authority. They see their teacher’s outnumbered. What else can they do?

‘I’m in those rooms all the time and [the students] are on their computers, they’re running around, they’re leaving the building.

‘You have children that are getting no education, but are being traumatized every day and that is disgusting,’ she continued.

‘What’s happened over the years is we become more and more trauma-impacted with less and less resources, bigger class sizes,’ Poulin said, arguing that administration was simply ‘putting all these Band-Aids’ on the issue while ‘we’re hemorrhaging.’ 

Superintendent of Schools Jake Langlais said he thought the behavioral problems at the school could be resolved with additional training

But Langlais has so far insisted the behavioral problems students at the school, as he denied any awareness of calls for help going unanswered.

‘You really have to solve those and get after it,’ he advised staff members at the meeting, according to WGME. ‘But as a whole, the school community is in pretty good shape.’

He went on to say that district officials are looking at getting teachers additional training on how to manage the rowdy students.

‘We want to make sure teachers have the tools they need to have good classroom management and to use our curriculum as it is in place,’ Langlais said.

DailyMail.com has also reached out to Lewiston Schools for comment.