Study: 40% of School Administrators Threatened by Parents in 2021

According to a recently released technical report from the American Psychological Association (APA), school administrators across the country have seen an uptick in violent threats from parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As one anonymous staff member wrote in the survey, “This is a new problem. It used to be the kids. Now, it is the adults.”

A report from WOWK-13 News outlined the survey results and just how affected school administrators were in the past year. Below is an excerpt from that report.

The aggression mostly came from parents who did not want their students to wear a mask to school, had politicized the pandemic or by parents who blamed the schools for learning loss, according to the Violence Against Educators and School Personnel: Crisis During COVID report.

The survey was answered by about 15,000 employees during the 2020-21 academic year. It found that one-third of teachers said they’d been threatened by students during COVID-19.

Administrators were the most likely to answer that they’ve been threatened with violence by parents, with 40% stating they’d experienced it during that academic year. About 29% of teachers said that a parent had threatened violence against them.

Middle school teachers were the most likely to answer that they’d received violent threats from students and parents.

Teachers reported that they’d been blocked online by parents when they tried to reach out about helping their students.

“Parents have been more difficult than students this year,” one educator wrote. “Our school system has been attacked frequently.”

Another said that they were cyberstalked because they support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Others have experienced outrage from parents about the move to online and hybrid learning.

“I have been called ungrateful, lazy, whiney, entitled, uncaring, heartless, selfish, stupid, and more,” a teacher answered in the report.

Physical aggression was most likely to come from students. Among school employees, all said they had “significant concerns” about their safety during the pandemic, including for their health in relation to COVID-19. They also reported concerns about neighborhood safety, poverty and children living in unstable homes.

To read the full report WOWK-13 on the American Psychological Association study, click here.