Alabama’s Teacher’s Bill of Rights’: A New Measure for Classroom Control

Alabama educators guide students through instruction and sometimes discipline. According to one legislator, instructors are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain control over their classes.

State Senator Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) refers to his measure as the “Teacher’s Bill of Rights.” The bill empowers teachers to reject kids from the classroom who disrupt the learning process.

These children are sent to the principal and can only return with a written certificate stating which discipline was utilized. If discipline was utilized, the bill required that parents be told.

Orr explained that the measure establishes a framework for escalating events if students act out.

“We need to restore teacher authority in the classrooms,” Orr went on to say. “We’re losing educators in droves because they cannot control their classrooms and their students.” Ada Katherine van Wyhe is the Alabama Association of School Boards’ Director of Government Relations. She stated that, while student conduct issues have increased, adding additional assistant principals to our schools is a better answer.

“We know that this is a key role in a school for helping teachers and families as well as principals themselves manage student behaviors,” van Wyhe went on to say.

Niki Turpen, a long-time instructor at Oak Mountain Middle School, stated that the measure will provide teachers with the necessary support.

“I think it’s important that the administration supports that teacher and doesn’t send the kid right back into the classroom because it undermines our authority,” Turpen said in a statement.

According to Orr, increased financing for assistant principals will help, but principals and superintendents must also get involved in this issue. The bill now goes to a House committee for a vote.