Jones Lane Elementary School fourth grader Raya Anolik doesn’t feel safe in her Gaithersburg school – not after several incidents involving students with behavioral challenges who ran away from their teachers and hurt her or her classmates.
“She has drawn a diagram of every classroom that she is in, and then she’s also drawn on that paper, a diagram of the bathroom and underneath the bathroom, she wrote ‘the only safe place at Jones Lane,’” Raya’s mother Alexis Anolik told Bethesda Today recently.
For the parents of another MCPS elementary school student, the fight to get support services for their son took more than a year once he began kindergarten at Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary School in Rockville during the 2023-2024 school year. In the meantime, they told Bethesda Today, their son struggled with sitting still in class, keeping his hands to himself and impulse control. They were often called to pick him up or he was sequestered with a staff member.
The parents, who asked not to be identified because one works for MCPS, said they wished MCPS had acknowledged their request for support before their child started school and that others knew that students with disabilities are owed access to a public education under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“We would go to pick him up at the end of the day and someone would walk him out holding him at arm’s length, like he was a wild animal,” one of the parents said. “I am shocked and appalled at how our son was treated by the system.”
The parents of the former Barnsley student and the Anoliks are among multiple families and educators who have raised concerns that a systemwide lack of support by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) for students with behavioral challenges, including some participating in the district’s Social Emotional Special Education Services program, is leading to safety issues and negative experiences for all students.
The parents and the Anoliks were among seven families with students in elementary schools from across the county who spoke to Bethesda Today about how such issues have impacted them. Some were unwilling to be quoted due to privacy concerns, but all said there is much more MCPS could do to ensure a safe learning environment for students.
According to Anolik, her 10-year-old daughter has been subjected to harassment and sometimes physical violence by another student who was in her classes. Raya Anolik also has testified before the school board about the experiences of her and her classmates, saying that she had concerns about safety and disruptions to her education.
“I truly believe that MCPS has not only failed the safety of my family and the other kids around, but they are definitely not doing any good for that kid,” Anolik said, referring to the student who she says has harassed her daughter. “Nobody should go to school and feel so out of control that they have to seek out another student and harm them.”
The lack of support for helping students who have significant behavior challenges is a longstanding issue in county public schools and schools across the country, which has only increased since the pandemic. MCPS is well aware of the issue, according to Superintendent Thomas Taylor.
Taylor, who is finishing his first year leading MCPS, has said the district isn’t staffing special education at the appropriate levels. At a District 18 Democratic Breakfast Club meeting May 12 at Parkway Deli in Silver Spring, Taylor told a crowd of about 50 he’s “particularly concerned” about the school system’s ability to create support structures for students with severe disabilities who exhibit combative behaviors.
“Children in other special education settings and children in the general education setting are suffering because we are not staffing special education properly,” Taylor told the group.
Taylor, along with the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), the local teachers union, are hoping the inclusion of 688 special education positions and the reclassification of other paraeducator positions in the school board’s recommended $3.65 billion budget request for fiscal year 2026 would make a positive difference.
But the district is now faced with partially reducing the number of hires after the County Council’s Thursday vote to approve a $7.6 billion county operating budget that includes about $3.65 billion in MCPS funding — leaving about $8.6 million of the district’s request unfunded. Taylor presented a recommended list of proposed reductions to close the gap – including reducing the number of new special education teachers from 186 to 156 – to the school board Thursday.
“It is a really bad situation. It’s not getting better,” MCEA President David Stein told Bethesda Today recently. “What we’re proposing here doesn’t fix the problem. It merely gets us to the place where we’re doing what we say we’re doing. And so if we don’t do that, it’s perilous times ahead for us.”
Bethesda Today asked to speak with MCPS officials about these issues but was referred instead to the district’s special education website and was provided answers to questions over email.
MCPS spokesperson Liliana López said that when students harm other students, disciplinary actions are guided by the code of conduct, and student safety plans can be implemented. Additionally, López said schools work with parents to identify the root causes of behavior that causes safety concerns or educational disruptions, and, if appropriate, a behavioral intervention plan can be developed for the students.
Bethesda Today attempted to confirm the families’ accounts with school administrators, but López said she was unable to comment on individual incidents that have occurred at schools. López said MCPS was anticipating that these issues would be mitigated through the funding of new special education positions.
Behavioral challenges
The Social Emotional Special Education Services (SESES) program is implemented for students who are “experiencing social, emotional and behavioral challenges which interfere with their learning and access to the general education curriculum.” It is in place at several MCPS schools, including Jones Lane Elementary, according to the MCPS website.
The significant behavioral challenges occurring in schools, however, aren’t limited to the students participating in SESES or other special education programs, families said.
Stein, the MCEA president, said while these issues within special education impact schools at all levels, they are most pronounced in elementary school because younger students are less able than older students to regulate their behaviors and emotions.
In kindergarten, first and second grade is “where we’re seeing the most issues in having the teacher’s attention and resources directed towards a very small group of kids instead of the larger class,” Stein said.
Anolik, who has two children at Jones Lane, said she was made aware of behavioral challenges regarding students participating in SESES during the 2023-2024 school year when she served as president of the Jones Lane Parent Teacher Association. Some students were pulling the fire alarm consistently, tearing down bulletin boards and hurting or threatening to hurt other students, she said.
“It was very clear that the training and the resources given to at least Jones Lane [wasn’t working],” Anolik said.
Anolik said she began looking for information and asking MCPS for ways parents could support the SESES program, without much of a response from the district.
Then in October, a student in the program became upset in the school library, pushed Raya and another student into a bookshelf, elbowed Raya in the ribs and grabbed and shook her. After Raya told her about the incident, Anolik said she reached out to Jones Lane Principal Ron Morris, who contacted her and discussed the incident.
“We were told that things had been changed, that they were going to monitor it,” Anolik said.
Later in the fall, the same student left a classroom from a separate part of the building and ran along a hallway yelling for Raya and then grabbing her by the hoodie before teachers could separate them, Anolik said. The student was removed from Raya’s classroom, but Anolik said she still had concerns for Raya’s safety.
In December, the student again ran along a hallway, yelling Raya’s name and entered her classroom, according to Anolik.
“She hid under her desk,” Anolik said. “Her homeroom teacher stood between the student and Raya while it took two other teachers to restrain him and remove him from the classroom.”
Jones Lane is among other MCPS schools dealing with similar behavior issues.
Jenny Bohl is a parent of two students at Barnsley Elementary who represents a group of about 20 other parents who have raised similar concerns. Bohl testified before the county school board in January and also told Bethesda Today that across different grades, students have been throwing chairs, pencils and desks; chasing after other students to hit them; entering classrooms of different grades and disrupting the class; and climbing cubbies to disturb ceiling tiles.
Classrooms that need extra support have had a “revolving door of paraeducators, substitutes and long-term substitutes,” Bohl told the board.
“At one point, there were weekly classroom evacuations because the adult in charge had no way to restrain a student having a behavioral outburst, which jeopardized the safety of the entire classroom,” Bohl said during her school board testimony.
One of the teachers in a Barnsley classroom that was particularly impacted, Bohl told the board, eventually took long-term leave.
“I watched as she became exhausted and hopeless, struggling to manage disruptive behavior and protect her students from harm,” Bohl testified.
Stein said a lack of support in special education is a security issue that can result in students leaving class or the school, destroying property or hitting others. Stein said he was recently in a first-grade classroom where a student was on the floor, screaming and crying.
“What is the teacher going to do at that particular point? Well, she can stop everything she’s doing and try to help the kid calm down. That’s in fact what the teacher did in this particular case,” Stein said. “But that means that teacher is leaving all these other kids. … It’s really illustrative of how much attention a student who’s having trouble regulating their emotions could really have on the classroom.”
Getting support
Getting help for those students who need it can be an uphill battle, even for parents who are strong advocates for their children. That’s what one family, who asked to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation since one parent works for MCPS, experienced during the 2023-2024 school year at Barnsley Elementary.
For students with disabilities, support can include an Individualized Education Program (IEP), which is a written statement and legal document that details an educational program designed to help meet a student’s needs. Students can also receive a 504 plan, which helps those who may have an impairment that limits their ability to perform major life activities but doesn’t impact learning, for example, a physical impairment that impacts mobility.
According to the MCPS individualized education plan website, an IEP team meeting for an initial student evaluation must be held no later than 60 calendar days from when the parent authorizes an assessment, or no later than 90 calendar days from the initial referral.
Taylor has noted publicly that the district has challenges to ensuring procedures and timelines for providing special education services are followed, resulting in litigation against the district. For roughly the first six months of fiscal year 2025, which began July 1, MCPS spent $251,485 on special education legal expenses, according to the most recent update provided to the school board.
“We need to hurry up and get our processes a lot tighter and be a lot more intentional about what we’re doing in terms of special education services and things that could potentially be litigated, and to work through that with deference to the kids and families that we’re serving because it’s been big misses for us up until this point,” Taylor said during the May 12 District 18 Democratic Breakfast Club.
The parents whose child was in kindergarten at Barnsley during the 2023-2024 school year said they advocated for their son to be evaluated for an IEP before he started at the school. While he was in preschool, they had hired an aide to be with their son when they observed behaviors such his attempts to leave the school campus. They were told they needed to wait until he attended the school in order to be evaluated.
The parents said it took more than a year for their child to receive an IEP and no real progress occurred until they hired a lawyer.
Briefly, the school instituted a 504 plan that included an addendum for one-on-one support for the student in the classroom. But the parents said they were told that there weren’t enough staff to provide that support.
As their son continued to struggle in class, they were often called to pick him up or the school would seclude him with an adult, sometimes with a counselor, the principal or even a building services worker. After their child had a behavioral outburst one day and the class had to be evacuated, the parents said they were initially told they couldn’t leave before they cleaned up the classroom.
Their student was placed on what is now called Home and Hospital Teaching, a program that provides a minimum of six hours of virtual instruction per week for students who can’t “attend their regular school of enrollment due to a physical, medical, or emotional condition,” according to the MCPS website. This wasn’t enough instruction for their kindergartener, the parents said, but noted their child didn’t feel safe or supported at the school.
Their child was eventually transferred to another MCPS school with a program that provides additional support shortly after the family obtained his IEP.
Lack of communication, pushing for change
All of the parents who spoke to Bethesda Today pointed to frustration with MCPS over a lack of communication and the feeling that their concerns were not heard.
Bohl said the group of Barnsley parents found it frustrating that they often hear about behavioral incidents from their children instead of the school.
“It’s really hard to know whose job it is to inform the parents that an incident has occurred that maybe put your child in harm’s way or was disruptive,” Bohl told Bethesda Today recently. “They don’t communicate how they’ve remedied or they’re protecting large groups of children, and I think that’s really frustrating and scary. My kid, and I’m sure others, had a lot of anxiety going to school because they didn’t feel like they would be protected.”
Anolik echoed those concerns.
“That is the common thread — nobody is listening,” Anolik said.
And, the parents added, MCPS can’t share information about potential disciplinary consequences or measures to address a student’s behavior, giving them little confidence that future incidents will be mitigated. All public and private schools are bound by federal law from sharing academic and disciplinary actions with others outside of a student’s family.
López, the MCPS spokesperson, said for incidents like class evacuations, principals are trained and use “discretion to determine the best course of action for each incident.” When students are hurt by their peers, parents whose students have a safety plan in place participate in the process and “if mediation or restoration is appropriate, families will be made aware of it.”
All of the families said they want MCPS to change how behavioral incidents are addressed and communicated. They also said that extra support in the classroom could help.
During Bohl’s testimony to the school board, she said Barnsley parents were told that a lack of resources led to many of the behavioral issues.
“There’s larger class [sizes], and then if you have students that have greater needs, there’s definitely no wiggle room to attend to those needs, plus the needs of the entire class,” Bohl said. “Teachers are completely under resourced.”
Taylor is hoping that increasing funding for support will help. Meanwhile, MCPS is examining how students are matched into services based on available resources.
“This is a huge undertaking in terms of reevaluating kind of where every student’s individualized education plan is, but that is really what the work is — and in trying to find the right placement for every student so that they can receive the services that are going to help elevate their performance,” he said.
