Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, talks about teacher and student safety during a House Education and Public Works Committee meeting in the House office building on Statehouse grounds in Columbia, S.C., on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Screenshot of SCETV legislative livestream)
COLUMBIA — Students acting out in class, sometimes to the point of attacking teachers, is causing educators to quit. How to protect teachers while also providing students the education they need is still a question, advocates and legislators said Tuesday.
Legislators attempted to address it with a House bill that would require schools to remove students from the classroom, possibly permanently, if they consistently act out in a way that disrupts or harms other students or their teacher. If a student got violent, a teacher would be able to react with “reasonable physical force” to protect themselves or other students under the proposal.
The House education committee hit pause on the bill Tuesday after teachers’ advocates, civil rights groups and parents raised concerns it could go too far.
The dozen people who spoke all supported the idea behind the bill. Without additional support and training, however, they worried it could disproportionately lead to students who act out because of disabilities and struggles at home being removed from their classrooms.
Legislators plan to take a closer look at the bill to make sure it protects students as well as teachers, said Rep. Shannon Erickson, who leads the committee and is the bill’s primary sponsor.
“There is a lot of gray area in this,” the Beaufort Republican said.
Teachers need some sort of protection, said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association. Educators call the organization weekly with stories of “how their professional and physical wellbeing has been upended by student conduct,” Kelly said.
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Students have bitten, hit and thrown objects at their teachers, Kelly said. He has heard from teachers who sustained concussions, torn tendons and, in one case, a miscarriage as a result of students assaulting them.
“These behaviors result in lesson plans abandoned in order to evacuate students from a class when desks and Chromebooks are being thrown across a classroom,” Kelly said. “These behaviors have also resulted in real physical injury to educators and other students.”
In an association survey, 22% of teachers said if they reported a student’s violent behavior to the principal, they could expect that student to return to the classroom that same day. An additional 2% said the student wouldn’t be removed from the classroom at all, Kelly said.
Administrators want students to spend as much time as possible in the classroom learning, which is admirable, though not at the expense of teachers’ safety and comfort, said Kelly, who also teaches advanced high school government classes in Blythewood.
“But in the face of these reasons, the response can’t be the too-common status quo of expecting and requiring educators to endure and carry on with business as usual,” Kelly said. “Yet, every student has a right to an education, even those who misbehave.”
Sometimes, students are misbehaving because they have either a diagnosed or undiagnosed disability, said several disability rights advocates and parents of children with disabilities.
As Jennifer Rainville, an attorney for education policy for Appleseed Legal Justice Center, put it: “Behavior is communication.”
“So, if we don’t look at the root cause of a child’s behavior, we can’t effectively fix it, and we are just kicking the can down the road,” Rainville said.
That was the case for Amy Holbert’s son, who has a behavioral disorder that caused him to act out in class, she said. His middle school teachers often described him as disobedient, disrespectful and disruptive — three of the qualifications to have a student removed from the classroom under the bill.
“In these moments, what looks like defiance is often a child struggling,” said Holbert, who leads Family Connection of South Carolina.
When Holbert’s son, whose disability she did not name, entered high school, a psychologist, administrator and teacher worked to understand him and how he communicated. Once his needs were met, he excelled, going on to earn a business degree from Clemson University, she said.
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“This outcome would never have been possible if his behavior had continued to be treated only as a discipline issue instead of a need for support,” Holbert said.
Other parents named similar struggles with their own children with disabilities. Mary Reaves’ child has Tourette syndrome, which causes uncontrollable outbursts, said the advocate for Able SC.
Rep. James Teeple’s daughter “learns different and acts different” after having an aggressive brain tumor removed, said the Johns Island Republican, who’s among the bill’s co-sponsors.
Other children with anxiety or trauma might act out because they don’t know how to handle their emotions, said Holbert, whose group supports parents of children with disabilities.
If teachers and administrators received more targeted training or schools hired more counselors and other trained professionals who could talk to children removed from classrooms for acting out, that could help, advocates suggested.
Some principals go through extensive training that mirrors what special education teachers learn, giving them the ability to identify and work with students who have disabilities that cause them to behave violently or disruptively. But the state has no uniform policy for all districts, said Ryan Bailey, spokesman for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators.
Legislators need to find a way to ensure every student is getting the education they need. At the same time, teachers need some sort of protection from students who are acting violently in class, Erickson said.
Some school districts have threatened to revoke teachers’ certifications because the teacher grabbed a student who was threatening them or a peer, she said. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to defend themselves if necessary, and they shouldn’t be scared to come to work, she said.
That’s especially true in a state that still had 706 empty teaching positions at the beginning of the school year, she said.
“This is going toward that situation, to make it easier for teachers to have a predictable outcome and for parents to have a predictable situation and for administrators to have a predictable set of circumstances on how these situations are dealt with,” Erickson said.
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The federal Individuals with Disabilities Act, commonly called the IDEA, ensures all children with disabilities can receive a free education. It also governs how public schools provide the appropriate intervention and services they need.
The law lists the covered disabilities as “an intellectual disability, a hearing impairment (including deafness), a speech or language impairment, a visual impairment (including blindness), a serious emotional disturbance (referred to in this part as ’emotional disturbance’), an orthopedic impairment, autism, traumatic brain injury, any other health impairment, a specific learning disability, deaf-blindness, or multiple disabilities.”
Under the law, behavioral disorders are part of what’s called an “emotional disturbance.” The definition includes “inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.”
Characteristics of children who have an emotional disturbance include hyperactivity, aggression, withdrawal, immaturity, and/or learning difficulties, according to the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health.
Common disorders under the umbrella of emotional disturbance include anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and psychotic disorders, according to the organization.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
