The Iowa City Community School District recently created a task force to tackle student aggression. The goal is to reduce physical incidents, support teachers, and create classrooms where learning continues to happen.

The task force comes in response to what educators and support staff say they have been seeing for years — kids acting out, sometimes violently, and adults stretched thin trying to keep up. Some educators say the behavior itself isn’t the problem — it’s the system around it. 

The school district’s most recent Annual Progress Report recorded 837 out-of-school suspensions and 259 in-school interventions during the 2023-24 school year, with both numbers up slightly from the year prior. Office referrals for disruptive or noncompliant behavior have also climbed, with over 13,000 reported across the district, nearly 2,500 more than the previous year.

The school district’s task force was created in part after significant community response to longtime Iowa City first-grade teacher Aspen Lohman’s resignation due to safety concerns, where, according to a statement written by Lohman and read at a Sept. 24 school board meeting by her sister-in-law, Gretchen Lohman, she was repeatedly stalked and assaulted by a fifth-grade student. 

Her departure prompted public discussions about classroom safety and staffing.

Sarah Bergthold, a school psychologist based in Bettendorf, Iowa, and board-certified behavior analyst who supports 21 school districts across the Midwest, said rising suspensions and referrals do not necessarily indicate students are behaving differently than in the past.

“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and I would not say there’s been a significant change,” Bergthold said. “It’s always been a problem. But now, people are becoming more aware of children and adolescents’ mental health issues.”

Bergthold works with school teams to assess student behaviors and implement evidence-based interventions. She said she regularly encounters physical aggression and refusal to follow directions in the different districts she supports. 

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“There have been a lot of changes in Iowa, in particular, to the way that we provide support to students in the schools,” Bergthold said. “Resources and support are scarce. There’s not enough support to give the students what they need.”

Elizabeth Freiburger, a Ph.D. candidate in school psychology and applied behavioral analysis at the UI, said, the COVID-19 pandemic, with its sudden shift to remote learning and limits on social interaction, added new challenges for students.

Freiburger said students returning to in-person classrooms often struggle with routines and expectations that changed during remote learning.

“During the pandemic, students were online a lot of the time, so that has lower expectations compared to being in a classroom where you’re expected to focus on the teacher for X amount of minutes,” Freiburger said. “So part of it is that students are relearning how to be in a classroom.”

Mia Roldán, a second-year UI elementary education major, said even as an undergraduate, she is learning strategies to manage these behaviors in classrooms.

“I see teachers taking the time to learn more about their students and their needs,” Roldán said. “This means learning about their family history, taking the time to ask questions. I see how that can help foster those student-to-teacher relationships, thus creating a space where students feel like they can open up about emotional and social needs.”

Roldán said she’s learning these kinds of check-ins can make classroom expectations feel more manageable and help prevent behaviors from escalating.

Freiburger said many of the challenges students face come down to the interplay of nature and nurture.

“The environment plays a big role in how children are developing and how they see others around them, how they’re displaying positive or negative interactions with others, and that carries over into the school setting,” Freiburger said.

Bergthold said in addition to teachers building relationships with their students, systemic approaches like the task force can help fill longstanding gaps created by staffing shortages and inconsistent resources across districts.

“Oftentimes, people want to change the kid,” Bergthold said. “That’s not the solution. It’s changing the adults, the system, the classrooms, the education.”