NEWS

Parents of Marion's online students called out for PG-13 behavior

By Joe Callahan
Ocala Star-Banner

Now available on an internet service near you: "MCPSonline." Rated PG-13. Features explicit language and adult situations. Parental discretion is advised.

Eric Cummings, chairman of the Marion County School Board, said it is time for the district to create a virtual school code of conduct to address parent behavior now that issues have surfaced during online classes.

About one-third of Marion County students, or 14,000 in grades K-12, are learning from home, and a few of their parents seem to have forgotten that their child’s laptop camera and microphone are catching words and images in the background.

Cummings said he has received reports of women wearing bras without shirts walking into the frame behind their children who have started classes. In other cases, parents can be heard using expletives.

Marion County School Board Chairman Eric Cummings said it is time to create a Virtual School Code of Conduct, one aimed at parents. He said that some women have been seen wearing bras and some parents can be heard shouting expletives. (Joe Callahan/Ocala Star-Banner photo illustration)

“Kids and the teachers are seeing and hearing it,” Cummings said. 

That causes the teacher, who is teaching from his or her classroom at her assigned school, to scramble to mute sounds and shut off screens.

“A teacher familiar with the platform can quickly turn their screens off,” Cummings said. “If that teacher is not familiar, those kids could get exposed to things that they are not used to seeing. We need to create some type of online etiquette protocols for parents.”

Cummings was observing one online class recently. Cummings saw one teacher’s screen. It revealed most of her students staring into the camera. Their faces filled video squares, or blocks like in true Brady Bunch form, all ready to learn.

Marion County School Board Chairman Eric Cummings discusses school business during a work session last year. [Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner file]2019

In one of the squares was a man looking into the laptop camera.

“I looked at the teacher’s screen and all of her kids were on there, but in one of the blocks there was a man with a beard,” Cummings said. “It was the father of the kid trying to get the student’s act together. I was like: 'Who is this old man looking at all of these little kids?' ”

But even more important, Cummings said many parents are interfering with teacher attempts to conduct their class. And too many parents are helping, or actually doing, their child’s work during online school.

“We need these parents to let these teachers to teach,” Cummings said. “If they were in regular class the parent would not be sitting there helping them. The way a parent learned how do, say math, is not how they are teaching today.”

Mark Avery, the president of the local teachers' union, said that he has heard many reports of teachers struggling to get control of classrooms, and being subjected to rude and unacceptable behavior by students and parents.

He believes that more guidance is needed. He said that there needs to be consequences for the actions of students, as well as parents.

"It is still a classroom," Avery said.

Avery pointed to a YouTube video posted by West Port High School teacher Kiara Feliciano. The video was entitled "Expectations for Guardians: What I Will and Won't Accept." The teacher calmly said that everyone is experiencing hardships.

This is a photo of a YouTube video of West High School teacher Kiara Feliciano who addressed parents and guardians about proper protocols. She said students were making rude comments about her looks that made her feel degraded.

The teacher realized that after two days of school that behavior had to change.

"After the first couple of days, I realized I really need to be talking to you in order to support your children the best that I can," Feliciano said. "In order for me to help your child, I need more help in return."

Feliciano said in a traditional classroom setting that she "can limit the distractions."

But teaching virtual school school she may have "50 to 60 students at a time," Feliciano said, adding that she has no way to control 50 to 60 households.

"Your child needs a quiet space for them to work," she noted, adding that some students are unmuting their microphones every time she mutes them.

"The students are playing offensive, inappropriate music during class time and using inappropriate language in the chat feeds," she noted. "I can't be in your household to help with these things, but I think you can help me here."

Feliciano then turned to a more serious discussion at the end of the six-minute video.

She said: "When your child's microphone is on, and I am in the middle of teaching, I don't need to hear how attractive you think I am." She said other students do not need to hear such "crass talk" in her class.

"I don't think it is cute, or funny, and I am not at all flattered by it," she said. "If anything I am humiliated by it. You have degraded me and reduced me in that moment."

She continued, stating, "my students will then not see me as an educator, a fierce advocate for a right to a quality education, but instead they will see me as a piece of meat." 

"They have learned this though your example," she concluded.

In response to the behavior, Cummings emailed a copy of a Pennsylvania school district’s document. called “Virtual Learning Code of Conduct,” to district staff.

The document was created by Colonial School District, located in an area known as Plymouth Meeting, a region that straddles Plymouth and Whitemarsh Townships in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

The Colonial code of conduct specifically addresses many student behaviors, including dressing and speaking appropriately. There is one section that speaks to parent behavior as it refers to cheating.

And that section states that parents must “ensure that your child’s work is authentic and original.”

Cummings said he would like the Marion school district to expand it to include parents, adding dress and language expectations for the adults, too.

School district spokesman Kevin Christian said the district will release a video on Sept. 21 that will give tips to parents how to help their children be successful. As to some student and parent behavior, he said: "We would not allow that in the traditional classroom."

"How do you tell people how to behave in their own home?" Christian asked. "We have to have the parents' cooperation for online classes to succeed."

Joe Callahan can be reached at 867-4113 or at joe.callahan@starbanner.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoeOcalaNews.