‘We want our school back:’ BISD educators, parents press Beaumont ISD on conditions inside classrooms

A teacher said he needs body armor to feel safe at school. A former educator said she is watching teachers walk away from a profession they love. A parent questioned why anyone would remain in an environment where teachers feel they are treated as the problem.

One after another, educators, former teachers, parents and students took to the microphone Sept. 24 to tell Beaumont ISD's Board of Managers and Superintendent Sandi Massey that improving student achievement must begin with addressing what they say is happening inside the district’s classrooms.

The public comments touched on teacher mental health, staffing shortages, student behavior, school safety, class schedules, discipline, communication and what several speakers described as a growing lack of trust between educators and district leadership.

The meeting was the latest in a period of intense focus on attendance, staffing, and academic performance within BISD. The district recently reported a teacher attendance rate of about 89.6%, while Massey has said the district is looking at the underlying causes of both student and teacher absences.

But, according to those speaking at the board meeting, the numbers tell only part of the story.

“We hear a lot of numbers in these meetings, test scores, enrollment rates,” said Kacy Ellis, a former BISD teacher and the 2024-25 Campus Teacher of the Year at Roy Guess Elementary School. “Numbers only tell what happened but don’t tell us why.”

Ellis said teachers’ absences cannot always be viewed simply as an attendance problem.

“Before we view that number through a lens of criticism, we need to ask what lies behind it,” she said. “Is a teacher taking a day off because they are disengaged or because they are exhausted, recovering from an injury or dealing with mental health strain?”

Ellis described two teachers she said she knows personally; one who sought help repeatedly for severe student behavior before eventually taking FMLA leave for mental health care, and another who required FMLA leave after suffering a knee injury, that ultimately required surgery, resulting from a classroom incident.

“On a spreadsheet, both count simply as one absence, but the numbers obscure the human story,” Ellis said, adding that the 5 p.m. board meetings preclude educators from having a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard at board meetings. “Right now, teachers struggle to share these real stories with you directly because you require teachers to stay on campus until 5:15 on Thursdays when school board meetings begin at 5, effectively denying them a voice in the very decisions that impact their daily lives.”

Sierra Taylor, a parent of two BISD students, focused on the district's teacher shortage and what she described as a lack of respect for educators.

“Our children deserve to be taught by adults that have consciously made the decision to be a teacher, adults that will show up, be consistent and are educated,” Taylor said. “We don’t want desperate teachers, we want amazing teachers, so why have we been losing them?”

Taylor said she has witnessed what she considers a dismissive attitude toward teachers.

“The attitude I’ve witnessed being directed toward teachers is, ‘put up, shut up, or leave,’” she said, and further questioned how BISD can expect student scores to improve while losing teachers. “What self-respecting adult would stay in an environment that is constantly telling them that they are the problem, they don’t matter, and they don’t deserve to be treated as a normal human being with rights?

“Teachers that left did not leave because they are lazy and teachers that stayed did not stay because they are lazy.

“There’s a problem. Teachers are tired and teachers are weary and, if you don’t get it straight, teachers are gone.”

Ellis likewise warned that teacher turnover carries consequences beyond filling vacancies.

“When experienced teachers leave, we don’t just lose employees, we lose institutional knowledge, mentors and community stability,” she said.

‘We’re exhausted’

Bevin Savell, a BISD kindergarten teacher, challenged the district's approach to instruction and professional development.

“Somebody is lying,” Savell said. “You don’t come from HISD, a district four times the size of BISD, successfully, then not know what to do when you get here.”

Savell said effective instruction requires teachers to meet students where they are academically, using remediation and scaffolding rather than assuming teachers themselves are the problem.

“Assuming that all teachers are incompetent and thereby forcing them to come in extra in the morning or stay late in the afternoons,” she said is a huge problem that is untenable long-term. “We’re exhausted, we’re dealing with discipline, it’s demoralizing.”

Savell also criticized the timing of instructional materials,  “especially when slide decks are not uploaded in time and we’re being told to internalize the lessons and be prepared — that’s just pernicious.”

Linda Gilmore, a former BISD teacher who said she spent 57 years with the district, delivered an emotional criticism of the evening.

“In my 57 years with this district I have never seen so much disrespect and confusion,” Gilmore said, then focused on Massey’s failure to show up to the district's community meetings. “The community meetings she began need her presence or cancelled if she’s not able to attend.”

Gilmore also said she has seen teachers and principals treated disrespectfully and questioned whether parents are being adequately included in their children's education.

“Parent involvement has been locked out,” she said, adding that some parents are receiving little information beyond testing results indicating their child is below grade level.

She said parents ask their children what they learned at school and hear responses such as “nothing” or “still no teacher.”

Gilmore also pushed back against comparisons between BISD and Houston ISD.

“We are not HISD — I’m tired of that,” she said.

“You are destroying my city,” Gilmore told the board. “Are you moving or am I going to move to Lumberton, 15 miles away?”

‘We just want our school back’

Greg Landry, who said he teaches psychology and sociology primarily to juniors and seniors at West Brook High School, focused on safety and the changes students and teachers are experiencing on campus.

Landry said students have told him they feel unsafe and raised concerns about access to parts of the campus and classroom door policies.

“The 300 building in the back is easy to get in,” Landry said. “I guess I need to ask for some body armor because I’m the one who has to go out and take the door stop out and the door has to stay open…so, to remind you, if another Uvalde happens, it will be blood on your hands.”

Landry said students also face frequent disruptions and criticized the district’s 90-minute class periods and little-to-no time for restroom breaks. He said students face long bathroom lines and restrictions that disallow them from leaving class within the first hour.

“We still don’t have a library,” Landry further detailed. “We’re supposed to be a high school. We were a B-rated campus and we don’t even have a librarian.”

Landry compared conditions to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union as, “We have to pair our desks together. Go look up Soviet Union classroom on Google…it came from that guy in Houston…”

“We just want our school back,” Landry said, and added that students have lost after-school employment because of the later dismissal enacted under Massey. “We want the 7:15 to 2:45 schedule we used to have.”

Landry also questioned the Board of Managers' willingness to challenge the superintendent and raised an allegation that he had heard there might be a “secret agreement” preventing the board from voting against the superintendent's recommendations.

“Board of Managers, I don’t know – y’all have never voted no,” Landry said. “We have a conservator here we have to pay... $250 dollars an hour, and y’all have never even given him a chance to overrule y’all.”

He urged board members to review the oath they took.

“Y’all need to wake up and go look at your oath you took to protect and defend the Constitution like I did because you’re in violation of your oath,” Landry said.

Landry also said an open records request he submitted had not been processed within 10 working days, with a BISD public information representative invoking an extra day to produce the public record, effectively preventing him from presenting the information at the current board meeting.

“Change is not the problem…many teachers returned because we wanted change, we wanted better for BISD and, most importantly, we wanted better for our students,” said BISD educator and parent Shonkerah Greenwood, who said she started the school year excited and optimistic about the change. But, “Change without communication, transparency, accountability and active listening, creates frustration, not progress. I challenge you – ask the teachers who are boots on the ground, ask the teachers who returned, stayed, and continue showing up every day because we believe in our students…Educators are walking away because they feel overworked, underpaid, unsupported and unheard.”

Greenwood expressed that student behavior is being addressed by on-campus relocation rather than providing meaningful intervention and consistent consequences, and that teachers are not being allotted their required 450 minutes of planning time every two weeks among their many responsibilities all while correcting slide decks containing curriculum with errors or information that does not align with what they are expected to teach.

“I’m not asking you to stop the change; I’m asking you to listen,” said Greenwood.

A different kind of response

Following the public comments and the scheduled agenda, which included discussion surrounding technology upgrades and concerns surrounding attendance at Bingman Head Start and credit by exam, Massey did not directly respond to the individual concerns raised by the speakers, although customary for the meeting structure.

Instead, a Bible story, prayers, and tears were offered.

The exchange exemplified the disconnect speakers described throughout the evening: Educators and parents came to the microphone with specific concerns about staffing, discipline, safety, instruction and working conditions, while the superintendent's response centered on faith and emotion.

The speakers’ message, however, was consistent: Improving BISD is about more than test scores and attendance percentages. It is about whether teachers want to stay, whether students feel safe and supported, whether parents feel heard, and whether the people inside BISD's classrooms believe district leadership is listening and responding.