{"id":329963,"date":"2015-03-09T13:36:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T18:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=329963"},"modified":"2015-03-10T13:36:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T18:36:32","slug":"tatum-parents-seek-action-after-fights-escalate-at-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=329963","title":{"rendered":"Tatum Parents Seek Action after Fights Escalate at High School"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tatumofficer\"<\/a>TATUM — Parents of Tatum High School students are calling for action after a photo of a school resource officer asleep in his car became a hit on social media amid an escalation of fights on campus. That’s according to KETK and the Longview News-Journal. “I got a text from my daughter today from school. She told me that there was a huge fight and that she was almost caught in the crossfire,” mother Heather Grindle said during a Tatum ISD school board meeting Wednesday – the day four fights broke out on campus. <\/p>\n

“I’ve had this discussion with my kids almost every night,” Grindle said. “We sit down to dinner and I say, ‘How was your day today?’ and the first thing they talk about is the fights at school. I think that’s a problem. I don’t know if it’s the transfer kids or if it’s the Tatum kids and I don’t really care. But something’s got to give, something’s got to be done because these fights are getting out of hand.”<\/p>\n

Tatum ISD Superintendent Dee Hartt confirmed four physical alterations between 10 Tatum High School students occurred on campus Wednesday before school, during lunch and between classes. The school has recorded 12 fights this year, he said. In the past four years, Tatum High School has had an average of 11 discipline infractions per year, he said. “Each incident was said to be an ongoing issue between the involved students that escalated through social media and continued throughout the school day,” Hartt said.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Tatum High School students began circulating a photo on social media of their school resource officer asleep in his car with a tweet that read, “This is what the Tatum High campus ‘police’ does.” Later in the day, after some of the fights were said to have occurred, students posted a different photo of the school resource officer walking the halls with the note that said, “Now our cop wanna show up. Have a good nap?” <\/p>\n

Hartt viewed the photo of the officer asleep and said it did not appear to have actually been taken Wednesday. He noted the sky appeared sunny, while the weather was rainy Wednesday. He also said the primary focus of school resource officers is to be present at school entrances to act as a deterrent to “a violent entrance.” Secondary responsibilities include providing student supervision during certain times of the day; however, campus administrators and staff are responsible for monitoring and disciplining students – not the school resource officer, he said. Hartt said campus administrators investigated all four fights Wednesday, and all students involved were disciplined “in accordance with school district policy.” Students received three days suspension and two days of in-school suspension, he said. None of the students involved were seriously injured, he added.<\/p>\n

But Grindle said during Wednesday night’s school board meeting that she doesn’t believe that’s enough. “Whatever’s happening isn’t fixing the problem. Getting however many days in the alternative school is not fixing the problem because the fights are not getting less,” she said to the school board.<\/p>\n

Hartt said social media was definitely at least partially to blame for Wednesday’s incidents. In a letter he sent to parents after this past week’s fights, Hartt sought parents’ help in educating their children on proper social media behavior. “Social media conversations in which students post hurtful messages, embarrassing comments and\/or inappropriate photos and videos spill over into the school in the form of bad feelings, arguments and disruptions,” he said. “TISD encourages you to help us educate our students about appropriate usage and consequences of social media behavior.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TATUM — Parents of Tatum High School students are calling for action after a photo of a school resource officer asleep in his car became a hit on social media amid an escalation of fights on campus. That’s according to KETK and the Longview News-Journal. “I got a text from my daughter today from school. … Continue reading Tatum Parents Seek Action after Fights Escalate at High School<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-14 18:37:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329963"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329966,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329963\/revisions\/329966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}