Teacher responds to massive school fight

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - School officials are coming to grips after the chaos on campus yesterday at EBR Readiness, an alternative school in the school district.

They’re still investigating how that fight involving 200 people got out of hand.

RELATED: 10 arrested after massive 200 person brawl at EBR Alternative School

One teacher who wishes to remain anonymous says she is on sabbatical citing what she says are unsafe conditions and stressful situations.

“We told human resources that our school was not safe because we are not staffed appropriately.”

The teacher says they are dealing with a skeleton crew.

She says teacher to student ratio was one teacher to 40 students at one point. She also says substitute teachers come in for a day, never to be seen again.

“It’s like waiting for a bomb to go off.”

Chief of Schools, Arcelius Brickhouse, says before yesterday’s brawl, there were already plans in place to help alleviate workloads.

Brickhouse continued, “We were in the process of starting to open additional sites.”

But those discussions are in their early stage and our teacher believes that would not have prevented what happened but says had there been more staff on campus it may not have gotten so far out of control.

“The school system was more than aware that we were having issues. They did not do anything to change the situation.”

Brickhouse says they take teachers’ and parents’ concerns seriously.

“We try to deal with students who make those poor decisions. We put consequences in place,” added Brickhouse.

Brickhouse says the fights are still under review with his office.

With the proper safety measures put in place, that teacher says she is willing to return to the classroom.

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