LANSING, Mich. — Two teachers suing Jackson Public Schools say the district did nothing to help them against aggressive students.
Both women have more than 20 years of experience teaching troubled teens, but they say nothing could have prepared them for what they endured at the Fourth Street Learning Center.
Things like threats, expletives, riots, punching out of windows, fights, guns, and drugs, they say.
Joanna Perkin and Amy Gish have both been on medical leave for more than a year.
"It was my cardiologist who took me off who told me that if I continued working in this environment I would die of a heart attack," said Gish.
The Fourth Street Learning Center is an alternative school for at-risk students inside the Middle School at Parkside.
Perkin says when she left, the school had no security and no social workers.
"It got to be so horrific that I couldn't return. All of our pleas and cries fell on deaf ears. We went over and over and over, followed procedure, cried for help, it just continued to fall on deaf ears," said Perkin.
"We asked for help from administration to see if we could get resources in and that never happened," said Gish.
The teachers say several of their colleagues also left the school.
They're hoping the suit brings changes for the staff and students there.
"If they had listened to us and the ideas that we were bringing to them, I have a feeling there would've been a different outcome," said Gish.
Jackson Public Schools tells us district policy is to not comment on pending litigation.
It has a little less than three weeks to respond to the lawsuit.
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