Community rallies behind Iowa City teacher who recounts multiple assaults in classroom

IOWA CITY — Aspen Lohman, an “empathetic and incredibly skilled” first grade teacher at Coralville Central Elementary School, has been on leave since February after repeated assaults by a student left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, acute panic attacks and depression.

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A dozen people — including family members, former students and parents of students, peers and community members — spoke on Aspen’s behalf Tuesday at an Iowa City school board meeting. Some educators shared their experiences with aggression by students.

“I am no longer teaching because of two assaults and one attempted assault during the last school year,” Aspen wrote in a statement read by her mother Danella Van Tasell Tuesday.

“I am writing this because my colleagues and I deserve to teach in a safe environment where we are supported and not just repeatedly told, ‘The administration knows. It’s happening everywhere ... I don’t know what to tell you. It takes a long time to right a ship.’ That is not acceptable anymore,“ Aspen wrote.

There were 11 reported incidents of a staff member needing outside medical attention due to an incident of intentional student contact in Iowa City schools during the 2024-25 school year, according to data from the district.

Aspen said she began to “fear for my life” last school year. The district created a safety plan for Aspen to lock her classroom door and have the principal and colleagues help her avoid the student she said was stalking her.

This would have been Aspen’s 29th year teaching in the Iowa City Community School District.

“She was a very positive person, always had a smile on her face, always looking at the bright side, bubbly, optimistic. This kind of broke her,” her husband John Lohman said in an interview with The Gazette.

“I am losing my hair. I have debilitating headaches. I have nightmares almost every night. I try to avoid people. I plan the time to walk my dog when I can best avoid neighbors, who I adore. If I shop, I have to go to Cedar Rapids, and then I still cry and have panic attacks. I don’t go to Iowa football games anymore with my family,” Aspen wrote.

‘Unsafe learning environments’

John detailed the multiple assaults on Aspen by students in a guest column published in The Gazette on Sept. 7.

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Since then, John said there has been an “outpouring” of support from educators across Iowa thanking them for shining a spotlight on the problem of violence in schools.

“When is the school board going to hold administrators accountable for unsafe learning environments?” John asked. “Teachers deserve to be able to teach in a safe environment ... There was a concerted effort to sweep this under the carpet.”

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During public comment Tuesday, Angela Strobel said her son — who was a first-grader in Aspen’s class last year — witnessed a student strangle his teacher.

Strobel said she was not told about the incident by the school district. She found out months later after getting an email from Aspen saying she was going on leave.

“It is not OK for me not to know that happened to my son and to be able to talk to him about it,” Strobel said. “Whatever policy stopped me from knowing to even discuss with him what happened that day, I think that needs to change.”

“What happened was frightening, traumatic and completely unacceptable,” said Royceann Porter, president of Black Voices in our Community.

“When children lash out in violent ways, there is almost always deep pain underneath. That does not excuse the behavior,” Porter said during public comment.

Children “deserve access to mental health care, counseling, trauma informed support and real intervention, not just labels that call them criminals,” Porter said. “We can ensure classrooms are safe places for teachers and students alike, and we can give hurting children the chance to heal.”

Future of Aspen’s teaching career ‘uncertain’

Gretchen Lohman, Aspen’s sister-in-law, said Aspen has recounted stories about being stabbed with a pencil and put in a headlock by students.

“I asked, ‘Why did you come back to that classroom?’ She said, ‘Because I needed my students to know that I was OK the next day because it was also very traumatizing for them,’” Gretchen said. “Even after all of the acts of violence Aspen endured, she still wanted to teach at Coralville Central because she said, ‘These are my people.’”

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Gretchen said Aspen had plans to retire from Coralville Central. Now, the future of her teaching career is uncertain.

“This nonaction has changed my sister-in-law for the rest of her life and cut her long, successful 28-year teaching career short,” Gretchen said. “As a board, you need to investigate these problems.”

An ‘empathetic, incredibly skilled teacher’

Mike O’Leary, former principal of Coralville Central who retired in 2008, hired Aspen.

“She was excellent. It was an amazing hire,” he said.

O’Leary said he’s spoken with Aspen since she went on leave from teaching. “It’s really difficult for her to talk about it. She’s been so traumatized. A child attacked and tried to strangle her,” he said.

Paige VanCleave’s son, Quinn, 6, was supposed to be in Aspen’s first grade class this year. Her older son Cooper, now 15, had Aspen as a teacher when he was in first grade in 2016.

Aspen is an “empathetic and incredibly skilled” teacher, VanCleave said.

“We were really excited to have her (as a teacher) again,” VanCleave said in an interview with The Gazette. “She has a magical classroom. She sends daily emails to the parents — things to talk to your kids about to engage them in talking about their day. She dresses up for homecoming spirit week to the nines. She sets the bar for teaching and exceeds it.”

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VanCleave said Cooper, who is now a student at Iowa City West High School, has witnessed repeated violence in school over the years.

“Classrooms have had to be cleared because kids are destroying rooms. At Northwest (Middle School) and West, kids have had to be pulled into classrooms because someone is being violent in the hallways. It’s such a normal thing anymore,” VanCleave said.

Years of documented assaults

In May 2022, John Lohman emailed Coralville Central Principal Andy Cahan detailing an assault on Aspen by a first grade student. In the email — shared with The Gazette — John wrote that “she was stabbed in the shoulder by a student with a sharpened pencil.”

“Aspen is one of our most beloved and experienced teachers at Coralville Central. She is well respected and looked at as a top leader that teachers and myself go to for advice and guidance,” Cahan responded.

“We obviously do not want negative behaviors to happen whether physical or verbal,” Cahan wrote in May 2022. “However, it is very challenging to combat these unpredictable moments with certain students. We are and have been addressing many negative behaviors throughout this school year. I cannot go into detail on students’ behaviors and their intervention plans ... We never want anyone to be injured and feel unsafe, especially in a school setting.”

School board responds

School board members at Tuesday’s meeting discussed why teachers might not report incidences of violence and what steps could be taken to improve trust between teachers and administrators.

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They also discussed how to better support students in special education and the teachers who serve them.

“I think that there’s a lot of good systems in place, but the trust isn’t there,” board vice president Molly Abraham said. “We hear that over and over that teachers don’t want to report incidents that happen because they don’t think anything will happen if they do. I’m not sure that we’re hearing the true amount of things that are happening.”

“That’s exactly what I’m hearing too, over and over again,” board member Jayne Finch said. “And also part of that is it takes time to report, right? So if they think that nothing is going to be done, why bother. I’m very heartened to hear the steps you’ve taken.”

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“Part of the puzzle here, to me, is changing that culture, which is really hard to do,” board member Lisa Williams said. “I think we’re capable of doing it. Part of that is to change culture you have to have trust between your teachers and your administrative team, and I think that exists in this district.”

“One thing I don’t want to get lost in this is that this is beyond an IEP thing,” board member Mitch Lingo said, referring to Individualized Education Plans, which are created for students in special education. “What I hear isn’t parents talking about a special education student. It’s other students too.”

There were 13,375 office referrals in the Iowa City district during the 2023-24 school year, which is the most recent available data. Of those, 5,639 — about 42 percent — were referrals of students with IEPs.

During that same year, there were 837 out of school suspensions of students, and 259 in school suspensions.

Out of school suspensions included:

In-school suspensions included:

In 2018, the Iowa City district removed all of its seclusion rooms after a 2017 state investigation showed the district violated federal law because many parents didn’t know about the small enclosures used for seclusion and the rooms were being used more broadly than intended.

“We’ve stopped secluding and restraining kids, we’ve stopped suspending for certain offenses. When those things are taken off the plate, there are some unintended consequences of that. That unintended consequence can’t be the physical safety of our staff, though,” Superintendent Matt Degner said.

“If there was an easy solution, we’d be employing it,” Degner said. “We’ve tried to improve, and we’ve removed old, tired solutions that we don’t employ anymore. We don’t generally suspend kindergartners through second-graders.”

“I do think we have some high frequency in the amount of aggression we see toward staff in the area of special education in comparison to where we see that data in other places,” Degner said.

Deputy Superintendent Chace Ramey said there isn’t a category specific to students assaulting staff members. “We see that as something we need to zero in on better, he said.

“I think a positive step is we are starting to hear teachers tell those things to us directly. Even six months ago, it was whispers. We now are hearing more staff members coming to us and saying specifically some of the things that you’ve heard,” Ramey said, adding it’s a step toward “building trust.”

Iowa City district establishing data review team

A presentation by district administrators to the Iowa City school board Tuesday affirmed a commitment to seek feedback and adapt plans and procedures to meet the needs of students and staff.

District officials reviewed how special education staff and resources are allocated, policies related to violence, and guidance for student discipline.

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“Thank you to the people that participated in the comment portion tonight,” Degner said. “I think you see the passion for our staff and also the passion our staff have for our kids, and we have a responsibility with this dual commitment to make sure we serve all kids in the district at the highest level, and that our staff feel that they are working in an environment that they can be safe and confident in as well.”

“With over 14,000 kids and over 2,000 staff members, there’s complexities in how we figure out the right answer to those questions and how it gets actualized into our school buildings ... Some of these are big pieces for us to work on moving forward. We’re not starting from zero. This is something we’ve been working on for the last couple of years,” Degner said.

A team of district officials is reviewing data to identify trends and potential needs, according to the presentation. The data includes office discipline referrals, specifically incidents of physical aggression with or without injury or serious bodily injury; employee accident reports involving intentional student contact; and seclusion and restraint reports.

The team will include Ramey, executive directors of elementary and secondary schools, executive director of educational services and student success, and representatives from the special education and human resources departments.

The district also is establishing a centralized data review team to evaluate office referrals and resolutions, academic performance, attendance and truancy, and special education eligibility.

The presentation Tuesday also reviewed injury response protocol, which states when an employee is injured at school, the injury must be reported to the principal and assessed by the school nurse. An electronic accident report is to be completed, which alerts the human resources department.

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