When they go to work in the morning, school personnel shouldn’t have to worry about suffering bodily harm.

An incident this week that resulted in a broken wrist for a Lawrence elementary school principal offers a snapshot of some of the complex issues teachers and administrators are called upon to deal with in the modern school environment.

The principal at Schwegler School reportedly suffered a broken wrist after being kicked by a 9-year-old third-grader at the school. A fracas had broken out in the classroom after the boy stole candy that is used to reward students for good behavior. According to the boy’s mother, the boy refused to go to the principal’s office and began to cry and throw objects in the classroom. At that point, the school staff attempted to carry him from the room. The principal was kicked and injured while attempting to hold the boy’s legs.

Police were called, the boy was taken into custody and the principal went for medical treatment. The next day, the boy was out of school (having been suspended for five days), the principal had a cast on her arm and the boy’s mother was eager to place blame for the incident on school personnel who, she said, didn’t use the proper “hold” to restrain her son.

According to the mother, they should have used the standard “Mandt system,” which involves an adult standing behind a child and holding the child’s arms in a crossed and locked position. “If they had used the hold,” she said, “he wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

What’s a teacher or principal to do? Federal privacy laws prevent school officials from discussing the details of this child’s history or behavior. The principal can only say, “I followed the district’s guidelines to defuse the situation.” The actions of the teachers and principal don’t seem unreasonable to someone reading about the incident.

We don’t know anything about this student, but his mother’s familiarity with the proper “hold” to use to calm her child seems to indicate that such restraint has been necessary in the past. If so, his behavior may have been a continuing challenge for teachers and administrators. It’s disappointing to see a parent failing to support the actions of professionals forced to deal with a situation like the one that occurred Tuesday.

This case illustrates the challenges of accommodating just one child who is attending the Lawrence public schools and one parent. Children bring a whole host of “issues” to school with them, including behavioral problems, learning disabilities, unstable family situations and others. As Supt. Randy Weseman said following Tuesday’s incident, “We are getting younger kids who have behaviors I didn’t know existed.”

And yet, teachers and administrators are charged not only with educating these youngsters but establishing limits for behavior that prevent them from disrupting the education of their classmates. And whatever action the adults take leaves them open to second-guessing by parents, who were not present and may have an unrealistic view of their child’s behavior.

State legislators who contend that school districts can get by with less funding if they trim “frills” and get “back to the basics” of education should pay attention. Modern teachers and school administrators have to deal with problems that were unknown to their counterparts of a generation ago and those problems make school nurses, psychologists, social workers and other support workers a necessity, not a “frill.”

Is it any wonder that interest in the teaching profession is waning?