CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) _ More than half of school employees felt intimidated by a classroom bully last year, according to a survey released Wednesday by teachers and service personnel unions.

Roughly 58 percent of teachers, instructional aides, bus drivers and school personnel also believe that student misbehavior in classrooms is a "significant problem."

The American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia and the West Virginia School Service Personnel surveyed 2,000 union employees about problem students and their impact on schools.

"The discipline issue has gotten much worse, as the survey shows. It's a common occurrence for teachers to be cursed," said AFT-WV President Judy Hale.

"And the children who are there to learn are being shortchanged. It is a small number of students who constantly disrupt, so it's time we took a good, hard look at this again."

The two unions issued a list of recommendations along with the opinion survey for Gov. Joe Manchin and legislators to consider.

Manchin has made discipline part of his legislative agenda for this year's session. During last week's State of the State address, he called upon lawmakers to address school bullies and disruptive students.

More than a third of teachers, 36 percent, say they lose 20 percent of instructional time every week to disruptive behavior — a loss that amounts to one day a week.

School employees were almost unanimous when it comes to concern about bullies, with 92 percent identifying bullying as a problem at their school or on buses.

The main thrust of the recommendations is strengthening and enforcing the 1995 Safe Schools Act. Hale says that legislation was good, "but the breakdown has come in the implementation. We've had the failure of many administrators to follow through on many of the things in that code."

To help ensure that principals are held accountable for giving support to teachers and school employees, the unions want to institute five-teacher committees to review disciplinary practices at every school on a monthly basis.

The unions also want it to become a grievance-worthy offense if a school employee is retaliated against for reporting a disciplinary incident.

"We got over 70 pages, single-spaced of comments from the people who responded to this survey, and many of those said they fear retaliation if they report discipline problems, so that is a big issue," Hale said. "They're told things like 'do not send any discipline problems to the office.' In other words, they're your responsibility, take care of it in the classroom. That's not OK."