Researchers and advocates for children say flawed and uneven policies governing student conduct explain why so many of the state's public school students are banished from class each year.
"It's not like students in North Carolina are misbehaving more," said Joel Rosch, a researcher at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "The reason for our high rate is almost all a function of policy."
The policy differences among school districts explain why some, including Wake, have so many more suspensions than others, Rosch said.
"After Columbine, after Virginia Tech, a lot of schools started zero-tolerance policies that changed the culture of schools," said Jason Langberg, an attorney at Advocates for Children's Services, a project of Legal Aid of North Carolina that represents students in suspension hearings. "There's no inherent problem with the safe-schools movement. The problem is we're creating policies that don't actually lead to safe schools."
Districts brought in more school resource officers, hired by local law enforcement, to patrol schools. Punishments for smaller infractions such as dress code violations or truancy became stricter to combat a perceived gang culture, Langberg said.
The state lists 17 "dangerous and violent" acts that must be punished and reported to the state and law enforcement. They include having a weapon on school property. But a butter knife or tool could be classified as a weapon. These acts are at the core of zero-tolerance policies, meaning that suspensions are automatic.
Aside from these acts, school districts have discretion to create their own codes of conduct for which principals determine punishments.
In Durham, a student may get a long-term suspension for an offense, but long-term is defined as 11 days to a full year.
The Wake school system defines a long-term suspension as "removal from the school system for the remainder of the school year." Thus a Wake student may be punished far longer for the same offense.
Wake school board member Keith Sutton said he wants to re-examine the district's zero-tolerance policy in the next few weeks. "We as a community have to do more in terms of teaching our kids about good behavior and respect," Sutton said. "And then in the schools, we have to do more to try to be more innovative, creative, and thinking outside the box, and trying to figure out how we can keep kids in a learning environment."
