Wake County school leaders are calling for an end to zero-tolerance discipline policies with more emphasis on shorter suspensions and additional alternatives designed to keep students in school and getting an education.
School administrators unveiled today a plan for a complete overhaul of discipline policies that would result in most offenses being treated as suspensions of 10 days or less unless principals think there are aggravating circumstances.
While the new discipline plan is being finalized for implementation in January, the board voted 7-1 to give Superintendent Donna Hargens immediate authority to reduce the lengths of individual suspensions.
“It’s a huge shift in the basic approach to discipline,” said Ann Majestic, the school board’s attorney.
Also today, the board gave final approval to changing a policy that automatically kicks long-term suspended students out for the rest of the school year. Under the new policy that would go into effect in January. school officials would have the flexibility to set the suspension length as anything between more than 10 days and up to the rest of the school year.
Administrators said discipline policies need to be changed because students are less likely to do as well academically and graduate if they miss significant amounts of time in class because of suspensions.
Last school year, 833 students received long-term suspensions and 19,396 short-term suspensions were issued.
Under the overhaul taking place, Hargens said two offenses under state law required to be long-term suspensions will remain so. Those offenses are possession of a firearm on campus and making a bomb threat.
The other 13 offenses now requiring a long-term suspension in district policy would either have to be or could be treated as short-term suspensions, meaning students are out of class for up to 10 days,
“We want to do away with zero tolerance or mandatory long-term suspensions unless they’re required by law,” Hargens said.
For instance, Hargens said that students will no longer receive long-term suspensions for repeated violations of “relatively minor” offenses such non-compliance or inappropriate language. Those offenses would be treated only as short-term suspensions.
Hargens said most offenses would be placed into two groups.
Most offenses would be considered short-term suspensions in which the principal can recommend that they be treated as a long-term suspension because of aggravating factors.
Hargens said a few offenses, such as drug distribution, would still be subject to long-term suspensions. But she said principals will have the discretion to issue a short-term suspension based on mitigating factors.
In addition to these changes, Hargens said there will be a cost from increasing alternatives to suspensions. She said more students will be placed into alternative schools instead of being put on the streets.
Schools will also be required to offer more alternative suspension methods such as after-school detention, Saturday school and community service in lieu of long-term suspensions.
Hargens said the plan, the culmination of 18 months of work by a team of administrators, will take several months to implement. She said they’ll need to get feedback from principals, train staff in the new discipline methods and give more time for notice of the changes to parents and teachers.
But Hargens said they didn’t want to wait until January to implement the changes. So she asked the board for authority to implement the changes on a case-by-case basis right now.
Hargens asked the board for authority to commute long-term suspensions to short-term suspensions. Hargens also wants the authority to shorten the length of individual long-term suspensions.
The plan seemed to get a warm reception from board members in both factions, who’ve divided 5-4 on many issues.
