RALEIGH -- Recently the Wake County Board of Education voted to change its definition of long-term suspension and give the superintendent authority to reduce the length of mandatory long-term suspensions for individual students when mitigating factors exist. There's also discussion of eliminating zero tolerance policies, limiting long-term suspensions for minor offenses and expanding alternatives to suspension.
Board members, interim Superintendent Donna Hargens and other district officials deserve praise for giving Wake County's school discipline crisis the close attention and initial action it desperately needs. They should be commended for their willingness to begin tackling critical issues affecting the school-to-prison pipeline.
While the recent actions will have positive impacts, it is unlikely that they will directly result in significant reductions in total suspensions, school-based court referrals or racial disparities. Therefore, officials should work quickly, comprehensively and collaboratively to reform school discipline policies and practices.
We have to work more quickly because too many students are still being pushed out of school and consequently suffer tremendous psychological and educational harms. Moreover, the school-to-prison pipeline is more than just an education crisis; it contributes to cyclical concentrated poverty, lower economic productivity, high long-term costs for taxpayers, overcrowding in the criminal justice system and barriers to achieving racial justice.
Recent reports revealed promising preliminary suspension data for the 2009-10 school year. However, suspension numbers remain enormous - over 20,000 suspensions last school year - and massive racial disparities persist. For example, African-American students represent 26 percent of students in Wake County, but over 62 percent of students receiving suspensions.
We have to work more comprehensively because Wake County's school-to-prison pipeline is massive and multi-faceted. If your house was burning down, would you put out the fire only in the kitchen? If your child had multiple diseases, would you treat just one?
In order to create a system that is more fair and equitable and has lasting reductions in suspensions and school-based court referrals, we need bold reforms in a wide variety of areas. In July Advocates for Children's Services submitted to board members a blueprint for reform, which contains detailed recommendations and best practices for keeping students in the classroom while ensuring that schools remain safe and orderly (including versions of all of the changes the board has recently made and considered). With the report as a guide, the board should be working on a broader array of solutions, which includes:
1) Implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports with fidelity in all schools;
2) Limiting the use of suspensions for elementary school students and for off-campus misconduct;
3) Mandating that administrators use graduated interventions and consequences to handle misbehavior;
4) Providing students facing suspension with fairer, more meaningful due process protections;
5) Expanding intervention and alternative education programs;
6) Increasing collaboration with community organizations;
7) Ensuring that school resource officers are appropriately limited, trained and supervised;
8) Limiting school-based arrests and court referrals;
9) Creating school-based discipline oversight and advisory committees made up of students, parents, community members, advocates and teachers to review data, discipline practices, and prevention and intervention programs ( not private information about individual students); and
10) Making school discipline-related data more complete, publicly available and easy to understand.
Unfortunately, these reforms have garnered little public discussion or consideration.
Finally, we have to work more collaboratively.
Students and parents, particularly those from low-income families and families of color who are most impacted, and local grass-roots advocates must be more involved in the creation, monitoring and reform of discipline policies and practices. They should have positions on the district-wide Professional Learning Team working on discipline reform and have ample other opportunities to share experiences and input.
Meaningful community participation will lead to a richer exchange of ideas and perspectives and more investment, transparency, legitimacy and accountability.
Addressing our school "pushout" crisis is a wonderful opportunity for the board. This issue can unify board members and the community around creating a brighter future for our most at-risk children. Additionally, we have a chance to make the Wake school system a national model for school-to-prison pipeline reform and the creation of a fair, equitable and just system of school discipline.
Jason Langberg is an Equal Justice Works fellow/staff attorney at Advocates for Children's Services, a statewide project of Legal Aid of N.C., Inc.
