Can Wake County find a way to stop suspending so many elementary school students?

Student suspensions in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade rose in Wake County schools for the third straight year, according to a new report.

In response, school board members are pushing for more local funding to hire counselors and other support staff.

Wake handed out 2,395 suspensions to elementary school students during the 2016-17 school year. That was up from 2,381 in 2015-16 and 1,967 the year before that.

But the rate of growth in suspensions slowed dramatically. After jumping 21 percent from 2014-15 to 2015-16, suspensions climbed just 0.5 percent this past year.

Still, Wake school board members found nothing to celebrate in the latest data.

"I personally do not support suspension as a disciplinary tool, period," said Jim Martin. "Suspensions take students out of a learning environment."

Wake schools think they have a strategy to help the most unruly students; what they don't have is the money, board members said.

Board member Bill Fletcher pointed to a 2013 recommendation from the district's School Security Task Force. That group said each Wake school should have a full-time staff of counselors, social workers, psychologists and nurses.

"The school board's proposed budget last year requested $10 million to hire these professionals and implement more aggressive support for challenged students," Fletcher said. "The county did not fund the request."

But that doesn't change reality, Fletcher said. "To reduce or eliminate the behaviors that lead to suspension will take the coordinated effort of a team of highly engaged and qualified professionals," he said.

Fellow board member Christine Kushner echoed Fletcher's sentiments. "I favor giving our schools additional services from school psychologists, counselors and social workers to help our students and teachers address issues with behaviors and provide mental health supports to our students," she said,

Most often, Wake suspends students for fighting and disrupting class. Of the 2,395 elementary school suspensions last year, 1,464 were for fighting or other physical aggression; 354 were for disturbing a class or school activity.

Fifth-graders account for most elementary school suspensions — 549 last school year. Fourth-graders make up the next largest pool.

The number of black elementary school students who were suspended decreased — from 1,535 in 2015-16 to 1,458 last year. Still, blacks continue to account for a disproportionate number of student suspensions. Last year, blacks made up 23.5 percent of Wake’s 159,549 students, but they accounted for 61 percent of all suspensions in pre-K through fifth grade.

The 2,395 elementary school suspensions last school year went to 1,344 students, meaning some were suspended two or more times. And of those who were suspended, 555 were students with disabilities. Those numbers were essentially unchanged from 2015-16.

Of the elementary students suspended, 886 were suspended once, while 458 were suspended multiple times, Fletcher noted.

That smaller number troubles him most, he said. "It is these students who need intensive supports to identify life challenges and help the student develop strategies to deal with them," he said.

To Martin, suspending students from school is counterproductive. "I strongly believe that you need to discipline into an environment where actual learning — academic, social and behavioral — takes place, rather than disciplining into a non-supervised setting that likely aggravates the underlying challenges," he said.

"However, I also don't believe it would be constructive to forbid suspensions if we don't also at the same time provide alternatives," Martin said. "This is why I consistently argue that the school system needs to build up its counselor, social worker, behavioral intervention, psychologist, etc., corps."

That goes back to dollars. "The problem is that this kind of work is labor intensive, and people are expensive," Martin said.

But he's convinced too that money makes a difference. "It is well established that every dollar spent in this kind of preventative and restorative way pays a huge dividend in lower societal costs in the long run," Martin said.

And for every dollar not spent?

"The sad reality is that by not attacking this problem in elementary schools, we are destined to repeat it in middle and high schools," Fletcher said.

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Can Wake County find a way to stop suspending so many elementary school students?."