NC House passes school discipline bill. Will it disproportionately affect Black kids?
Legislation that supporters say will improve school discipline but critics say will kick more Black students out of school was adopted Wednesday by the state House.
The N.C. House passed a bill that removes wording from state law that now lists inappropriate language, disrespecting teachers, dress code violations and minor fights as examples not to be deemed serious violations meriting a long-term suspension.
Rep. John Torbett, a Gaston County Republican and primary sponsor of House Bill 188, said the change is needed because of how lax discipline has gotten in schools.
“All it does is simply give teachers some, I guess, power back to control their classrooms,” Torbett said.
The 71-42 vote went largely along party lines, with three Democrats joining Republicans in supporting the bill. Rep. Jeffrey Elmore, a Wilkes County teacher, was the only Republican who joined the other Democrats in voting against the bill.
Most Democratic lawmakers argued that it could lead to more suspensions and increase the school-to-prison pipeline.
“The worst thing we can do with our children, if they should be in school, is to give them 10 or days more out,” said Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat. “Because as a juvenile court judge, I’ll tell you that’s when I started seeing kids come into the court.”
The House passed a similar bill in 2021 that was not acted on by the Senate. But now the GOP has a veto-proof legislative majority to override any potential veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
Has discipline gotten worse?
In 2011, state lawmakers added the language that “the use of inappropriate or disrespectful language, noncompliance with a staff directive, dress code violations, and minor physical altercations that do not involve weapons or injury” are not serious violations.
It was a bipartisan effort to say that long-term suspensions, which are for more than 10 days, should be reserved for serious violations. The belief was that if students were in school more, they’d be less likely to have poor grades and drop out when they fell behind.
Short-term suspensions fell by 24% and long-term suspensions dropped by 78% between the 2010-11 and 2018-19 school years. But the trend has reversed since the pandemic.
A state report released last month shows that school crimes were up 16.9% last school year from the 2018-19 school year. In addition, short-term suspensions are up 7% and long-term suspensions are up 18%.
Torbett said it’s gotten to the point where disruptive students are allowed to stay in the class and take away from the education of other children.
“Just go talk to you local school boards if they think discipline, violence, bad language used to a teacher, disrespect used to fellow classmates, disrespect used against teachers and administrative personnel and ask them if they think that’s gotten better over the last five or six years,” Torbett said.
Torbett says the bill encourages schools to find in-school alternatives that remove students from the classroom without sending them home.
Impact on Black students
The racial overtones of the bill were discussed during the floor debate. Mirroring national trends, Black students in North Carolina are suspended at higher rates than white students.
“Even though the language says use best practices and do not discriminate, it does affect our African American and children of color two to three times the rate of our white kids,” Morey said.
But Rep. Ken Fontenot, a Wilson County Republican who is Black, said Democrats are acting as if Black students can’t be held to the same standards as white students. Fontenot said his parents, who “grew up in a time when they could be found hanging from a tree,” taught him that nothing can stop him from succeeding.
“We can perform,” Fontenot said. “I disagree that higher standards hurt African Americans. They help African Americans.”
But House Minority Leader Robert Reives, who is Black, said the reality is teachers may treat students differently based on whether they can relate to them. He defended Morey, saying she’s not saying that Black students can’t accomplish at the same level as white students.
“She is just saying that this bill as it is presently written could leave us in a position where it disproportionately affects good, smart well-meaning children,” said Reives, a Chatham County Democrat.
As a woman who “walks in my Blackness every day,” Rep. Carla Cunnigham said she knows she’s just as good as anyone else. But the Mecklenburg County Democrat said the quest for perfect people is flawed.
“There are no perfect people,” Cunningham said. “People make mistakes all the time. Kids make mistakes all the time. Every day we wake up we probably make a couple.”
This story was originally published April 20, 2023 at 5:45 AM with the headline "NC House passes school discipline bill. Will it disproportionately affect Black kids?."
