Nebraska lawmakers approved a Feb. 27 allowing schools to for violent behavior. Schools will be required to provide a plan to parents whose young children are suspended that describes available resources and how the student’s behavior will be handled in the future. Gov. Jim Pillen said he intends to sign the bill into law.

In the rural Nebraska panhandle, elementary teachers at Kimball Public Schools have watched students as young as 5 throw furniture, bite staff and attack classmates. 

Until a few years ago, in- and out-of-school suspensions were one way that Nebraska schools dealt with this type of behavior. But in 2023, state lawmakers for students in prekindergarten through second grade unless they brought a weapon to school. 

It was billed as a move to protect children with disabilities and prevent the disproportionate suspension of students of color. But now, Nebraska lawmakers are trying to reverse the ban. Educators say suspensions are needed to stop severe or violent behavior — which has gotten worse since the pandemic — and to get parents’ attention about how their children are acting in school. 

“We will have a student physically assault another student, or fight staff members. And then it happens repeatedly. The parents’ support is not there. What are we going to do in Kimball, Nebraska?” asked Superintendent Trevor Anderson. “The only solution that we really have is that they’re still in the building and now it’s essentially one of the staff members babysitting all day long, because (the student) is not able to handle being in the regular classroom setting.”

Nebraska is one of a handful of states, including Minnesota and Texas, that have sought to repeal suspension bans in the last year. At least 18 states prohibit suspensions for students in prekindergarten through second or third grade, according to the most recent published in 2020.

A rise in student misbehavior post-COVID, combined with inadequate funding for special education, has left districts struggling with how to address behaviors — sometimes violent — in the classroom. But research that suspensions disproportionately impact students of color and children with disabilities or from marginalized backgrounds, including those in early grades. 

While Black children made up 18% of U.S. preschoolers during the 2021-22 school year, they represented 38% of students who received at least one out-of-school suspension, according to the latest federal . About 23% of U.S. preschoolers received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) during that time and represented 41% of those who were suspended.

One found that “receiving a suspension serves as a key turning point toward increased odds of incarceration” for students later in life.

“I don’t … think it works to suspend pre-K students (through) second grade‬ students at all. I was‬ ‭suspended at that age and, quite frankly, I don’t believe it helped. I went home and watched cartoons. I don’t think that changed my behavior‬ ‭at all,” said Nebraska state Sen. Terrell McKinney when he in 2023. “I believe it prepares‬ kids — especially kids that look like me — for the juvenile justice system, the child welfare system and then the‬ ‭criminal justice system.”

Discipline that might be appropriate for older students can be harmful for young children’s development, said Luis Rodriguez, a New York University professor who school discipline. 

“Young children are still learning. They probably are still developing social skills — especially when we’re talking about kindergarten, first grade — and it might be the first time that some of these children are around other children and away from home,” he said. “Exclusionary disciplines such as suspensions at that age can interrupt foundational learning.”

Since the pandemic, some policymakers have focused on ways to combat in schools to protect teacher and student safety, while others have tried to reduce disparities in school discipline and ensure children don’t miss out on learning, said Zeke Perez, assistant director of the nonprofit . 

Maryland was one of the first states to for early grades, in 2017. It prohibited the practice for students in prekindergarten through second grade unless there was an “imminent threat” to staff or students.

A published in 2024 found that the law reduced the probability of K-2 suspensions from 1.9% in 2017 to 0.8% in 2018, while rates remained steady around 3% for grades 3 to 5 following the ban. But disparities still remained in suspension rates for students who were Black, low-income or had disabilities.

Paul Lemle, president of the Maryland State Education Association, said the law has been beneficial for schools.

“We’re always trying to avoid removal from school, especially for our youngest students,” he said. “Everywhere there’s challenging behavior. It comes with the territory. This hasn’t made the job more difficult. It’s the right thing to do for these really young kids.”

While Maryland’s law allows suspensions for violent behavior, Nebraska’s only exception is for bringing a weapon to school. Some educators and lawmakers said revisions are needed to expand the exceptions to protect students and teachers.

Nebraska state Sen. Dave Murman, who proposed in January, said he’s heard from school districts that the same students act out repeatedly and can’t be removed from the classroom. 

“I don’t believe this law is working. Suspension should never be the first option, but what happens when a student behaves in a violent manner and students or staff get hurt?” he said at a Jan. 27 . “I’ve heard stories from teachers and administrators about students biting, hitting, throwing desks and chairs, stabbing with pencils and even kicking the stomach of a pregnant teacher. How can children learn in that environment?”

Murman said suspensions might be the only way administrators can get a parent’s attention to address their child’s behavior. He said some schools aren’t able to make contact with families until they have to physically remove their child from school after a suspension.

These challenges have become more common for Kimball Public Schools since the pandemic, said Anderson. The district is located near the Wyoming and Colorado borders and serves nearly 400 students. About half are enrolled in elementary grades.

Anderson said he had never seen the level of aggression and violent behavior from young elementary students in his eight years as an administrator until recently. He said classroom management has been more difficult since the suspension ban went into effect in 2023.

Small, remote districts like Kimball don’t receive the same resources as metropolitan schools that provide , such as behavioral supports or trauma-informed interventions. A licensed mental health practitioner visits the district once a week. Anderson said he recently filled a behavior specialist position that had been open for a year and a half.

Before the ban, Omaha Public Schools used suspensions in kindergarten through second grade on rare occasions to get a behavior plan in place for a struggling student, said Kathy Poehling, president of the Omaha Education Association. 

“We’re not forced to suspend preschoolers or kindergartners. But if that’s what we need to do in order to get people together, to put a plan in place, sometimes you need 24 hours to do that,” she said. “I don’t really support the idea of repealing the entire ban, because I think then we’re not really looking at the situation and saying, ‘What does the child need?’ We don’t want to suspend just to suspend.”

Omaha’s Education Rights Counsel, a legal advocacy nonprofit, supported the ban because children between the ages of 4 and 7 were being sent home multiple times a year, said Director Lauren Micek Vargas. 

Some students might be exhibiting behaviors because of a disability or possible trauma at home, she said. 

“With our most young, vulnerable children, oftentimes that behavior actually is a form of communication of something else,” she said. “If you punish something without trying to figure out what is happening underneath the surface … we’re missing out on an opportunity to really connect with the child and also see other things that are going on.”

But under IDEA, some legal procedures that could help students get access to special education services are triggered only by suspensions, said Robyn Linscott, director of family and education policy at The Arc of the United States.

Under IDEA, schools are required to hold a meeting with specialists, teachers and the family of any student who has been suspended for 10 or more days during a school year. These sessions determine whether the behavior that led to the suspensions is the result of a disability.

“If that is the case, then the school has to make sure that all these other supports are in place before they can be suspended again, before they can be expelled,” Linscott said. “They often look back to functional behavior assessments and their (individualized education program) to see if it was actually being followed. This is a really important protection and procedural point for students with disabilities.”

Even without suspensions, schools can informally remove students with disabilities by asking their parents to take them home. But that doesn’t count toward the federal 10-day limit.

Last year, Minnesota lawmakers initiated bills to reinstate suspensions and other exclusionary discipline only two years after passing a ban. State Sen. Jim Abeler, one of the bill authors, said the suspension ban had been implemented with good intentions, but “it’s been a disaster.”

“There’s no chance to intervene,” he said. “The kids see no consequences and don’t ever get a chance to get on track with a plan. Superintendents came (to the legislature) and begged for a way to work around this.”

A 2017 in Texas was revised last year to expand the reasons for sending a student in prekindergarten through second grade home. Before the change, young students could be suspended only if they brought a gun to school. Now, include repeated or significant disruption to the classroom or a threat to the health and safety of other students.

In Nebraska, lawmakers like state Sen. Ashlei Spivey are working on a that would allow more exceptions, like chronic disruptive behavior or violence. The legislation, which is separate from the bill to repeal the ban and more likely to pass, is in the second debate and voting stage in the legislature. 

Spivey said that while sending students home might be a tool for discipline, alternative interventions are key to preventing disproportionate suspensions and keeping young children in the classroom.

“If you feel like a 7-year-old should not be in a classroom, my thought is that you cannot throw them away, but you ask, ‘What are they navigating? What type of support do they need?’ ” she said. “There also needs to be clearly defined expectations of what escalates to a suspension and how you are defining that, and how it is being applied to all student populations.”

First grade was the year “all hell broke loose” for Carter, a South Carolina teenager with multiple disabilities whose school career was marked by suspensions of every kind. In-school. Out-of-school. Forced to sit alone at lunch. Kicked off the school bus. 

In a powerful story and state-by-state data analysis this week, my colleague Amanda Geduld offers disturbing new insight into the degree to which children with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to school suspensions, sometimes for minor infractions. Disciplinary actions against children with disabilities aren’t just a matter of their behaviors, Amanda found. They’re also greatly affected by where the student lives. 

Amanda digs into the repeated school suspensions of Carter, which his mom said could have been avoided had the local schools provided adequate special education services that federal law demands. His case highlights a trend: No state suspends children with disabilities more often than South Carolina. 

“It’s just reflective of the state of public education of South Carolina as a whole,” said Macaulay Morrison, the assistant director of a health and legal advocacy clinic at the University of South Carolina Law School. “Sometimes it’s easier for schools to exclude these students than it is for them to figure out how to support them.”

Read Amanda’s story here, and see how the numbers stack up in your state.��

In the News

New on the First Amendment battlefield: A slim majority of American adults support teacher-led Christian prayers in public schools, according to a new Pew Research Center report released just days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized Bible readings in schools and required Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. The Texas laws are part of a broader conservative push to bolster religion in schools — with hopes of ultimately finding favor on the Supreme Court. On the same day Texas required the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, a federal appeals court struck down a similar law in Louisiana. | The 74

Developments on Trump’s immigration crackdown: Federal immigration agents arrested more than 30 people after conducting a raid at a south Alabama high school construction site. Officials said the operation “sends a strong message to those who exploit illegal labor for profit.” |

• In Florida, agents visited the offices of a state-funded children’s center in a search for their undocumented parents. |
• Detroit teenager Maykol Bogoya-Duarte has been deported to his home country of Colombia after he was detained by immigration officials during a routine traffic stop while driving to a school field trip. |
• In New York, residents confronted masked immigration agents lingering hundreds of feet from an elementary school. Agents got into a car crash as they attempted to flee. |
• The State Department will screen the social media profiles of student visa applicants for “any indications of hostility” toward the U.S. |
• A former federal immigration officer in North Carolina was arrested on allegations he possessed images of child sexual abuse. |
• Student absences have surged by 22% this year in California’s Central Valley amid heightened immigration enforcement activity in the agricultural region, a new study found. |

The Loudoun County, Virginia, school district announced plans to install on its campuses artificial intelligence-powered surveillance cameras designed to identify weapons, fights and medical emergencies. |

A critic’s take on Pride Month: Libraries have become “centers for queer resistance” in the fight against censorship. A new investigation takes aim at LGBTQ+-affirming books which, according to the author, glamorize “medicalized sex changes as brave and heroic.” |

• The Trump administration has gutted a specialized suicide prevention line for LGBTQ+ youth, who are far more likely than their straight peers to die by suicide. |
• In a major civil rights setback, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. |
• The Education Department announced the California Interscholastic Federation violated the civil rights of female students by allowing transgender athletes to compete on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. |

The Senate education committee voted Thursday to approve Trump nominees Penny Schwinn as the Education Department’s second in command and Kimberly Richey to lead the agency’s civil rights office. Both were advanced to the full Senate on 12-11 votes along party lines. | The 74

A federal judge has awarded more than $900,000 to a former Pennsylvania middle school teacher who was fired for attending the “Stop the Steal” insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. |

The Senate parliamentarian will allow a provision to ban state regulation of artificial intelligence for a decade, including rules around its use in schools, to remain in President Donald Trump’s sweeping spending bill. |

A bulletin from the National Terrorism Advisory System has warned of a “heightened threat environment” for cyberattacks after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites. In an unrelated cybersecurity advisory last year, the federal government cited the potential threat of Iran-based hackers carrying out cyberattacks on U.S. “education, finance, healthcare and defense sectors.” | ,

A massive settlement, behind closed doors: The school board in Los Angeles has quietly agreed to issue $500 million in bonds to settle hundreds of decades-old sexual abuse cases involving former students. |

ICYMI @The74

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Emotional Support

Look. At. This. Chunk. 

No really, this dog’s name is Chunk! This pup is 74 editor Kathy Moore’s 11-week-old Corgi pup nephew, and we get it. He’s unbearably cute. Try not to make a scene.

After trading taunts with a classmate one morning in March 2023, Tristan threw a punch that busted the other student’s lip. A teacher who intervened wound up with a bloody nose and swollen lip in the ensuing scuffle.

Then a ninth grader at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Tristan later took responsibility for starting the fight. “I hit him first — that’s where I was wrong,” said the teen, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy reasons.

School officials suspended Tristan for more than three weeks, among the longest punishments typically allowed . But while the case seemed open and shut, an impartial hearing officer later ruled that the lengthy suspension violated the teen’s rights.

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Tristan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, received special education services to address impulse control and anger management. But the school failed to provide numerous counseling sessions that were supposed to help him learn to regulate his emotions, the hearing officer found.

During a legally required meeting to assess whether Tristan’s disability played a role in the fight, school staff did not consider his special education records, behavioral plan, or history of similar outbursts.

“There is no evidence that the [school’s review team] discussed any relevant documents,” wrote hearing officer Patricia Le Goff, who noted the school did not follow the required step-by-step process and Tristan’s mother was not allowed to offer her perspective. The hearing officer found that Tristan’s behavior stemmed from his disability and the school’s failure to provide counseling sessions.

Le Goff concluded that Tristan should not have received a lengthy punishment. But it was too late. Tristan had served his suspension.

New York City’s public schools routinely flout federal rules designed to prevent schools from removing children from class for long periods due to behavior related to their disabilities, a Chalkbeat investigation has found.

To examine the discipline process, Chalkbeat obtained hundreds of pages of special education records and rulings from impartial hearing officers who reviewed appeals from families whose children with disabilities received lengthy punishments. Those records — as well as interviews with more than a dozen parents, advocates, and school officials — reveal a pattern of schools failing to properly consider a student’s disability during the suspension process.

As a result, some students are serving longer punishments than legally allowed, a problem that disproportionately affects Black students. The removals can compound academic struggles among students who are often far behind their peers.

The problem stretches back years. Independent monitors who looked at nearly 1,400 suspensions between 2015 and 2018 found systemic flaws with the review process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of findings that have not previously been made public.

“There are students who are being suspended weeks and weeks more than they should be,” said Andrew Gerst, an attorney who handled Tristan’s appeal while working at Mobilization for Justice, an organization that represents low-income families. “They should not be kept out of school one minute longer than they have to be.”

Students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended compared with their nondisabled peers. As a group, they were removed from class 14,000 times last school year, about 39% of all removals and suspensions, despite representing 22% of the student body.

For long-term suspensions, which are less common and typically issued for significant misconduct, federal law requires an extra level of review. Schools must consider whether the behavior in question was related to a student’s disability or a failure to provide special education services guaranteed in their learning plan.

Trisha Clayton, Tristan’s mother, said the suspension review process left her feeling like the school wasn’t interested in supporting her son, and the lengthy punishment knocked him further off track. A different hearing officer later ordered the Education Department to pay for 900 hours of one-on-one tutoring in addition to other therapies to make up for inadequate special education support.

“He missed out on a lot of instructional hours,” Clayton said. “If you have a child with a learning disability or anger issues, they just don’t want to deal with those kinds of kids.”

Education Department officials said they could not comment on specific student cases, and the principal at Medgar Evers did not respond to questions.

School staffers on other campuses who have participated in suspension reviews said there are often good reasons to issue longer punishments, as they can help maintain a safe learning environment for other students and possibly deter future misconduct.

“Holding your teacher against the wall, or punching someone in the face, that’s not necessarily a manifestation of their disability most of the time,” said Anna Nelson, a former Bronx assistant principal who has participated in suspension reviews. “If a kid’s never been suspended before, it’s a message that really sticks with them.”

But advocates and parents say that schools often reflexively dismiss the possibility that a student’s disability played a role in their misconduct.

City education officials acknowledged in an interview with Chalkbeat that implementation of the suspension reviews can be uneven.

Over 600 Education Department staffers have been trained to make the reviews more collaborative, according to a department spokesperson, and officials have revised letters sent to families to better explain the process.

Stephanie Jemilo, a special projects director at the Education Department who oversees the training, said her team works with specific schools when they receive complaints from families. The goal is to make the meetings feel less punitive.

“It really is the process to say, ‘Hey, something‘s not working here, and let’s all come together and figure out what’s not working,’ ” she said.

Schools have long failed to account for students’ disabilities in the suspension process

All public schools are required to educate students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible, a cornerstone of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The law is designed to prevent schools from using the discipline process to exclude those students.

When a student is suspended for more than 10 days, or if there’s a pattern of short-term removals, school staff must determine if the behavior in question was “caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship” to the student’s disability or the school’s failure to provide mandated services.

If the answer to either is yes, the student is supposed to return to class immediately, and the school is required to conduct a behavior assessment. (There are some exceptions for extreme violence, drugs, or weapons possession.)

To make that decision, school officials must hold a meeting called a within 10 days of the student’s removal from class. Schools must include parents and at least one staff member who knows the student, including a school psychologist or guidance counselor. Families are entitled to request others to join, such as a teacher who works with their child, and they can bring an advocate.

In theory, the process should be collaborative. But the final decision rests with the student’s school, an arrangement that families and advocates say is far from objective.

“It’s like somebody gets arrested and you go to the police station and ask them to have a hearing about whether they think that they were right to arrest the person,” Gerst said. “They have every incentive to stand by their decision.”

Problems with the city’s discipline process aren’t new, according to a Chalkbeat review of legal records and city data that has not previously been made public. A 2002 filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children claimed schools routinely used discipline to exclude students without properly considering their disability.

After a protracted legal battle, the city settled the case in 2015 and agreed to some reforms. They beefed up training and created a that spells out each step of the process schools must follow.

The city was also required to check whether schools were following the rules, sending independent monitors into nearly 1,400 suspension review meetings, a sample of the meetings held between 2015 and 2018. The monitors found glaring and systemic problems, according to reports obtained by Gerst through a public records request and shared with Chalkbeat.

For example, only 44% of suspension review meetings included “effective” discussion of the incident that led to the suspension and whether it was connected to disability-related behaviors, the monitors found during the 2017-18 school year. In 20% of cases that year, there was limited or no discussion of a student’s special education learning plan, raising questions about how the review team determined whether a student’s behavior was related to a lack of services.

Nicole Tuchinda, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law who has written about the suspension review process, called those figures “disturbing” because they reveal schools frequently did not comply with key components of the law.

“It just shows it’s a sham,” Tuchinda said.

Failing to protect students with disabilities from longer punishments could further set back a group that is already disproportionately removed from their classrooms, are far , and .

One focusing on New York City found suspensions led to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating. Other research also that suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Students who are suspended for more than five days are typically sent to alternate learning centers away from their school, an

Problems with the suspension review process are also more likely to affect students of color, . Between September 2021 and December 2022, more than half of the 1,825 suspension reviews involved Black students, even though only a quarter of students with disabilities are Black, .

Schools were more likely to find that white students’ behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, according to figures obtained by Gerst.

Education Department officials declined to provide more recent figures and there is no federal data on the suspension review process.

The responsibility for ensuring the city is complying with federal special education laws falls to the state’s Education Department. State officials found some problems with the city’s suspension review process in 2023 that required “corrective action,” according to spokesperson JP O’Hare. He did not specify the nature of the problem or what specific action was required. The state Education Department has “not received any specific ongoing concerns” about the process, O’Hare added.

It is difficult to know how widespread problems with the review process are today: The Education Department stopped sending independent monitors to the meetings after they were no longer legally required.

Melinda Andra, a longtime advocate at the Legal Aid Society who has represented families in the suspension process, said there were some signs of improvement when the monitors were in place.

Now, she said, “Things have kind of backtracked.”

‘Everybody was just on the attack’: One family felt alienated by suspension review

Danet Ferguson’s son, Malachi, faced a monthlong suspension for fighting another student in January, striking two teachers who tried to break them up. She was confident the school would conclude the 13-year-old’s ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder contributed to the incident. The school found such a link in a previous suspension this school year.

In the aftermath of the fight, Malachi was removed from class at I.S. 181 in the Bronx. Ferguson, who runs a day care, was forced to drive him to a suspension center more than an hour away. “I’m stressed out and frustrated,” Ferguson said at the time. “His grades have dropped. … I’m missing work.”

A little over a week after Malachi was removed from class, his school held a suspension review meeting to assess if his disability played a role in the fight. Ferguson and Michaela Shuchman, her legal advocate, pointed to Malachi’s history of aggression and impulsivity, which are well documented in his special education records.

But school staff countered that Malachi’s behavior was premeditated. They said they could not let the incident slide without significant punishment, according to Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services.

“Everybody was just on the attack,” said Ferguson. “There was no one trying to listen.”

The school ruled Malachi’s disability wasn’t a major factor, allowing his suspension to continue. With Shuchman’s help, Ferguson appealed the case. A hearing officer found several procedural flaws with the school’s suspension review process.

Ferguson wanted Malachi’s counselor and one-on-one paraprofessional to attend the meeting, two people who could have helped interpret his behavior that day. But the school dismissed the request, arguing it came too late to ensure the staff could be there and wasn’t worth postponing the meeting, according to the hearing officer’s ruling.

Hearing officer Tanya White blasted the school for that decision, noting that Ferguson “had a right to designate attendees.” She added: “The two people that [Ferguson] requested would have provided a unique insight into the ultimate determination.”

It was also unclear whether the school was following Malachi’s special education learning plan, an issue that was not sufficiently discussed during the suspension review process, according to White’s ruling.

Malachi is supposed to have a full-time behavioral support aide, who had helped keep his behavior in check in the past, the hearing officer wrote. School staff claimed there was a different aide with Malachi at the time of the incident, though the hearing officer noted the aide’s presence was not included in the official incident report, nor did that person offer a witness statement or attend the suspension review meeting.

“The only two people who placed the covering paraprofessional at the scene are DOE staff members with a vested interest in the answer as to whether the Student’s [learning plan] was being implemented,” White wrote.

White was also troubled that the school had removed references to physical outbursts in Malachi’s behavior plan. Altering the behavior plan “undermines the DOE’s assertion that it arrived at the correct conclusion,” she wrote.

The principal of I.S. 181 did not respond to a request for comment. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on specific student cases and did not answer a question about whether the school’s staff have received training on the suspension process.

White ruled in Malachi’s favor, ordering the Education Department to pay for about 126 hours of one-on-one tutoring to make up for the disruption to his education. Malachi still served the monthlong suspension, which would have been nearly three weeks shorter if the school had found the fight was related to his disability at the initial review meeting.

Shuchman said overturning a suspension on appeal after the student has already served it is common, as that process often takes around 40 days to play out and .

“It’s really justice delayed,” she said.

City officials resist calls for reform

Over the past year, advocates have pushed the Education Department to reform the discipline process but have struggled to gain traction.

A group of attorneys lobbied the Education Department to directly connect families to advocates before the suspension review meetings, as parents often don’t know their rights or how the process works. A handful of public interest legal groups offered to supply pro-bono advocates.

“Just having somebody in the room, just having your back … is really important to families,” said Gerst, one of the lawyers who supported the effort. “When we do advocate, we often find so many other special education issues.”

Some advocates and parents also suggested that school staff don’t review their own school’s suspension decision. The idea has some precedent: At charter schools, the suspension reviews are typically overseen by Education Department staff who don’t work for the school.

So far, the city has rejected the proposal to provide legal representation for families during the process, a decision Education Department officials declined to explain.

But they expressed some openness to taking the process out of the hands of the school that disciplined the student.

“It’s something that we are talking about,” said Jemilo, the Education Department official, “and exploring what an alternative could be.”

If the city made that change “that could be big,” Shuchman said, because the current process creates “a real conflict of interest.”

It is unclear how seriously city officials are considering it, however. An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about who would conduct the reviews or a timeline for making that change.

In the meantime, advocates said the process is still stacked against families.

For Clayton, Tristan’s mother, the process was so overwhelming that she pulled him out of the city’s school system.

Even though Tristan won hundreds of hours of one-on-one tutoring, Clayton struggled to coax him to attend. The teen’s experience at school had reached a breaking point, and Tristan wound up getting suspended again, she said.

That was the final straw. “I was like, ‘I’m going to spend half the time at a suspension hearing,’” Clayton said.

So last September, Tristan moved in with his aunt upstate. His mother said he’s doing better in school, landed a job at a local bakery, and plans to go to trade school for plumbing.

The guidance counselor from Tristan’s old school recently called to ask after the teen.

Clayton was thrilled to offer an update.

“He’s really thriving,” she said. “I’m in disbelief.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

The released by ImpactSTATS, Inc. and The BEE Collective used National Center for Education Statistics data to compare how often students were being excluded from school as a disciplinary measure at predominantly white versus Black Charleston schools in the 2022-23 school year.

To zero in on the treatment of young students, researchers considered only those schools that offered pre-kindergarten programs. Of the 42 schools in the study, 33 encompassed grades pre-K through 5; six went from pre-K to grade 8; two were pre-K to kindergarten and one school taught pre-K to second grade.

Of those schools, the ones with more than a 51% Black student population isolated children from learning settings for disciplinary reasons at a rate of 98.2 removals per 1,000 students, according to the report. This was seven times greater than the 14.1 removals per 1,000 students at majority white early-grade and elementary schools — and more than double the districtwide rate of 42.7 per 1,000 students.

Exclusionary discipline could include in-school or out-of-school suspensions and expulsion. When looking just at out-of-school suspensions in Charleston, the racial disparity by school population soared, according to the study released earlier this summer.

Students in majority Black schools faced out-of-school suspension rates of 78.8 per 1,000 students in the 2022-23 school year compared to 11.9 suspensions per 1,000 students for those in predominantly white schools. 

The districtwide rate was 34.8 suspensions per 1,000 students. 

“This tells us that we have a problem and it’s not children’s behavior — but adult action and adult decisions,” said lead researcher Melodie Baker. 

Charleston public schools served 50,312 students at the end of the last school year: 24,978 were white, 14,291 were Black and 7,916 were Hispanic, according to the district. 

Baker said removing a child from a classroom or isolating them from their teachers and peers robs them of an opportunity to learn self-regulation and is particularly damaging to the youngest learners.

“It makes kids feel like they don’t belong,” she said. “They feel ashamed. They feel confused. It affects their overall development.”

The practice is seen as : and are among the states that have banned or strictly limited such removals in the early grades.

Charleston County School District spokesman Andrew Pruitt last week pushed back against the study, which raises issues of racism and implicit bias, noting its data does not include the ages of the suspended students or the reasons why they were punished. 

“We take any report that raises concerns about unconscious bias negatively impacting our children seriously. However, we are incredibly concerned that a specific claim of that magnitude was made in the absence of an analysis of the appropriate and relevant data,” he said in a statement. 

The district didn’t start breaking down its disciplinary data by grade until recently, according to Pruitt. Though records were limited, he cited a total of 49 preschool suspensions in Charleston public schools in the 2022-23 school year. He did not separate that number by race.

Preschoolers across the U.S. are expelled at rates than K-12 students. South Carolina in preschool suspensions by a large margin in 2017-18 with 438 preschoolers suspended, according to the most recent available federal data. 

Those numbers have grown significantly worse in the Palmetto State and were a critical focus of . The Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children showing 928 South Carolina public preschoolers received in-school and out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24; 66% of those 3- and 4-year-olds were children of color and 77% were boys.

The committee’s data for Charleston County schools, the state’s second-largest district, cites that 25 preschoolers received out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24 and fewer than five received an in-school suspension. Eighteen Black Charleston County public preschoolers received an out–of-school suspension and fewer than five white students did. Twenty-one male preschoolers received an out-of-school suspension that year and fewer than five female preschoolers did. Six preschoolers classified as special education students were among those removed from school for disciplinary reasons.

The Charleston County School District has taken steps to address systemic inequalities in discipline, Pruitt said, including professional development training for all its early education teachers that focuses on how to appropriately respond to student behavior while taking into account young learners’ social-emotional well-being. He said the district continues to work with early childhood education organizations throughout the state to adopt best practices.

The report by ImpactSTATS and The BEE Collective notes citing the role of educator bias in harsh discipline, including perceptions of Black children as being older than they are, less innocent, more aggressive and more deserving of punishment for the same behavior displayed by white students.

New York-based was founded by Baker in 2023 to bring more diversity to the research field and to provide technical support and research assistance to grass-roots groups working with underserved communities of color. 

The BEE — Beloved Early Education and Care — Collective is that partly funded the study and collaborated on the research. It seeks to improve maternal and child health in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, including in addressing racism and implicit bias in early child care. 

Black children across all grade levels and those with disabilities have long faced higher rates of exclusionary disciplines than other student groups. According to analyzing data from the 2020-21 school year, Black boys were nearly two times more likely than white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or an expulsion.

“It’s mostly boys who are being suspended — mostly for rough-and-tumble play,” Baker said, speaking anecdotally of the Charleston suspensions after interviewing those who worked with or observed district students. “But there’s a lot of research out there that talks about the positives of rough-and-tumble play. Males tend to perceive that very differently.”

Of Charleston County schools’ 3,673 teachers in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 2,402 were white females, 556 were white males, 404 were Black females and 103 were Black males, according to .

Cara Kelly, a researcher who observed classrooms within the Charleston district for seven years, ending in 2019, recalled several instances where kindergarten children were made to sit alone and in silence for 30 minutes or more for minor infractions such as talking to other students, calling out while a teacher was speaking or standing up when they were supposed to sit for long stretches of time. 

“It’s OK to give a child five minutes to calm down — but not to be completely excluded,” she said. 

Kelly, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Education Institute, told The 74 she believed the punishments were not developmentally appropriate and often targeted Black children. 

The report recommends the district recruit more male teachers in the early grades, increase pay for all early childhood educators, decrease student-to-staff ratios and raise awareness about discipline reform legislation that seeks to prohibit suspensions, expulsions and corporal punishment while promoting more effective means of managing student behavior. 

Researchers acknowledge that the report, funded partly by the American Heart Association Voices for Healthy Kids, should be interpreted cautiously because of the data’s limitations regarding race and age.

The BEE Collective has filed a public records request asking the Charleston district to release the suspension records for children 5 and under for the last five years broken down by age, race, gender and school. Noting that the response to that Freedom of Information request is due Aug. 31, Pruitt said it was “unfortunate” that the groups moved ahead with publishing the report without that information in hand. 

Tawanna R. Jennings, an infant and early childhood mental health consultant for South Carolina’s Partners for Early Attuned Relationships Network, called the study’s findings “pretty astounding,” adding she hopes the results will be shared widely and that Charleston teachers receive better training and greater support.

“There needs to be more resources so that [teachers] can understand these behaviors,” she said. “How do you teach these children and how do you be empathetic with what they may be experiencing?”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to ImpactSTATS and to The 74.

In the 2022-23 school year, student expulsions in Connecticut increased by over 31% compared to the 2018-19 pre-pandemic year.

Out-of-school suspensions increased by 14.4% statewide in that same time frame. 

And on average, one in every 14 children received a suspension or expulsion — with that number being disproportionately higher for Black students (1 in 7) and Latino students (1 in 11) when it came to suspensions,  from the state Department of Education.

The department also says that suspension rates in middle schools are “substantially greater than pre-pandemic levels.”

The numbers may change on an annual basis, but the story isn’t new as some lawmakers, like Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, say the data shows a 30-year trend of “who’s being penalized … punished [and] who doesn’t have the resources to financially support a proper education.”

“The system is set up by the time these children end up in a public school system to the time they exit out. And many of them are exiting out by the third grade. They exit out mentally by third grade. They’re disconnected literally by the third grade,” McCrory said. “The reality is we want to fix this situation and put the tools in place for the educators and administrators to fix the situation — not to continue to put kids out at a very early age.”

, an act concerning school discipline, passed out of the Education Committee last week on a vote of 31-13 with proposals that would require services for the youngest children who receive out-of-school suspensions and continues work from last year  survey data.

Young learners

Existing legislation says that schools may impose out-of-school suspensions for third through 12th graders if the student poses a danger or “disruption of the educational process.” It also says administrators may suspend a child if there’s evidence of previous disciplinary problems and if other efforts to address the behavioral concerns are not working. Younger learners, from pre-school through second grade, may be suspended for conduct “of a violent or sexual nature.”

The proposed bill strips out the language describing some of the youngest learners as “violent” or “sexual in nature,” after several people in public testimonies questioned children’s understanding of that type of behavior, especially when they’re under the age of 8.

“The current state law says that children this young can be suspended if their behavior is violent or sexual in nature and I think that language is extremely problematic when we are describing the behavior of the very young. It may be out of control, it may even hurt someone, which is not OK, but we cannot have the laws of our state characterize the behavior of very young children in quasi-criminal terminology,” said Sarah Eagan, Connecticut’s child advocate. 

The bill substitutes that language for “behavior that causes serious physical harm,” and requires that these students receive services that are “trauma-informed and developmentally appropriate.” 

After concerns about defining what “serious physical harm,” would mean, Rep. Jeff Currey, the House co-chair of the Education Committee, said there’s room to “tighten language,” of the bill as it moves forward. 

The legislation would also limit out-of-school suspensions for pre-K through second grade students to two school days.

“It would be our strong recommendation that the state not permit suspension for children in pre-K through second grade for a number of reasons: it doesn’t teach them anything; too harmful; probably worsens the behaviors that folks are trying to address; it disrupts the trusting relationship between a very young child and school. We can’t change young children’s behavior through shame and ostracization,” Eagan said, adding that although the bill doesn’t ban suspensions for these students it “does further the roads toward limiting the use of suspension.” 

State data shows since 2018-19, the number of suspensions, both in-school and out-of-school, have declined for pre-K through second graders by 32.6%, but still about 800 students received sanctions in 2022-23. Of those 800 pre-K through second grade students, 304 were Latino, 212 were white and 182 were Black.

School climate

Last year, an  passed with bipartisan support that tackled a handful of issues including the creation of school climate standards based on , the creation of a bullying complaint form and of several new practices for local implementation. 

Legislators are building on those efforts this session, as SB 380 will require schools to develop standards for their school climate surveys that must include data on “diversity, equity and inclusion and for the reduction in disparities in data collection between school districts, develop a model school climate improvement plan and perform other functions concerning social and emotional learning and fostering positive school climates,” according to language in the bill.

“The bill … [will allow] the state to compare the information collected from school climate surveys, detect when schools are struggling to create safe and positive school climates, and assist schools in their efforts to work toward safe and positive school climates,” said Lauren Ruth, a research and policy director at  in  of the legislation. “Until there is greater uniformity across survey questions and collection methods, these surveys provide little meaning and are not useful for identifying and utilizing the best practices of schools that display high student and parent satisfaction.”

The legislation also includes provisions that would allow school climate specialists to incorporate improvement plans and will require the state Department of Education to appoint a director of school climate improvement and report “the number of acts of bullying based on a student’s membership in a ,” which could include things like race or national origin.

In the 2022-23 school year, there were over  of bullying across the state, an increase from approximately 800 the year prior, though the state said “students attended school in-person to varying degrees; some learned fully/mostly remotely for the entire school year,” because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SB-380 also included provisions that revised district notification procedures when a student is arrested and updated school resource officer reporting requirements.

This was originally published on CT Mirror.

New Mexico lawmakers are debating  that would curtail expulsions and out-of-school suspensions for the state’s youngest students.

National studies show that children in child care and preschool programs are at least three times more likely than older children to be expelled. The bill would bar out-of-school suspensions for children younger than 8 years old, except in cases where the child threatened, attempted or caused bodily injury to another individual that was not in self-defense. And none of those suspensions would be allowed to exceed three days. It would bar expulsions except for instances where a child carried a   to school. It would also require detailed discipline data reporting that could help identify racial and other disparities in how these students are punished. 

“We’ll have data that can explain what’s happening, but also the impacts to the young child,” said the legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Harold Pope, D-Albuquerque, adding that Senate Bill 283 would help spot children who are “falling through the cracks or being harmed.”

The proposed law would apply to all public schools and licensed childcare facilities that receive funding from the state, although children whose parents pay the full cost of childcare would not be covered, according to an analysis by the Legislative Education Study Committee.  

The legislation is supported by the state Public Education Department and Early Childhood Education and Care Department, as well as a dozen children’s advocacy organizations and the American Federation of Teachers. And the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education has issued a  urging states to “severely limit” expulsions and suspensions in early education settings. But the bill is facing pushback from New Mexico’s public school districts and some in the child care industry.

More than 900 children in kindergarten through second grade were suspended across New Mexico last school year, Early Childhood Education Cabinet Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky told the Senate Education Committee at a Feb. 13 hearing.  

Federally funded Head Start programs, which enrolled almost 9,000 children last year, already prohibit suspensions and expulsions. But last school year, a  than 32,000 children were enrolled in other pre-K programs or in childcare facilities funded by the state. 

Data isn’t available for how many children enrolled in those childcare facilities have been suspended or expelled over the past decade. The proposed law would require that data be reported.

School districts are required to report discipline data for students in kindergarten through second grade. New Mexico In Depth obtained that data from the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) for a story about school discipline . 

An analysis of that data showed that statewide, these children were suspended from school more than 7,400 times and expelled at least 17 times between the 2010-11 and 2020-21 school years. Of those suspensions, 5,481 involved violence, threats or weapons possession, but the data does not reveal how many of those incidents involved attempts to harm another student. 

The number of out-of-school suspensions overall trended upward during those years.  

More than a third of all K-2nd grade out-of-school suspensions and expulsions during 2010-11 to 2020-21 involved special education students, PED data showed. Eighty-seven percent involved boys.

Nationally, Native American, Hispanic, and African American preschoolers are more likely than white children to be kicked out of preschool, Groginsky said. Special education students are also more likely to be suspended, she noted.

“We see that it’s disproportionately boys, boys of color that are being suspended and expelled,” she said. “We see it in our own data. We see it in national data.”

Suspending young children from preschool or early grades leaves them more likely to drop out later in life, or to become incarcerated, Groginsky said.

The proposed law would require detailed reporting about how childcare and preschool facilities use in-school and out-of-school suspension to discipline children. Licensed preschool and childcare facilities receiving state funds would have to report details about the grade, race, ethnicity, English learner status and disabilities of students, children’s total numbers of in-school and out-of-school suspensions, and the misbehavior leading to suspension. They would also be required to report the total number of days a child was excluded from class, and if the child was sent to an “alternative education setting” such as a detention room during in- or out-of-school suspensions.

“There’s an opportunity here for us to truly understand what’s happening in our early childhood classrooms all the way through early elementary, and to use that data to drive better decision making, better supports, and help for our classroom educators,” Groginsky said.

Detailed early childhood suspension data would also help the state with outreach to train teachers and administrators about implicit (unconscious) teacher and administrator bias, Groginsky said. 

“We need to prioritize for all of our early elementary educators research-based, trauma-informed professional development,” Groginsky told New Mexico In Depth. It is “essential” that young children learn how to solve problems and resolve conflict, and that means training early-childhood educators how to help children develop those skills, she added. 

The legislation specifies no penalties for facilities that fail to comply, and the bill would not impose any significant costs on state government other than the cost of receiving discipline reports. But critics said the bill could prove costly for preschools and childcare facilities to implement, and could open up childcare centers to lawsuits if they are unable to remove children from classrooms for longer periods of time. 

The New Mexico School Superintendents Association and New Mexico School Boards Association asked that lawmakers exclude kindergarten through second grade from the bill, leaving only preschools, but a motion failed in the Senate Education Committee that would have amended the bill to do so. 

Sen. Bill Soules, a Democrat from Las Cruces and himself an educator, voiced concern about the state’s “incredible shortage” of behavioral health providers – experts who would be needed to help preschool facilities address problematic behavior and avoid out-of-school suspensions. But Groginsky said her department stands ready to provide clinical experts to help preschool facilities, and to coach teachers and administrators.

“They would be contractors,” Groginsky said. “We have 15 right now going through using our federal relief money, going through a certification program. So our goal is to have 15 full-time … infant and early childhood Mental Health consultants. And our goal is to grow that to about 60 over the next three to five years.”

The bill now awaits its second hearing, by the Senate Judiciary Committee, with just a little more than three weeks left in the legislative session.

his article was originally published by . 

Students of color continue to be disproportionately punished when compared to their white counterparts, according to a new report on school suspensions released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island.

The report, titled “Still Oversuspended and Underserved: Continuing Disparities in Suspension Rates in Rhode Island,” even as the overall number of school suspensions dropped significantly over the past two decades.

“In order to truly provide an equitable, uplifting, and educationally enriching school environment for all students in our state, we must make sure that no students are being inappropriately removed and excluded from the classroom,” ACLU Rhode Island Policy Associate Hannah Stern said in a press release.

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Stern added that schools should not punish students for “normal adolescent misbehavior” but ensure students have appropriate social and emotional support in schools.

In 2016, the General Assembly passed a law making suspensions as a last resort for those students whose misbehavior was disruptive to the learning experience of other students and could not be resolved through counseling and other interventions.

Despite progress in reducing the number of suspensions, the authors found that the proportion of Black and Latino students who are suspended remained the same.

The report looked at suspension data for the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic — 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019. Data showed Black and multi-racial students were suspended at a rate 1.5 times higher than their numbers in the general population would suggest. For Latinos, the rate was 1.3 times higher.

experienced the highest rates of suspension at 2.5 times greater than expected. That puts them on par with students with disabilities who face a 2.5 times greater suspension rate than their counterparts.

Far fewer white students receive out of school suspensions. The report showed the rate for white students to be 0.71%.

The more students are removed from classrooms and punished, the more likely their academics are to suffer and to drop-out, increasing vulnerability to the criminal justice system as adults, the report said.

The Rhode Island Department of Education called the report findings “insightful” and that it will use the data to “address inequities” in education.

“For students to succeed, it is crucial that they are in school every day engaged and learning,” Department Spokesman Victor Morente said in an email.

“RIDE is committed to working with stakeholders including students, families, educators, and members of the General Assembly to address concerns and ensure that schools are inclusive environments conducive for learning.”

Narragansett schools show highest disparity

Narragansett schools had the highest ratio of Black student suspensions. Blacks accounted for 0.8% of the student population attending Narragansett schools but represented 14% of suspensions in the district during the 2018-2019, according to data in the report. That made Black students 18 times more likely to be suspended.

The ACLU found that rates of out-of-school suspensions for behaviors classified as “insubordination” or “disrespect” consistently hovered around an alarming 40% of all suspensions.

“Minor offenses which are more reliant on the interpretation and tolerance level of teachers or administrators,” the report reads, “ should be addressed by behavioral counseling and restorative justice measures rather than through removal from the school for a period of time.”

In addition, the 2018-2019 school year saw 1,400 suspensions of students in kindergarten through grade five, of which 30% were for such subjective offenses.

In its conclusion, the report called for legislative action to alleviate the situation. Both chambers of the General Assembly are considering bills that implement its recommendations.

and its sister bill in the Senate, , would limit out-of-school suspensions to students grade six and above, who have not responded to other interventions — including restorative justice practices — and are deemed a risk to the school community. The bills would require consultation with a mental health professional when considering the suspension of a student in lower grades. In addition, districts would be required to submit a yearly report analyzing data and the administration of suspensions.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

Despite a dramatic decline in suspensions as students moved to remote learning during the pandemic, Black children and those in special education were disciplined far more often than white students and those in general education, according to a recent New York University .

The report also indicates students’ this past academic year, echoing news accounts of as a result of and of 850 school leaders where roughly 1 in 3 reported an increase in student fights or physical attacks.

And, it notes, some schools have turned away from restorative justice programs that grew out of the Obama era to more punitive tactics, including out-of-school suspensions, which are particularly damaging to students: shows they and can foreshadow .

The Department of Education is in the process of revising its own disciplinary recommendations with a focus on these same student groups. 

“This is perhaps one of the most urgent civil rights and social justice issues in education,” said Richard O. Welsh, assistant professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the study’s author. “It is incredibly important in our effort to create a more equal and just society that we look at the school system and consider opportunities to learn and grow.”

Welsh cites two sources in his June 10 report: a 13,000-student district in the Atlanta metro area that allowed him to scrutinize its disciplinary records from 2014 to 2022 and news reports on student discipline culled from around the country. 

He found that while suspensions plummeted at the Georgia district during the pandemic, Black students were still more likely to face punishment as compared to white and Hispanic students. from .

Welsh learned that while the Georgia district’s office discipline referrals — such as a teacher sending a child to the principal’s office during in-person learning — declined in the 2020-21 school year, 82% of those referrals involved Black children, who made up only 48% of the student body.

Special education students accounted for 15% of the district’s overall population, but were 42% of the referrals that year. That number was not only disproportionate, it marked a significant spike from pre-pandemic years, when special needs students represented 29% of discipline referrals. Welsh found, too, Black children continued to be singled out in this category: Between 2015 and 2019, 23% of students referred for office discipline were Black students enrolled in special education. The figure jumped to 37% in 2020-21. 

Disproportionality is a longstanding problem when it comes to school discipline. 

American children lost of instruction in the 2017-18 academic year because of out-of-school suspensions, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education. 

While Black students made up , they accounted for nearly 42% of the suspensions: were 13.75% of and more than 24% of suspensions.

Too much punishment, or too little

Many school systems around the country have not yet compiled their disciplinary data for this past school year. But Welsh said interviews with staff at the Georgia district plus information gleaned from local news reports “points to an uptick in disciplinary infractions and consequences” in 2021-22. 

In step with his findings, Rohini Singh, assistant director at the School Justice Project for Advocates for Children of New York, said some schools are ratcheting up the punishments for incidents that would have been handled differently prior to the pandemic. 

This is particularly true of on-campus fights, she said: A scuffle between two children that drew a crowd of onlookers might not have resulted in an out-of-school suspension in the past, but has stark consequences today — and not only for the students at the heart of the tussle. Onlookers are also being targeted, she said, charged with an infraction called “group violence,” a punishment previously doled out only to those who planned an attack in advance.

“The school is seeking a [lengthy] suspension for all of these students instead of looking at the individual circumstances, understanding what happened, the context,” Singh said. 

New York City Department of Education Press Secretary Nathaniel Styer said he could not comment on specific discipline cases without knowing the names of the students involved. In 2019, the DOE moved to to 20 days, restrict student arrests and train educators in alternative disciplinary practices.

At least reports some NYC teachers and parents believe children are not being punished enough and that serious student misbehavior is often ignored. DOE data does show, from 14,502 for the first four months of the 2017-18 school year to 8,369 for the same time period four years later.

The city school system has committed millions to restorative justice programs that focus on reconciliation over punishment to address long-standing racial disparities. are mixed but a 2021 showed children with the highest levels of exposure to restorative practices experienced Black–white discipline disparities five times smaller than those with the lowest levels of exposure.

Dana Ashley oversees a joint program between the United Federation of Teachers and the DOE aimed at changing the culture and climate in dozens of schools, moving them away from after-the-fact disciplinary tactics. She said teachers who have had continuous training on how to handle student meltdowns feel less discontented than those who have not. 

“Teachers are frustrated when they are told they are supposed to know something, but are not given the resources to know it and do it well,” she said.

Elsewhere in the country, Chicago Public Schools saw a 16% increase in out-of-school suspensions for high school students in the first semester of the 2021-22 school year compared to the same time period two years earlier. 

But, said Jadine Chou, head of safety and security at the 341,000-student district, it could have been far worse: CPS saw a 38% reduction in police notifications and a 50% drop in expulsions at its high schools during this same time period, which Chou attributes to the district’s long-standing commitment to restorative justice. 

“We are very grateful to our school staff that they have signed on to this mindset,” she said, calling it, “the right thing to do.”

Pandemic-related trauma

In the current climate, Andrew R. Hairston, director of the Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed, said schools must factor in pandemic-related trauma when evaluating student behavior: Educators must remember many of these children lost loved ones, survived food and housing insecurity and endured unprecedented levels of isolation — and, in some cases, abuse — prior to returning to the classroom. 

Their re-entry was botched, he said: Children needed greater flexibility and compassion. 

“There is some lip service to social-emotional learning, but the investments don’t meet the needs,” he said. 

Anell Eccleston, director of care and sustainability at the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said his organization’s helpline received nearly 300 calls this past school year from families concerned with disciplinary issues — up from roughly 150 prior to the pandemic. 

“The majority of calls are from students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and single-parent homes, where their parent or guardian has also been impacted harshly by the pandemic,” he said. “Some schools are reimplementing zero tolerance practices and pushing out students at high rates.”

Out West, Paradise Valley Schools, which serves some 30,000 students in Phoenix and Scottsdale, also saw a jump in out-of-school suspensions, from 1,223 in 2018-19 to 1,356 last school year. In-school-suspensions dropped from 1,135 to 1,091 in that same time period. 

School should have given younger students more time to play and older kids a greater opportunity to manage their emotions, perhaps allowing them to leave the classroom to cool off, said Meenal McNary, a co-collaborator with the Round Rock Black Parents Association in Texas. But a “return-to-normal” mindset won out, she said.

McNary pulled her three children, ages 5, 10 and 12, from her local public school district last year in favor of a small charter with a far higher percentage of Black and Hispanic children. 

But even that didn’t spare them from what she believes is outsized punishment for minor infractions, like their failure to sit still and listen: When one of her kids was talking to another student in class while his teacher was delivering a lesson, the educator took away his Chromebook for a week as punishment, she said.

“They use that to learn,” she said. “How does that make any sense? Why can’t we do something different? OK, he’s bored, so what else can we do?”

Add high-stakes tests, pandemic-related stress for all and the constant threat of gun violence and both teachers and students are flailing, she said.

The roughest year of my life 

Some states, recognizing the long-term damage of strict punishment, have tried to dramatically curb heavy-handed measures: Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2015 signed legislation aimed at making suspensions a last resort in an attempt to disrupt the . , including Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Louisiana and Nevada, have limited the grade levels in which out-of-school suspensions and expulsions can be used. 

Denver Public Schools, which served 86,600 students last school year, started implementing restorative justice practices in 2005. A 2017 grant grew the program exponentially, prompting a 64% decrease in out-of-school suspensions overall, with a 77% decline for Black students and a 79% drop for children with disabilities, said Jay Grimm, the district’s director of student equity and opportunity. 

But this past school year brought new challenges. The district saw a marked increase in what the state of Colorado dubs “detrimental behavior,” including student fights and bullying. In 2018-19, such behavior resulted in 1,155 out-of-school suspensions. Last year, the figure jumped to 1,754. 

The district shrunk by roughly 4,000 students in that same time period.

Grimm said the school system remains committed to alternative forms of managing student misbehavior. There was a 41.5% reduction in expulsions this past school year compared to 2018-19, partly because the district changed the way teachers report classroom insubordination, which, he said, “could be subjective or have some bias.”

Nearly everyone who returned to the classroom last school year was at a disadvantage, administrators said. Teachers started the year burned out and those who were new to the profession, who joined the field when school was remote, had trouble managing their students. 

Melissa Laurel, an educator for 21 years, said her South Texas charter school saw a four-fold increase in disciplinary referrals this past academic year. While fights remained relatively uncommon at her 6th- through 12th-grade campus, vandalism skyrocketed as children answered TikTok challenges that left her school’s bathrooms damaged. 

Worse yet, she said, parents, who used to be allies in helping teachers manage their children at school, were suddenly unsupportive. A high-ranking administrator on the road to becoming principal, Laurel left the post to work at the charter’s regional office in part because of poor student behavior.

“It was the roughest year of my life,” said Laurel, who starts her new position in July. “The kids were just more aggressive.” 

David Combs, former assistant principal at a Knoxville, Tennessee high school, said staff observed an increase in racial slurs among students and more vandalism than he had ever seen in his 23 years in education — combined.

Combs, who will start a new position at a different district in the fall, attributes the change to too much time at home and on the internet. 

“It was as if they missed a stage in development and maturity,” he said. “But, toward the end of the year, that was starting to decline.” 

McNary, the Round Rock parent leader, is empathetic to teachers, saying they had to manage an entirely new, fraught landscape: Not only did they have unruly students but they also had to abide by new Texas state laws restricting discussions of systemic racism and LGBTQ issues.

“Teachers not only have to make sure their kids are OK, but also to not say anything wrong,” she said. “When are they supposed to get to know the children?”

The data map is an extension from a report released by the U of M’s Poverty Solutions initiative that analyzed data from the 2017-18 school year. An estimated one in 10 Michigan students will experience homelessness by the time they leave their K-12 education, according to the report.����

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“The main takeaway really is that there is a lot of room for improvement and more investigation and research needs to be done, not only into the areas where the rates are really high, but into the areas of where the rates are low, to find out what is happening,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, a senior research associate at Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.��

The map that some districts had rates below 5%, while others had a rate of over 40%.��

Only 50 out of 537 non-charter public school districts made up one-third of all students who were suspended or expelled in the 2017-18 school year. Those 50 school districts only served about 13% of students in Michigan. In 48 school districts, over 25% of students who had experienced homelessness were suspended or expelled.��

The 10 school districts where discipline rates for students who had experienced homelessness were the highest included: Benton Harbor Area Schools at 41.1%, Atlanta Community Schools at 40.7%, Flint City School District at 40.5%, Kelloggsville Public Schools at 38.8%, Beecher Community School District at 38.7%, Alba Public Schools at 38.1%, Hamtramck Public Schools at 37.9%, Eastpointe Community Schools at 37.2%, Westwood Community Schools at 36.2%, and Kalamazoo Public School District at 34.9%.��

None of these school districts responded to a request for comment.��

There were 60 school districts that had no suspensions or expulsions reported in statewide data as a result of either zero suspensions or expulsions or their failure to report using these discipline practices.��

Erb-Downward also highlighted the impacts of housing instability on students, saying many people do not accurately grasp the “impact that housing instability has on children from an educational perspective, or from a health perspective.”��

“Reality is we have a lot of kids in the United States who are experiencing housing instability and homelessness and this type of instability really has an educational impact,” Erb-Downward said. “And it has a health impact that [and] has a mental health impact. If we don’t recognize that as a society, we’re not going to be able to provide the support that kids really need to succeed.”

A study by the found that, generally, suspensions do not disincentivize misbehavior in the future and that more severe school discipline translates into worse academic performance. Another 2018 found that children, 12 years after a suspension, were less likely to go on to earn college degrees and were more likely to be arrested than students who never faced suspensions.��

Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said “it’s important for school districts to really take a close look, not to be defensive, but just to be curious about the data” from the U of M.

“We know that behavior is communication,” Stone-Palmquist said. “And we know that homelessness is experienced as a traumatic event for young people. So it makes sense that you might see an increase in behavior, both during homelessness and an after. I think what’s unfortunate and sad is that we’re not thinking about other ways to handle that behavior in schools.”

A package of bills in the Michigan Legislature last yeartakes aim at reforming the state’s disciplinary systems, with the specific intention of mitigating the effects of zero-tolerance policies that were scrapped in 2016 after subjecting students to expulsions or suspensions after just one act of misconduct.����

The package of bills, Senate Bills , and , were introduced by state Sens. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), Erika Geiss (D-Taylor) and Adam Hollier (D-Detroit).��

The bills, which haven’t moved from the Senate Education and Career Readiness Committee, would establish guidelines for schools to release reports regarding how many days a student was suspended for; their race, ethnicity and gender; and their current economic and living situation. The bills also seek to establish due process for students facing disciplinary action as well as adding a living situation factor to the “seven factors” of whether a student should face disciplinary action.��

Irwin told the Advance the U of M report “shines a light on how much of a problem” school disciplinary action is for students who have experienced homelessness.��

“When folks are struggling to fit in, when folks are struggling to connect those positive elements of the community, it’s extra important that the community reach out and try to help them connect, because that’s healthy behavior,” Irwin said. “That’s how we get a healthy community.”

Erb-Downward said the interactive data map should also further empower state and local leaders to figure out better methods on “how to help kids navigate strong feelings and emotions” and to “create a school environment that’s safe” for all students.��

“When we’re starting to suspend and expel one in 10 children who have ever experienced homelessness in their life up to that point, we’re not helping those kids who’ve experienced trauma and have some real challenges,” Erb-Downward said. “They need support.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

In fact, . In addition to making it more likely that students will face exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion, students are chronically absent more when campuses are staffed by cops, with researchers identifying a marked spike in missed school days among youth with disabilities. 

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The results, researchers note, suggest that school-based police could hinder students’ academic outcomes, increase their long-term involvement with the criminal justice system and appear to “seriously exacerbate existing opportunity gaps in education.” The effects of school police on discipline and arrests were “consistently over two times larger for Black students” than their white classmates, the study found. 

“There might be these benefits in terms of reduced violence, but there are also these really large costs, and costs that unequally affect students,” said report co-author Lucy Sorensen, an assistant public administration and policy professor at the University of Albany, SUNY.

“At the end of the day, I have a hard time, as an education researcher, thinking this is what we should invest money in,” Sorensen added. 

The report, a working paper released by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University that has not yet been peer reviewed, is the first school-level examination of campus officers across every public school in the U.S. It is also one of the first pieces of in-depth research on the effects of school police to follow a nationwide movement to remove cops from schools that was prompted by the death of George Floyd and argued their presence was especially harmful to students of color.

School security consultant Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland, maintained that campus police can be a positive force so long as they’re including a clearly defined selection process for officers who receive specialized training. 

“If you have a properly designed and implemented, supervised and evaluated [school resource officer] program, there are many positive things about that,” he said. “That said, if you have an SRO on your campus, chances are you’re going to see some increase in arrests by the mere fact that the officers are going to identify crimes that school administrators may previously have not recognized and reported.” 

The number of officers stationed in K-12 schools has grown exponentially in the last several decades, largely in response to school shootings, and the federal government has to facilitate that increase. In the 1970s, just 1 percent of schools had police stationed on campus. Today, that figure has jumped to roughly half. 

School shootings remain statistically rare and campuses have grown markedly safer in the last several decades. But the new report throws cold water on a common argument in favor of school policing: Officers failed to prevent school-shootings and other gun-related incidents. In fact, having an officer on campus “marginally increases the likelihood of a school shooting,” according to the report.

Future research should explore the factors that drive that increase, Sorensen said. Though shootings have long motivated police presence in schools, preventing such tragedies is “not what the job entails on a day-to-day basis,” she said, and instead officers “are getting involved in minor disciplinary matters.”

George Floyd’s murder in 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer ignited a heated national debate over the broader role of police in the U.S., and several districts ended their ties with the police or slashed their policing budgets. In Minneapolis, for example, the district terminated its police contract and replaced officers with non-sworn safety agents who lack arrest authority. Several dozen districts nationally made similar decisions as advocates highlighted racial disparities in school-based arrests that fed the school-to-prison pipeline and called on educators to replace cops with counselors and other student support services.

On Wednesday, the City Council in Alexandria, Virginia, its school resource officer program five months after it pulled police from hallways. The reversal followed parent outrage in the wake of . 

The latest research, however, further bolsters a body of evidence on the negative effects of placing police in schools. To reach their findings, researchers analyzed federal education data between 2014 and 2018 and data on law enforcement agencies that applied for federal grants between 2015 and 2017 for school-based policing. In a given year, officers led to a reduction of six non-firearm violent incidents per 100 students, according to the report. They also increased the out-of-school suspension rate by 10.9 students per 100. The increase in student punishments was starkest in middle and high schools where, per 100 students, 17.8 more received out-of-school suspensions, 1.7 more were expelled and 4.8 more were referred to police or arrested. Additionally, results suggest that school police increase chronic absenteeism by 12.2 students for every 100 kids enrolled, and an increase of 13.4 students per 100 among those with disabilities. Across disciplinary outcomes, the results were starker for Black students than their white classmates. 

Overall, the results suggest that stationing police in schools “intensifies the levels of punishment unevenly across different groups of students, and that Black students, male students and students with disabilities generally bear the brunt of this punishment,” according to the report. 

The new report follows a recent study on , which reached similar conclusions. In by the Center for Public Integrity, the nonprofit news outlet found that schools disproportionately referred Black students and those with disabilities to the police at a rate nearly double their share of the overall student population. 

“If you’re going to throw out your SRO program, then you should also throw your administrators out with it because they have been partners in those programs all along,” Trump, the security consultant, said. “It’s not just the police who must be screwing up.”

Ben Fisher, an assistant professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, noted the consistency of  the latest research with the North Carolina study, which found a “trade-off between some marginal decreases in school crime and some pretty serious increases in the exclusion of students through suspensions and arrests.” Fisher said it adds to a growing body of research highlighting that school resource officers have a detrimental effect on youth outcomes, while pointing out that other people could view the evidence through a different lens.

“I don’t think it’s good to exclude students from school or arrest them,” said Fisher, who has researched the efficacy of campus police for years but wasn’t involved in the latest report. “Other folks could read that same research and say, ‘There’s more arrests — good. They ought to be removed from schools if they’re doing bad things.’” 

When interacting with students, most school-based officers seek to avoid arrests, according to by the National Association of School Resource Officers, a trade group. About a third of campus arrests are based on observations from officers, according to the survey, and a similar share began with a referral from school staff. 

Ultimately, policymakers should weigh the decreases in campus violence against the other effects of school policing and decide whether other interventions could be more effective, the researchers concluded. 

“Interventions should not just be judged on a single outcome, but comprehensively on many outcomes,” the report states. “It also suggests that the comprehensive impact of using resources for school police should be compared with the comprehensive impact of using resources in other ways to improve school safety and climate,” including in schools, which researchers described as “a single intervention to both reduce suspensions and improve school climate.” 

As school-based police continue to generate passionate debate and additional research emerges about their efficacy, Sorensen said she expects education leaders to increasingly explore alternatives like investing additional money in social workers and mental health services for students.

“I think we’ll see a lot of different experimentation in the coming years,” she said, “and I hope we can learn from that.”