… For minor offenses, principals would have to try interventions before suspensions …
baltimoresun.com
By Liz Bowie, The Baltimore Sun
11:53 AM EST, February 23, 2012
Baltimore County school leaders are reconsidering discipline policies that have led to one of the highest suspension rates in the state, saying they want to reduce the times that students are sent home for minor infractions.
A revamped discipline code, made public for the first time this week, would encourage staff and teachers to intervene with students before they are suspended and would give principals more flexibility in how they deal with bad behavior.
The school board will consider the new policy over the next month and will vote in April on whether to adopt it.
The proposal would bring the county discipline code more into line with a plan from the Maryland state school board, which is expected to introduce new discipline policies Tuesday.
“We have most likely overused suspension as the consequence for every [bad] behavior,” said Dale Rauenzahn, executive director of student support services for the county school system. The result was a high suspension rate that kept students out of school. “If you want students to achieve, they have to be in the classroom.”
Known for having some of the strictest discipline policies, Baltimore County suspends about one in every 10 students each year and, like many counties, disproportionately suspends African-American and special education students.
After years of defending discipline policies, the system is encouraging teachers and administrators to use their judgment and to intervene to stop the behavior rather than suspending students. Administrators were sometimes suspending students for three or five days at a time repeatedly, Rauenzahn said, and the system is hoping to top that practice.
Whether county school board members will support the new policy is unclear. One board member, Rodger Janssen, said he believes the system has a record of good academic achievement, which may be correlated with its discipline policies. “I know what the state board is doing. The handwriting is clear on the wall, but I don’t want to walk away from what I think has made this school system” successful, he said.
The new policy would not change the consequence for the most serious violations — when a student brings a weapon to school, attacks a teacher or sells drugs.
But when a student misbehaves on a school bus, then the punishment should not be to keep the student out of the classroom, where he has been behaving fine, Rauenzahn said. Instead, the consequence might be to prohibit the student from riding the bus.
“We want to talk more about interventions, using other tools than the suspensions,” he said.
More students are likely to be given service learning or be prohibited from engaging in after-school activities when they commit small violations of the discipline code. Instead of dividing all discipline offenses into just three categories, the system is proposing adding a fourth category that defines what should be done for “minor acts of misconduct.”
“It is clarifying what it means to be student-centered in terms of discipline, to really work with the students to change behavior. That is a tall order,” said Dundalk High School Principal Tom Shouldice, who added that he supports the changes.
The new policy would allow students to bring cell phones to school but would require them to be turned off and put away during class, a change that is a nod to reality in most schools, Shouldice said.
Cathy Walrod, principal at Hereford Middle School, said she supports the changes and already has been trying to use punishments that fit the misdeed. For example, a student who throws food in the cafeteria is more likely to find himself staying after school to help the janitor clean than to be suspended. She said administrators in her building ask, “What would make this child want to change his behavior?” In some cases, she said, they ask a student the question.
But statistics show that many administrators across the state have handed down suspensions without giving students the consequences first. “I have given the principals the ability, the flexibility to use other alternatives to suspension. Many administrators felt they were locked in and had to suspend,” Rauenzahn said.
Students who disrupt classrooms could still be suspended, he said.
Rauenzahn said principals will be warned that they must intervene immediately if a special education student has been suspended for five days, even if those five days are not consecutive.
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun