In an effort to reduce the amount of suspensions and expulsions in Massachusetts Public Schools, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be taking community comments and suggestions on how to revise the current law concerning the process of disciplining students.
The legislation, Chapter 222, passed in July 2012 and set regulations for disciplinary actions regarding suspensions and expulsions, saying administrators must take preliminary actions first, such as detention. However, these preliminary actions are usually not taken so students are being suspended or expelled, often not returning to finish their high school education.
“Chapter 222, in essence, ensures that students have the opportunity to make educational progress through the education services that they’re going to be required to have provided by the district, when they are excluded from the classroom, whether it be from suspension or expulsion,” said Lauren Greene, information officer at the DESE. “… It also puts in place sort of a due process that they’ll have that is their right, and so that law strengthens this.”
Greene said the DESE takes public comments seriously, discussing them in front of the board and figuring out how to work them into the law. Comments from the community are required before the DESE votes on changes to the legislation.
“That is a statutory regulation to allow outside parties, people that are interested or directly affected by the regulations to offer up insight,” she said. “All regulations that go through the state process have to have public comments. Sometimes, associations comment that a certain word should be changed to either strengthen or clarify the regulations. We review them, we have discussion about the added value that they would make to the regulations that we are proposing.”
Tom Mela, senior project director of children’s law support at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, said this legislation was created to prevent suspensions or expulsions from harming a person’s education.
“This addresses the fact that too many students who attend public schools in Massachusetts are excluded from school [for their behavior],” he said. “It requires schools to, for all but the most serious offenses, try alternatives to exclusion and making exclusion a last resort.”
In addition to trying to prevent frequent punishments that keep a student out of school, this legislation puts in place regulations for how to keep a student learning while out of school, Mela said.
Teena Marie Johnson, special projects coordinator for Boston Student Advisory Council, said stronger language is necessary in revision this law because right now a lot is left up to the school’s discretion.
“A lot of issues have come up around whether or not schools are actually using alternatives in place of suspending a student, and it’s very hard to determine that because administrators are not documenting that,” she said. “We’re asking the Board of Education to say explicitly that you have to document and track alternatives that you have used before you suspend or expel a student from school, we need to be able to see that you’ve tried distorted justice or you’ve tried detention.”
Some residents said preventing frequent suspensions and expulsions needs to happen before the bad behavior arises in the student.
“What they need is after school activities to keep the kids off the streets, away from bad influences,” said Carmen Suarez, 50, of Jamaica Plain. “The teenage environment these days is filled with violence, guns and drugs. They need activities to keep them away from all that stuff, and that will encourage good behavior.”
Kiara Bugliese, 19, of Fenway, said she was never involved in extracurricular activities in high school, but her future aspirations kept her determined to finish school.
“It’s important to have dreams and ambitions,” she said. “That way even if high school sucks, you know it’ll pay off in the end and get you where you want to be.”
Dongjin Vasquez, 22, of Brighton, said staying in high school is important because diplomas show better qualities than a General Education Development.
“It’s important to graduate because diplomas show future employers that you have motivation,” he said. “It’s complicated because I think administrators have a right to suspend students who are acting out, skipping school, losing motivation, but at the same time they need to try to involve students more.”
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