Mandating a call to parents before a K-2 suspension
One of LOC’s main requests is that the New Hanover County Schools district (NHCS) add language to policy 4351 requiring administrators to contact the parent or guardian of a K-2 student before doling out a suspension. Peter Rawitsch, one of the group's leaders, said the contact attempt was all they had requested from the district.
In 2022, LOC successfully helped push the district to implement a policy that said these younger students could only be suspended for having drugs or alcohol, committing assaults, communicating threats, having weapons, or other “clear threats to safety.”
Rawitsch said he understands a call to parents before a suspension is already a general practice, but he would like to see it formalized.
“The principals have said they're doing it. The superintendent has said that's the expectation, but we would like that in writing that holds everyone accountable," he said.
Interim superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes says that parents will be contacted first except in extreme situations.
“My expectation that I gave to the principals is, unless there has been a sudden violent act, like an assault, or something of that nature, that I would expect parents to have been contacted throughout the process of discipline that may lead to an out-of-school suspension. So, I think the important thing to know is that an [OSS] is never going to be our first line of defense unless there has been a violent act or a crime," Barnes said.
Barnes said while he wants to minimize suspensions for any student, the numbers surrounding K-2 suspensions in the first five months of school are not statistically relevant.
“We have more than 5,000 K-2 students. Sixteen elementary schools have zero out-of-school suspensions, and only 19 students in the first five months of school have received OSS,” he said, adding that those suspensions all took place in nine of the district’s elementary schools.
Rawitsch said that these data points are still concerning — and used the small number of OSS to drive home the point about the feasibility of mandating a phone call.
Statistics show that in the 2018 and 2019 school years, K-2 suspensions were in the hundreds, but starting in 2021, the numbers started dropping below 100. They've been hovering in the mid-70s for the past three school years.
Sharing data around K-2 suspensions
LOC's other complaint is that the district is not forthcoming about sharing suspension data with the public. Rawitsch said they used to get monthly student services discipline reports from the district, which no longer produces those because of staffing cuts to Central Office.
However, if the district tracks the data, whatever form it comes in would be a public file subject to disclosure from public records law (provided it didn’t include, or was redacted to remove, personally identifying information).
Barnes said there is a hiccup since the suspension numbers are low, running the risk of being attributable to a particular student. The Department of Public Instruction has guidance on reporting numbers associated with crime and violence, suspension and expulsion, and other discipline data, such as if a “student group or subgroup population size of less than 10 students, then the data will be suppressed.”
It’s unclear when this applies, though. DPI’s annual reporting does have less than one student reported per school — and NHCS, when they produced monthly Student Services reports, had cumulative numbers under 10.
Assistant Superintendent Julie Varnam wrote in an email to WHQR, “The release of data is bound by asking the question once it's disaggregated and whether PII (personally identifiable information) is at risk. There is no real hard/fast rule because it's all about how far it's disaggregated. A group size of 10 is a good rule of thumb, no matter the group size, to protect student identity.” She added, “We are not interested in hiding data but in protecting the privacy afforded to our students. It could be argued that our release of 1 student at a school could impact PII, but we certainly aren't going to disaggregate further to share the grade level or other subgroups. We have not changed our position; we are just consistently applying the decision-making parameters for each data set when releasing.”
Basically, the district has to decide if a data point could be used to identify an actual student; if it does, they'll withhold it.
While LOC can still review annual data, Rawitsch said consistent data from the district "helps us monitor the progress the district is making, especially in light of their attempts over the past four years to train teachers on alternatives to suspensions, ways of working with students that have challenging behavior.”
Barnes reiterated that his job is to monitor this suspension data along with administrators.
“I'm certainly agreeable to meet and talk [with constituents, including LOC] however I can, but this really is an issue that is best solved and addressed with individual parents, the individual principals, and the individual teachers,” he said.
Continuation of suspension as punishment
LOC’s goal is to eliminate most suspensions. Barnes acknowledges that he wants OSS used as “a last resort in a continuum of escalating sort of consequences where we work with parents, we work with students, we work with teachers to develop a plan to ensure that students behavior doesn't impact the learning environment in the school.”
Veronica McLaurin-Brown, who has worked in education for over 30 years, is a co-leader of LOC with Rawitsch. She said the stakes are high if students aren’t redirected and rehabilitated while in school, “I think our jails in New Hanover County are filled with students who have dropped out.”
Some research does support that suspensions increase adverse risks like future incarceration. Some of it shows that suspensions don’t necessarily make the school safer, either.
However, in climate surveys, some NHCS staff have reported feeling that their safety is at risk due to escalating student misbehavior. This led to teacher survey comments that mentioned keeping the student in the classroom is tough when safety and learning are compromised.
Staffing to implement alternate forms of consequences
Rawitsch agreed that if a student is being too disruptive, that may call for removal from the classroom, but not from school entirely.
“They're entitled to an education too, and so it would mean finding another space in the school where a highly qualified, certified teacher could continue their education, where school counselors and possibly a social worker could work with the student to help develop a plan with the classroom teacher, to have the student come back to the classroom. Kicking them out of school provides them with no education or services,” he said.
(Note: Students in out-of-school suspension do receive homework, but most would agree it's not the same as teacher-led instruction.)
Rawitsch is not alone in advocating for more staffing, particularly for elementary teaching assistants. He also said that additional support staff, such as counselors and social workers, should be concentrated in schools with high needs.
He outlined this request at the last board meeting, but Barnes said there isn’t the funding, spacing, and staffing available for separate instruction for individual students.
McLaurin-Brown reiterated that students change once teachers do. She also gave an anecdote of when she referred many students for suspensions earlier in her career, but eventually changed her approach.
“I went back to school, and I made sure that I was at the door when every kid came in, I spoke to them; when every kid left, I talked to them. If I gave them an assignment the next day, if they didn't do the assignment, I called every parent. I went to their homes and talked to them on the playground. I changed my curriculum,” she said.
McLaurin-Brown said she barely had any referrals at the end of that year.
She said she understands the pressures teachers and staff are under, but they should advocate for themselves if they are not getting what they need to do their jobs. However, she said, NHCS employees can’t fail students who come to them for their education.
“As teachers, we owe it to ourselves to collectively come together and ask for and demand the changes that we need, like resources, to be bold enough and courageous enough to let the system know that you are a professional. You shouldn't have to be begging for materials on WECT,” she said.
What’s next
Rawitsch and McLaurin-Brown say they will continue their LOC advocacy to change the 4351 policy and ask for the publicly available suspension data.
Barnes said that the board’s policy committee could revisit this – and supporters of LOC said they would be there for the discussion.
The next policy meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 21. The next general board meeting is February 4.
