Obama-era policy irrelevant in debate over school shootings

Once again, the Trump administration is twisting itself in knots trying to find a solution for gun violence that doesn’t involve the obvious — imposing stricter regulations on guns. This time, Donald Trump is targeting an Obama-era guideline regarding school discipline. To hear some conservative commentators describe it, the guideline helped lead to the Parkland shooting by making schools too soft on student misbehavior.

This is not only completely off the mark, it has the stench of racism all over it.

Here’s why, in two parts:

• First, the Parkland shooter’s problem behavior certainly hadn’t been ignored by school officials. He had been disciplined numerous times during middle school and high school, was suspended at one point and was eventually expelled. Not only that, but the shooter’s troubling history was well-known to local law enforcement officers, who’d been called to his home many times. Even the FBI had received tips about the shooter.

• Second, undoing the Obama initiative could have unfair effects on minority students, as the guideline was designed to reduce the disproportionate rate at which black and brown students are punished compared to their white classmates despite being no more likely to act out. That imbalance has been well-documented, and the Obama administration was absolutely right in addressing it through a 2014 “Dear colleague” letter to schools that outlined ways to reduce the unfairness.

The Obama guideline led to some very positive outcomes, including schools rolling back zero-tolerance policies that became popular after the Columbine shooting but had resulted in stories of students being suspended for low-level misbehavior like swearing or bringing toy guns to school. Another step forward was the use of preventive classroom-management strategies when appropriate instead of calling in school security officers or law enforcement authorities.

But this month, Trump announced that he’d assigned Education Secretary Betsy Devos to lead a commission to examine repealing the guideline as part of a broader review of school safety policies. Worse yet, the commission is made up of four Republican Cabinet members and does not include any educators or students.

To the credit of the Broward County school system in Florida, where Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is located, the system had adopted a program aimed at reducing the racial disparity in discipline the year before Obama issued the guideline. The Broward County superintendent said after the Parkland shooting spree that any attempt to connect it to the shooting was misguided.

“We’re not going to dismantle a program that’s been successful in the district because of false information that someone has put out there,” he said.

Other districts should also hold fast. The Obama guideline was one of several steps aimed at reducing the atrocious disparity in the percentage of minorities incarcerated in the U.S. Studies have shown that blacks are put behind bars at five times the rate of whites, and blacks and Hispanics make up 56 percent of the population in jails and prisons despite comprising 32 percent of the U.S. population.

Justifiably, the NAACP and other minority advocacy groups are speaking out about Trump’s review of the guideline. Those groups had already raised legitimate concerns about proposals to allow teachers to carry guns in classrooms: Given the evidence that minority students are disciplined at an disproportionate rate, they could also face a heightened risk of teachers seeing them as threatening and responding by pulling a gun.

“The removal of (the guideline), combined with the possibility of armed teachers in our schools, sets the stage for transforming our schools into prisons,” the NA ACP said.

Minority groups also have legitimately questioned why a guideline aimed at resolving racial disparities is being targeted when the Parkland shooting was committed by a white man, as has been the case with the majority of mass shootings in the U.S.

In the aftermath of Parkland and far too many other school shootings, it’s appropriate to be discussing school safety. But any proposed solution must be partially aimed at reining in assault rifles and high-capacity magazines — weapons based on those designed to kill and maim as many enemy soldiers as possible with minimal reloading.

And any attempt to dial back policies that have helped protect minority students from unfair punishment is a nonstarter.