Enabling more willful defiance in state schools

Berkeley-based state Sen. Nancy Skinner being, well, Berkeley-based, is often out of step with the politics of most California voters. Yet she has also been very good on housing and policing issues for the state.

And she certainly was not wrong, at the heart of the matter, when she said, in support of a bill she sponsored and advanced through the Legislature: “The punishment for missing school should not be to miss more school.”

When it comes to suspending or expelling primary, elementary and secondary students in public schools in California, or anywhere else, this has long been a conundrum. When young people are acting out at school, or simply ditching class, in ways that range from merely annoying to actually dangerous for whatever growing-up or familial reasons they may be facing, there has been for generations a push to punish the rule-breaking with either the threat or the fact of suspending them temporarily or expelling them permanently from one school or district.

The thinking, as with most punishments, has been that while this may well have deleterious effects for the student in question, it certainly has the salutary effect of removing a troublemaker from campus, to the benefit of teachers, administrators and classmates.

But as with many supposedly simple solutions, suspension and expulsion can undeniably create problems of their own. Satisfying as it can be to lay down the law when rules are broken, if we look at the big picture, precisely where does our society think a troubled teen is supposed to go during school hours if they are banned from going to school? It may well be that the punishment actually acts as a push to those getting up to no good to get up to more no good rather than quietly meditating at home on their misdeeds.

And for many or most students, staying at home means doing so unsupervised, as their parents will be at work. The lure of the streets is strong.

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Skinner's bill to ban “willful defiance” suspensions “for middle and high school students who demonstrate bad behavior, including breaking the dress code, talking back to a teacher or using their phone in class,” as Anabel Sosa reported in the Los Angeles Times. “The legislation Newsom signed into law, SB 274, also will prohibit the suspension and expulsion of students due to tardiness or truancy.” School systems will still be able to suspend students “for more severe actions, such as physical violence, possession or use of drugs, theft or bullying.”

The bill is actually an expansion into the upper grades of an existing policy that already banned suspensions for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Just as reasonable people in favor of the rule of law can understand that sending offenders — especially young people — off to jail or prison for their transgressions can have the terrible side-effect of pushing them toward rather than away from a life of crime, we too believe that keeping troubled teens enrolled in school is generally a good thing.

But put yourself in a teacher's shoes. It's against the rules to be fiddling on your phone in class — yet a student continues to do so. He sasses back at you when you tell him to put it away. And, the supposed adult in the room, you have no recourse for this? You simply have to put up with the insurrection? That's why former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill in 2012, saying that teachers should be able to “retain discretion” over decorum in their classrooms. We don't understand why reasonable, generations-long standards for in-school behavior can't be maintained. Better legislation would have aimed to minimize, not entirely eliminate, the ability to suspend students for willful defiance of teachers and administrators.

Yet no Democrats and few Republicans voted against the bill. Call us old fogeys, but we say that the new legislation is wrong.