Rethinking use of expulsion

Gap persist in state’s public schools; bias remains

Expulsions of all students in Connecticut public schools continue to decline on a statewide basis, but minority students are still kicked out of school in numbers disproportionate to their representation, new data show.

Black males make up 13 percent of the male student population but account for 26 percent of expulsions.

Hispanic females make up 24 percent of the female student population but account for 38 percent of female expulsions.

Black females account for 12.8 percent of the female student population, but 34.3 percent of female students expelled.

“It is unfortunate but undeniable that the face of expulsion is youth of color,” said Marisa Masolo Halm, an attorney with the Center for Children’s Advocacy who works primarily to defend the educational rights of children.

And because many of the state’s large city school districts have high minority populations, the disparity is more obvious in the big city schools.

“I don’t have the answer,” Allan Taylor, chairman of the state board said. “Is a societal problem part of it?”

Commissioner of Education Dianna Wentzell was also reluctant to lay blame, saying it was important for the state to know the “what” behind expulsions even when it doesn’t know the “why.”

“We are really looking for guidance from the board,” Wentzell said.

The what

A student is expelled when he or she is excluded from school for more than 10 consecutive days in a school year. In Connecticut public schools last year, the average expulsion lasted 115 days.

In 2016-17, there were 750 expulsions in the state compared with 954 in 201213.

One-fifth of the expulsions occurred in the state’s neediest school districts, with most in the largest cities: Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk and Stamford.

Four out of five students expelled are high school students. Elementary students account for less than 2 percent.

In the Danbury area, New Milford and Danbury had the most expulsions, at seven and six expulsions last year, respectively. Both communities saw slight increases over the previous year.

New Milford Superintendent of Schools Joshua Smith said school officials don’t expel a high number of students because they take into consideration what that removal could mean for the student’s learning and balance it with the risk to the rest of the student body, as well as the corrective behavior and restorative justice model.

“When you remove a student form the educational process, you’re doing so to protect the student body and addressing very severe issues,” he said. “That isn’t a process we undertake lightly.”

Smith said it is also hard to determine trends with expulsions because they are very localized to the districts where they are occurring.

“It’s very hard to look at statewide and national data and extrapolate it to all districts in the state,” he said.

Those trends are even harder to determine when dealing with numbers as small as New Milford’s.

Smith said various incidents could result in expulsions one year, like a large fight resulting in 10 students being expelled, but if that same incident doesn’t happen again the following year there could be a decrease.

State law requires expulsion hearings when a student is found with drugs or weapons. Those categories account for half of all suspensions.

In most other cases, however, expulsion is a discretionary punishment meted out for fights, theft, disruptive behavior, threatening behavior and policy violations.

Policy violations accounted for 11 percent of all suspensions in 2016-17, nearly double what it was two years ago, said Camera Stokes-Hudson, an associate policy fellow for Connecticut Voices For Children, a New Haven-based advocacy group.

“We need to dig deeper to understand how permissible policy violation expulsions are occurring,” Stokes-Hudson said. “And who it’s impacting.”

The impact

Kathryn Meyer, another attorney for the Center for Children’s Advocacy, has had many clients affected by expulsion. One was a Fairfield County high school student expelled last year for having an emotional outburst triggered by a mental health issue.

Instead of getting her immediate help, the 16year-old was led from the school in handcuffs and then expelled.

“She had the most emotional reaction I have ever seen,” Meyer said of the female minority student who didn’t want her name or school identified. “She so wanted to be in school and graduate on time.”

Both the student and her mother feel race played a role in the expulsion, Meyer said.

The mom was overwhelmed and didn’t understand the process or her rights. “She felt she let the situation get away from her,” Meyer said.

Appealing an expulsion is next to impossible since an expelled student has no right of appeal to court, Meyer said.

Instead, the advocate petitioned for an early readmission, which was granted. The student, a junior, missed only a couple of months of school.

“It was a positive result,” Meyer said. “I wish it could have happened earlier.”

The consequences

Students who are expelled run a greater risk of academic failure, dropping out and ending up in the juvenile justice system.

In Connecticut, 46 percent of expelled students get homework assignments, 14 percent get tutoring and 23 percent are put into an alternative education setting. Nearly one in 10 get nothing.

A new state law requires the state Board of Education to develop guidelines for the education that expelled students receive, including the kind of instruction and number of hours to be provided. It is a work in progress.

Beyond providing guidance once students are expelled, Wentzell said more work needs to be done to prevent expulsions from occurring.

“Expulsion is the most extreme use of exclusionary discipline possible,” Wentzell said.

“It really is the modernday equivalent of the Greek’s method of disciplining by ostracizing . ... It is the opposite of what we are trying to do.”