School board reviews causes for suspension

Orange County principals are now required to consult with a supervisor before handing down outof-school suspensions for everything but the most serious offenses.

Deputy Superintendent Jesus Jara, who sent an email to principals notifying them about the new mandate last month, said in an interview he wants principals to consider other options for disciplining students.

“The purpose is really to have information and to make sure we are doing all we can to really change the behavior of the students,” he said.

Wendy Doromal, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, said she agrees with an approach that focuses on fixing bad behavior. But she said some teachers are concerned other students will suffer if misbehaving classmates aren’t removed from campus.

“Some teachers have complained that disruptive students are being left in their classrooms and are not receiving consequences for serious infractions,” she wrote in an email.

Jara said the move isn’t necessarily intended to reduce the overall number of suspensions, though he hopes to limit out-ofschool suspensions for less serious offenses. He said the discussion between the principal and supervisor is intended as a consultation, and the final decision is up to the principal.

Orange students are slightly more likely to serve out-of-school suspensions than their peers in other Florida districts. About 1 in 15 Orange students served out-of-school suspensions during the 2014-2015 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education, compared to 1 in 16 statewide.

Black students were especially likely to be suspended at a rate of about 1 in 8 in Orange, compared with 1 in 21 Hispanic students and 1 in 35 white students.

Students were only counted once, even if they were suspended multiple times. The state report does not indicate how many days the students missed.

Lake County’s rate was much higher, with about 1 in every 11 serving out-ofschool suspensions during the 2014-2015 school year. This year, administrators at each campus created plans for reducing suspensions, spokeswoman Sherri Owens said.

Each principal was given a chart showing his or her school’s out-of-school suspension data for 2013-2014 through 2015-2016, broken down by race and gender. Based on that data, principals chose a group to focus on to reduce suspensions.

Seminole County had a far lower rate, with about 1 in 20 students facing this punishment. Schools with “excessive” out-of-school suspensions are working to reduce them, but their plans aren’t complete yet, district spokesman Mike Lawrence said.

The U.S. Department of Education, the nation’s largest teachers union, and civil rights organizations have urged schools to keep students in school, citing research that shows outof-school suspensions aren’t effective and hurt students academically.

Students who are suspended are less likely to earn high school diplomas, and suspensions during the 10th-grade year alone result in more than 67,000 dropouts nationally, according to a 2016 study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Those dropouts led to $35 billion in lost tax revenue and social costs, such as criminal justice expenses during the students’ lifetimes, the study found.

Orange’s focus on suspensions is “enlightened,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lamont, a Wisconsin pediatrician who was an author of a report about the subject for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“You don’t have to be touchy-feely,” he said. “You can look at this from a dollars-and-cents standpoint. As a society, it makes great economic sense to make sure as many of our children as possible become employable, taxpaying adults as opposed to people needing extensive medical care, who can’t find jobs and become involved in the legal system.”

Less egregious infractions that could result in out-of-school suspensions in Orange include promoting gangs, fighting, smoking cigarettes at school and bullying. Principals now have to consult with their supervisors before giving out-of-school suspensions for these types of offenses.

Jara said the district already required principals to speak with an executive area director before meting out suspensions for children in kindergarten through third grade, unless the student committed one of the most serious infractions.

Principals still do not have to notify their supervisors when they give inschool suspensions or when they suspend students for offenses such as having drugs, alcohol or weapons on campus; striking or threatening employees or students; and sexually harassing or assaulting others.

Suspension and expulsion are the “most severe disciplinary measures that a school district can impose,” and schools should intervene with students long before that action is taken, Lamont said.

“You have to ask yourself, if I’m in such a deep hole that I need to even be considering this, how long have I been digging this hole?” Lamont said. “How long have conditions been going on that have led to this?”