Pulaski County district student suspensions down; report finds disciplinary actions for black, white youths still disproportionate

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. is shown in this photo.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. is shown in this photo.

The number of students suspended last year for rule violations in the Pulaski County Special School District dropped by 165, or nearly 9%, and the number of expelled students declined when compared with the previous year.

That's from the district's recently released 2018-19 annual report on discipline, which comes as the district prepares for a July 2020 federal court hearing on whether the 12,000-student system has met its long-standing desegregation obligations on equity in discipline practices, student achievement and the condition of its buildings.

Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in a 36-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit, has set a July 14-Aug. 7, 2020, hearing to determine whether the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts have met those long-standing desegregation commitments and are entitled to be declared unitary and released from federal court monitoring.

The Pulaski County Special School District suspended 1,734 students from school -- some of them multiple times -- for rule violations in the recent 2018-19 school year, according to the district report that also covers all student misbehavior referrals to school administrators and student behavior on school buses.

By demographic groups, the decline in student suspensions held true for black male and black female students and for non-black males -- including white males, according to the district's annual discipline report.

In contrast, non-black females -- including white females -- who are typically the least likely students to be excluded for up to 10 days from class, showed an increase in suspensions between 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Sherman Whitfield, the Pulaski Special district's director of pupil services, welcomed the latest discipline report.

"I'm kind of excited about it this year in that we definitely saw some decreases in the numbers," Whitfield said. "However, we still have work to do. We saw decreases in suspensions and in-house discipline and those kinds of [measures]. But we still have work to do relative to black-white -- that percentage gap between black and white students. We're still working on that. That's our focus," he said, "but overall the discipline report this year was pretty good."

Black students made up a majority, 62%, of the students suspended last school year, although black students are in the minority in the overall district enrollment. The composition of the district this past school year was 42% black, and 58% white and other non-black races and ethnicities.

Black students in the district have long been suspended or otherwise disciplined at higher rates than their white classmates and at rates disproportionate to their racial composition of the district.

There were a total of 689 black males suspended and 444 non-black males suspended last school year.

The number of suspended black males dropped by 56, or 7.51%, when compared with 2017-18 counts, according to the report. That was actually exceeded by the drop in the number of suspended white males and other non-black males, which declined by 107. That was a 19.41% decline compared with the previous school year.

A total of 601 females were suspended, of whom 388 were black and 213 were non-black. That means 65% of the female students suspended were black and 35% were non-black.

An appropriate goal is to have the percentages of black and non-black students who are disciplined be in proportion with the overall enrollment, Whitfield said.

"There's no data that tells us that black kids are worse than the white kids or that white kids are worse than the black kids," Whitfield said.

"The problem," he elaborated, "most of the time is not in the objective areas [for disciplining students] but in the subjective areas. We as educators have to check our biases. We all have them. That's where we try to engage teachers and all others who have contact with students about checking out particular biases."

Like Whitfield, Linda Remele, president of the Pulaski County Special district's School Board and a retired district administrator, was pleased with the findings in the report, including the drop in expulsions and suspensions from school bus ridership.

"We are keeping kids in school, which is our goal," Remele said. "And when you keep bus suspensions down, you keep kids in schools learning," she said, complimenting the district staff for that. "A lot of time when you suspend them from the bus, parents don't have a way to get kids to the school."

Other data gleaned from the annual report showed:

• A total 2,994 suspensions were imposed in the 2018-19 school year, reflecting the fact that some of the 1,734 students suspended that year were suspended multiple times. The total suspensions dropped by 420 students, or 12.3%, compared with the 3,414 suspensions imposed in the previous school year.

• Nine students were expelled from the district in the 2018-19 school year, down from 20 the previous year, a 55% decline. Seven of the nine expelled were black males. There were nearly 100 students who were recommended for expulsion and had hearings before Whitfield but most of those cases were resolved in ways short of ending a student's formal education, Whitfield said. Students who aren't successful in a traditional school for whatever reason can be assigned to alternative learning programs within the district, including a new program at the old Robinson Middle School.

• A total of 11,383 discipline referrals were made last year -- in which misbehaving students were sent from their classes to a school administrator for a variety of discipline measures, including suspension and expulsion. The number of referrals was the lowest in six years, down from a peak of 18,006 in the 2015-16 school year, according to the report. The number of referrals in 2017-18 was 14,138.

• The numbers of discipline referrals vary dramatically by school, and by elementary versus secondary schools.

Baker Elementary had six discipline referrals last school year while Daisy Bates Elementary had 551 -- up from 374 the previous year. Harris Elementary had 270 referrals last year, which was down from 378 the previous year.

At the secondary school level, Sylvan Hills Middle had 2,119 referrals, down from 2,817 the previous year. Robinson High had 1,466 referrals, which was down from 1,553 in the 2017-18 school year.

Whitfield said the annual report provides "just good data" in efforts to gauge the conditions in the district and schools.

He hopes new initiatives -- first explored by district officials last school year for carrying out this school year -- will further reduce the disciplinary actions.

Those initiatives in place elsewhere in the state and nation include Response to Intervention, Positive Behavior Interactions and Supports, and Advancement Via Individual Determination. Because the initiatives have been used elsewhere, the Pulaski County Special district knows that they can work as long as they are carried out properly, Whitfield said.

"If they are implemented with fidelity, we know they can work."

The U.S. Department of Education's Positive Behavior model, for example, is a behavior management model in which students are taught and are expected to practice healthy social, emotional and behavior skills.

"The beauty of it is that the kids hold each other accountable," he said. "It's just exciting to see."

The Response to Intervention model addresses student achievement, giving individual and small group instruction to students who need the most academic help.

The Advancement Via Individual Determination system being used district-wide this school year is meant to close the "opportunity gap" among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and prepare all students for college, career and life, Whitfield said.

"With all that, we have high expectations to see additional improvements in regard to the disciplinary numbers," Whitfield said.

In regard to discipline, the district's federal court-approved desegregation plan obligates the district to collect and evaluate detailed student discipline data to determine its success in eliminating racial disparities in the imposing of school discipline.

Other discipline-related provisions in the desegregation plan require a top-level district administrator to provide for and participate in efforts to help teachers and other school staff members eliminate racial disparities in school discipline.

Further, the Pulaski County Special district shall adhere to the policies set forth in the Handbook for Student Conduct and Discipline, the desegregation plan says.

An assistant superintendent shall be responsible for determining the fairness of student disciplinary decisions. That assistant superintendent will delegate the student hearing function to a single hearing officer who will make a decision based upon equitable factors. An aggrieved student may appeal to the superintendent. The superintendent may review the matter or refer it to the school board for action.

photo

PCSSD students suspended in 2017-18 and 2018-19

Metro on 08/25/2019

Upcoming Events