Zero Tolerance - Zero Sense
by Eddie Evans, Co-Director - Texas Zero Tolerance
Page 9
To their credit some Texas school districts have incorporated this language into their codes of conduct. For example Katy ISD’s student code of conduct allows students to turn over prohibited items without fear of recrimination provided the item is not an illegal item. Unfortunately Katy ISD is the exception rather than the rule on this issue.
~ Texas Appleseed recommends the following to reform the current public school disciplinary process in Texas,
Amend the Texas Education Code to achieve the following:
Provide state oversight of DAEPs. Require the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to monitor and enforce standards for Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs (DAEPs). In 2007, TEA was mandated to develop the state’s first standards for DAEPs, but not required to monitor or enforce those standards.
- Factor “intent” into discipline decisions. Require districts to consider a student’s “intent” when applying discipline for nonviolent, non-criminal offenses. Currently, districts may consider intent when exercising its discretion to suspend a student or refer to a DAEP, but are not required to do so.
- Place a cap on suspensions. Place a cap on the number of days that a student may be referred to in-school and out-of-school suspension (ISS and OSS) in an academic year.
- Notify districts with disproportionate disciplinary referrals. Require the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to notify and provide guidance to districts that exceed the prior year’s statewide average referral rate to ISS, OSS, and DAEP or are at high risk for referring a disproportionate number of minority or special education students for disciplinary action. The TEA already collects this disciplinary data.
- Compliance with federal laws. Require TEA to monitor DAEPs to ensure compliance with federal and state statutes governing English as a Second Language instruction and education of students with disabilities.
- Improve DAEP academic standards and course offerings. Require TEA to improve academic standards and range of course offerings—and explore the use of technology to more closely link curriculum offered at DAEPs and mainstream schools.
- Early parent notification requirements. Require schools to alert parents immediately when disciplinary action is taken. Current policy requires notification within three days.
- Rights and responsibilities. Require the Texas Education Agency to create a model student and parent “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” for inclusion in a school’s Code of Conduct.
Education advocate groups and Texas legislators largely agree on what is needed to solve the problems caused by zero tolerance in Texas. Most notably they agree that immediate parental notification when there is a serious disciplinary issue with a student & requiring the consideration of the child’s intent would go a long way to hopefully stemming the tide of innocent children being unnecessarily written up and written off by overzealous Texas school administrators. Only time will tell if Texas will take the necessary steps to help ensure that the innocent aren’t ensnared and unjustly punished.
We all want safe schools but at what point do we allow common sense back into the process? There is something inherently wrong with a system that does not give a child a way to correct an honest mistake, that deliberately does not contact parents when there is an issue with their child at school, that does not consider intent, and then feels it is okay to abuse children in the name of vengeance for a state sponsored school.
How many more innocent Texas children are we going to damage -- and possibly destroy -- all in the name of zero tolerance? Destroying innocent children’s lives and traumatizing innocent families does not make schools safer but does breed contempt for an unjust system.
Texas parents should not have to worry when they send their children to school each morning that the next time they will see their child will be in juvenile detention or jail. Texas schoolchildren should not have to fear that if they make one innocent mistake that their world as they know it will be destroyed forever. Texas can maintain safe schools without turning into a police state that criminalizes innocent children simply for being children.
Texas can and must do better by her children and families.
© Texas Zero Tolerance, 2008 - 09
