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Search Terms: Discipline AND Disabilities AND Education

Document 380 of 494.

May 22, 1999, Saturday

SECTION: EDITORIAL & COMMENT , Pg. 15A

LENGTH: 703 words

HEADLINE: DISCIPLINING STUDENTS IS NO EASY TASK

BODY:

Before jumping on a new legislative bandwagon bent on preventing school violence, lawmakers should pause and reflect upon the fact that they themselves not only have made it difficult to remove violent students from school, but also penalize school districts that enforce discipline.

* Wake-up call No. 1: Along with a law requiring school districts to have a "zero tolerance'' policy for student misbehavior, lawmakers adopted legislation declaring high schools "deficient'' if they have a student attendance rate of less than 93 percent. If students are expelled for selling drugs, bringing weapons to school or assaulting a teacher -- and such expulsions bring the high school's student attendance rate a hair under 93 percent -- the high school is labeled "deficient'' on its statewide report card.

Maybe lawmakers should commend districts that expel violent students instead of adopting laws that might cause some school officials to hesitate enforcing student discipline. * Wake-up call No. 2: If a student happens to be suspended from school during the first week of October -- when official statewide student enrollment counts are taken -- a school district cannot count this student for statewide funding purposes. So although laws require school districts to educate suspended students immediately upon their return to school, they penalize the districts financially if they suspend a student during the first week of October of any school year.

* Wake-up call No. 3: Lawmakers have made it difficult to expel violent students from school. Before expelling a student, school officials must first provide that student with no fewer than four written notices and two hearings, in addition to an optional appeal with the school board and the Court of Common Pleas. Students have many other due process rights; a single technical slip-up by school officials can bring a violent student back to school. If, for example, school officials don't remind parents in writing over and over again of their legal options, a disciplinary action becomes null and void -- no matter what the student did.

* Wake-up call No. 4: Federal special-education laws prohibit school officials from expelling a student who has a learning disability -- even if this student assaults or threatens the life of a teacher. Lawyers representing these students and their families are paid with tax dollars, and these lawyers often succeed in immediately getting "stay-put'' orders to keep such students in school. Are our state lawmakers trying to help public school districts by urging our congressional delegates to change these laws? Rep. Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana, expressed interest last year in revising them.

* Wake-up call No. 5: State Sen. Eugene Watts, R-Dublin, is proposing legislation that will make matters worse. He wants to require all public school districts "to establish early-warning signs'' for potentially troubled youth. Sounds OK on the surface, but the list of so-called warning signs that Watts expects school districts to detect includes general areas like "poor academic performance, low school interest, feelings of being picked on and persecuted, social withdrawal, intolerance for differences, prejudicial attitudes, history of discipline problems, excessive feelings of isolation, being alone, and rejection.''

Don't all students experience some of these things at times? It's one thing to ask school districts to do what they can to identify these signs. It's something else to put it in law, which would open the door for parents to sue a district for not doing enough to detect such an "early-warning sign'' in a young person who becomes violent.

Perhaps in recognition of National Teacher Appreciation Month this month, our state lawmakers could acknowledge that their own actions have contributed to the very problem they now wish to fix. Maybe now is the time for them to step back and recognize that there are things they can do to improve their own report cards. Instead of adopting conflicting laws that make matters worse, they should display common sense and help school officials enforce student discipline.

Dennis A. Leone, superintendent

Chillicothe City Schools

LOAD-DATE: May 23, 1999

Document 380 of 494.


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