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Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Chalkbeat
Virtual suspensions. Mask rules. More trauma. Why some worry a student discipline crisis is on the horizon
By Kalyn Belsha
Aug 21, 2020
As America’s students head back into their virtual or real-life classrooms, new rules await.
In Jacksonville, Florida, students who don’t wear a mask repeatedly
could be removed from school and made to learn online. In some Texas
districts, intentionally coughing on someone can be classified as
assault. In Memphis, minor misbehaviors could land students in an
online “supervised study.”
It’s amounting to a flood of changes to school rules and discipline
codes at a time of heightened stress for students, parents, and
teachers.
Those rules reflect schools’ attempts to make learning during a
pandemic safe and possible. But the increased attention to student
misbehavior has advocates and many parents very worried that students
who were disproportionately removed from classrooms before the pandemic
— namely Black and Native students, and students with disabilities —
will bear the brunt of these new consequences, undermining schools’
promises to provide students from hard-hit communities with extra
social and emotional support.
“We have seen and felt the impact of having a Black child with learning
differences and how that’s been treated disciplinarily. So I’ve got a
lot of concerns,” said Cassandra Kaczocha, a parent of a son headed
into eighth grade in Chicago, where schools are set to start virtually
and monitor student engagement over a six-hour school day. “He can’t
sit there and look at the screen the whole time and give the
appropriate cues to the teacher that he’s paying attention.”
And at a time when many students are already struggling emotionally and
have missed a lot of instruction, harsh discipline or removing students
could have particularly worrisome consequences.
“It is the definition of taking a crisis and making it worse,” said Liz
King, who directs the education equity program at The Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella organization of civil
rights groups. “We need to find better ways to support children and
better ways to support families. That was always true, but the urgency
now is just incomparable.”
Why people are worried
Schools across the country have promised that they will focus on
addressing students’ social and emotional needs as they head back to
school — in some cases prioritizing that before getting students back
on track academically in recognition of the toll taken by both the
coronavirus pandemic and the country’s ongoing reckoning with its
history of racism and the police killings of Black Americans.
But parents and educators are still worried that the pandemic could set off a new wave of harsh discipline for students.
Schools are under a lot of added pressure to keep students and
educators safe, and some kinds of misbehavior could carry big health
risks. Removing a face mask or intentionally coughing on others could
spread illness. Even a public display of affection in a high school
hallway could now be considered a safety risk, said Dan Losen, who
directs the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, part of The Civil Rights
Project at UCLA.
Teachers, many worried about their own health, may be on edge, perhaps leaving students less room for error.
On top of that, it’s likely there will be an uptick in misbehavior.
With their movement restricted, students will have fewer avenues to
de-stress. Some students will be experiencing new or added trauma,
which can cause students to act out.
Several advocates said they were especially worried about Black,
Hispanic, and Native children, whose families have experienced higher
levels of illness and death during the pandemic. Those communities’
experiences have differed, but in many cases they’ve also faced higher
rates of job or economic loss as well as food insecurity.
Students may disrupt classrooms, need more attention from their
teachers, or have “some real anger about how this situation has
impacted themselves and their family” and not be able to express that,
said Miranda Johnson, a clinical professor of law at Loyola University
Chicago who studies school discipline.
That makes learning harder, and teachers will have fewer tools at their
disposal. Typical interventions like pats on the back or close-up chats
are harder now. And while some schools are still holding restorative
peace circles to hash out conflicts, it’s unclear how effective those
are in a virtual or socially distanced setting.
Another issue: School officials say that decisions about whether a
student should be disciplined will often come down to figuring out
their intent, which is hard to do even in normal times. Such subjective
decisions have also been a key driver of racial disparities in school
discipline.
Johnson worries students of color who act out will be labeled as
“defiant” while white students will be perceived as in need of social
and emotional support.
Nationally, Black students and students with disabilities are much more
likely than their peers to be suspended or expelled from school, while
Native students also face higher-than-average rates of exclusionary
discipline.
“All the situations that we know make people vulnerable to bias exist
in this situation,” Johnson said. “High stress situations, people are
at their limits both professionally and personally, lots of discretion
in these decisions because there’s not clear guidance, and everyone is
sort of making things up as they go.”
How schools are planning
As the new year begins, schools are adjusting student codes of conduct to account for the complexities of the coronavirus.
Take wearing a face mask. Failure to wear one will be classified as a
dress code violation in several districts, with escalating consequences
for repeat offenses. That’s the case in Duval County, Florida, where
the first time a student doesn’t wear a mask, they’ll have to fill out
a safety contract. By the fourth time, a student could be removed from
in-person schooling.
The schools chancellor in New York City, Richard Carranza, said earlier
this month that students who don’t comply with face mask requirements
will be barred from in-person learning.
Though in some places, the consequences could be criminal. In Utah,
students and staff who don’t wear a face mask could be charged with a
misdemeanor.
Another common revision to student codes of conduct are consequences if
a student intentionally spits, sneezes, or coughs on someone else. In
some Texas school districts, like Fort Worth ISD and the Houston-based
Spring ISD, it will be treated as a type of assault.
In both places, school officials would quickly remove the involved
students from their classroom and try to figure out whether the
behavior was done on purpose. In Spring ISD, if a student takes off
their mask before spitting or coughing, school officials will assume
the act was intentional, according to district documents, which could
result in a suspension.
In the Weld RE-4 district based in Windsor, Colorado, officials have
warned that students who come to school while awaiting a COVID test
result will be suspended.
Remote learning has spawned other new rules or warnings that students
will be held to similar standards as they would be in school while at
home, particularly around dress code and their work spaces.
In Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis, that means no
pajamas, hats, or hoods on screen, and students’ shirts must have
sleeves. (The district is providing “flexibility” on clothing bottoms
and footwear when a student’s full body won’t be seen on video.) Other
rules might be even tougher to follow: The district is also requiring
students’ work stations to be clear of “foreign objects” and says
students shouldn’t eat or drink during virtual classes.
A high school senior follows a remote Advanced Placement Calculus class
as her cousin plays with his phone while sitting in a Los Angeles
community garden in August 2020. Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty
Images
School districts are also making decisions about whether and when
students can be muted in an online classroom, lose access to email or
online privileges, or be virtually suspended or expelled. Several
education advocates said they were worried that new forms of discipline
online may look like a suspension in practice, but not be tracked that
way or released as part of a district’s usual discipline data —
potentially leaving parents and the public in the dark.
“We’re looking at ways school districts might be informally excluding
students, like ‘Don’t come back to the Google Meet or the Zoom room for
a couple days,’” said Johnson, of Loyola University Chicago. “If that
were to happen in an in-person setting, it would be considered a
suspension. So I think, similarly, it should be considered a suspension
if it’s happening remotely.”
In Memphis, a new virtual code of conduct encourages teachers to avoid
removing students completely from a virtual class. But if students are
too disruptive, teachers can limit student audio or video, and students
can be placed in a short online “supervised study” for minor
misbehaviors or a supervised virtual suspension for more serious ones.
In Chicago, a recent revision to the student code of conduct allows
principals to block a student’s access to email or the district’s
online programs if the student is disruptive or creates “an unsafe
learning environment.” The policy says a student can’t be blocked
indefinitely and that privileges should be restored once there’s a plan
to address the safety issue.
It’s unclear exactly how schools will be held accountable for those
moves. The district says it will track principal requests to restrict
students’ online access, but losing access for a full day won’t count
as a suspension.
And then there are the most severe cases: parents who’ve been referred
to social services when their children don’t participate in remote
learning. In Massachusetts, as the Boston Globe recently documented,
school officials reported dozens of families to state social workers
for possible neglect. Often, their children attended school districts
that predominantly serve Black and Hispanic students from low-income
families.
“Given all that we know about the racial contours of the digital divide
and the homework gap, it is just indefensible to apply a punishment
framework to children who are not connecting with their classroom
teacher,” said King, of The Leadership Conference.
Some schools are trying be proactive, but questions remain
Some school districts are crafting plans for how to handle misbehavior
in ways that don’t exclude students from the virtual or regular
classroom.
In Spring ISD, the district where intentionally spitting or coughing on
someone will now be classified as assault, some 35,000 students from
the Houston area began the new school year remotely this week. The
district recently held a virtual training for principals about handling
student behavior, where Superintendent Rodney Watson said trainers
pushed educators to think about whether their strategies could
contribute to existing inequities.
The district also identified students “that had a lot of infractions
last year,” Watson said, and is targeting them for extra support this
year.
“We’re going to be really looking at that from a prevention side,”
Watson said. “We really want to make sure that someone’s acting out is
not a product of their basic needs not being met.”
Spring ISD also plans to collect and examine data on COVID-related
infractions, broken down by race, gender, and economic status. District
officials will use that to watch for possible disparities and decide if
policies need changing, Watson said.
Winford Adams, Jr. a Spring ISD school board member and parent of three
children in the district, said he’ll be watching to make sure the
district regularly provides that data — “If it isn’t, I will ask for it
to be,” he said. He’s especially concerned about how the new
coronavirus-related rules could affect students with disabilities.
“We want to make sure we’re protecting our teachers from exposure, and
we want to have clear guidelines for conduct, but I have a concern
about some of those kids,” he said.
To Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, the director of educational equity and a
senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, the risk is that old
patterns will repeat themselves during the year ahead. But this could
be a moment for schools to do things like relax dress codes or rethink
suspension and expulsion policies, she said.
“Now is the time that we start to undo those things,” she said. And to
“actually get at whatever trauma or stress students are bringing into
the classroom, whether virtual or physical, and try to provide that
counseling or those supports to help them through it.”
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