Education Department Poised to Fix the Obama Era "School Discipline" Fix

The Trump administration may be scrapping the Obama-era school discipline mandates--and liberals are furious over it..

A friend sent me this article yesterday afternoon from of all sources--the Huffington Post...


The article is about a subject of great interest to me, how Federal Bureaucrats under the previous administration were heavy-handed with local school districts and forced many districts to sign onerous "consent decrees" that tied these districts' hands in many respects as it pertained to discipline of students.

This all stemmed from the false notion of a school pipeline to prison, and it is/was reinforced by a very real phenomenon that occurs nationwide for many years running now.  This is the situation where black and hispanic students are often suspended in numbers that appear to be out of balance with white and asian students when examined on a percentage of the school population basis.  It is like a reverse achievement gap....and this phenomenon is well documented.  The previous administration took this to illustrate that administrators, teachers, and school districts nationwide were systematically "targeting" black and hispanic students for removal from school.  Believe it or not, there are actually people that believe that this nonsensical rubbish, ridiculously stupid notion is actually TRUE--they believe that large swaths of the public school system in the nation is filled with racists.  (ironically, these same snowflakes that believe the nation's schools are full of racists out deliberately targeting black and hispanic students for removal never talk about the underlying behavior(s) which resulted in  the discipline in the first place.  To these true believers, this simply is an irrelevant point...)

But now that there is a new administration in Washington--some of these failed policies are being looked at again, with fresh eyes. There is talk some of these Obama era "guidance documents" will be scrapped.  This would be a great thing, because these policies have been a disaster in practical terms, even as naive proponents have lauded the "lower numbers" of minority suspensions and expulsions.

Here is a newsflash:   Just because a rule is not enforced and a record is not created does not mean that the behavior just got better nationwide--it just means that terrified administrators scrambled to comply, and they told their principals to stop suspending certain students.  Voila, there was the fix.

 Better numbers and lower suspension and expulsion rates of minority students was achieved.....

But when you use heavy handed tactics to sweep a messy reality under the rug and ignore bad behavior to get better numbers, there will be side effects.

Escambia county was threatened with a lawsuit back in 2012, along with several other Florida Districts, because our "numbers" appeared to be too high, our numbers of black students disciplined as a percentage of our schools' populations when compared to white student suspensions and expulsions.

Some districts acquiesced, formally, to the Federal Government, SPLC, and ACLU and signed these consent decrees.  Escambia complied by changing discipline terminology (expulsions became disciplinary reassignment), watering down discipline (especially as it related to minority students) and doing in-school suspensions instead of out-of-school suspensions, and forcing teachers to not write referrals. etc.  The school board was never officially given the draft SPLC/ACLU/DOJ crafted consent decree for action--however I did see a copy of it at the time and I was eager to have a crack at that garbage document if and when it was put on an agenda for board action.

But that document was never brought, and slowly, over time, many of the tenets of that document were simply instituted procedurally without formal board action here in Escambia County. This way, there would not be any unrest in the press or at the board meetings, it would just be instituted and there would be no "bad publicity"

In the wake of that action over the last six years locally, two important things have transpired, two big outcomes...

1.  The number of suspensions and expulsions of minority students has become "lower" in Escambia County.....

But

2.  Behavior of students has actually become worse as fewer misbehaving students faced real consequences for their bad behavior and this has led to high teacher turnover in many schools and a stagnant/declining enrollment for Escambia as compared to our surrounding school districts.

Flagler County Settles With SPLC

From Bay News 9 :

'The complaint alleged that while black students made up 16 percent of the district, they accounted for 31 percent of all out-of-school suspensions.  Instead of fighting back, school leaders sat down with the SPLC to try to find a solution. And that solution was approved Tuesday night by the school board. According to Amir Whitaker, an attorney for the SPLC, what this does is “create more preventions, more interventions and address the issue for all 13,000 students in Flagler..The Southern Poverty Law Center still has federal civil rights complaints against the school districts of Bay, Escambia, Okaloosa and Suwannee Counties."

Read the settlement here

Federalization of Local Entities: Is it Already Happening in Escambia County Schools without So Much as a Vote by the Board?

The Federal Government is meddling in the affairs of local  schools and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.

There are some startling parallels between these two types of agencies and how they are being manipulated by the Federal Government.

This is disturbing to me, as these functions should be subject to local, state, and/or municipal control--not the Federal Government.

Police departments and LEO's that do their jobs in tough areas (Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD) suddenly are the villains for attempting to fight crime.  Suddenly the cops are the bad guys and they need sensitivity training and must subject their entire departments to expensive federally dictated "improvement protocols"  Being a police officer has got to be one of the most difficult jobs in the country, especially now with all of the second-guessing that goes on among politicians.

But wait, that sounds a lot like what teachers are being put through.

Schools and teachers that are fingered for treating minorities unfairly are put on notice, and then subsequently such districts are made to live under onerous "consent-decrees" that stipulate how monies are to be spent, how resources are to be allocated, and specifically how minorities are to be treated with respect to discipline.  Otherwise, the Feds threaten to pull funding.

here is an example of a recent school district implemented agreement from Mobile.

One district in Minnesota got snagged by this sort of a situation, and is now spending an additional $500K yearly to pay a compliance officer, an independent monitor, and several other staff positions in order to be deemed "compliant."  Meanwhile, they report better discipline numbers, but this masks the phenomenon that is growing nationwide: minimize the consequences for the infractions.

That's right, in many instances, what was once an infraction that would have warranted a referral to the office, is now forcibly foisted on teachers to "handle" in their classrooms, so there is not a written referral, or a paper trail.  Say "F#$K this S@#T! in class loudly, and instead of being sent to the office, this student is now given a behavior incident form, which teachers keep track of and which teachers must have four of before they send a student to the office with a referral.  Presto  "See, our numbers are BETTER!" Our referrals are DOWN!"

And with respect to minority students, they will continue to receive more warnings and less impactful consequences for misbehavior that is committed.  This will continue, and suddenly we will all see  "LOWER NUMBERS for MINORITY STUDENTS!!"

The problem is, this will not be a solution.  This is a stop-gap measure that forces teachers and other students to absorb the bad behavior and often abusive, violent conduct of some students for political

What is the OCR?

I was fortunate during this weekend's NSBA Conference in New Orleans to be able to attend a lecture on the history of the Federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) The seminar was presented by several attorneys from the Washington DC Law Firm   Hogan Lovells.  The chief presenter was Mr. John Borkowski, a pratner with Hogan Lovells.

I take a keen interest in this session because . We have been working with OCR in Escambia County for a number of years to address concerns about allegations that the way we discipline minority students in our district is discriminatory--which is not true.  We have also recently been accused of being a party to litigation over discipline issues, which is also untrue.

The presentation at NSBA gave a brief history of the OCR, an entity created by the passage of the civil rights act of 1964.  OCR investigates discrimination complaints lodged against recipients of federal program funds. (including K12 systems and colleges and universities) Such complaints are often based upon claims of discrimination due to someone's race, gender, gender identity, and/or disability.

OCR is housed in the Federal Department of Education. OCR is mandated by statute to review ALL complaints that it receives ( but not necessarily conduct an investigation of all complaints )