West Virginia Legislature’s school discipline bill isn’t the answer to the issue

Senate President Craig Blair wants Gov. Jim Justice to bring back Senate Bill SB 614 for the upcoming special session. The bill would mandate the removal and suspension of elementary school children for certain behaviors. (Getty Images)

Gov. Jim Justice will decide the agenda for the legislative special session he’s planning to call, but Senate President Craig Blair is hoping to make some suggestions.

Blair said he was talking to Justice about getting the elementary student discipline bill on his list.

Specifically, Blair wants Senate Bill 614 — which died on the last night of the regular session — to be passed. This bill would allow teachers to remove aggressive and violent students from their classrooms, and send them to a behavioral intervention program — but only 13 of the state’s 55 counties have these programs. In the 42 other counties, when students are suspended, law enforcement is notified if they’re not picked up by the end of the day.

SB 614 had no funding attached to it to create behavioral intervention programs in additional counties.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, children frequently reported experiencing anxiety, depression, irritability and anger, and teachers believe that student behavior is worse now than it was before the pandemic. Educators are getting spit on, having things thrown at them, kicked and punched. This has led to higher rates of suspensions .

This bill provides a solution for teachers — by allowing them to remove a problem student — but it doesn’t do anything to help the children in the counties without a behavioral intervention program. Kicking a student out of school for one to three days won’t improve their behavior.

Suspensions actually lead to lower academic performance and it increases the likelihood of the student dropping out of school. Students who get suspended are also more likely to have run-ins with the police. Black students and students with disabilities are targeted most by suspensions.

Punitive discipline — such as kicking children out of class — doesn’t teach students the skills they need to behave or to react differently.

So what’s the answer?

Experts say teachers should be trained on how to pre-empt bad behaviors, but if that’s not possible, use it as a learning moment.

The Greater Dayton School, a private, tuition-free school for students from low-income families in Dayton, Ohio, doesn’t assign suspensions.

“What we want to do is create that love of learning,” Leila Lubin, one of the school’s founding teachers, told The Hechinger Report . “If a student is sent home every time they do something wrong, they’re going to grow up not really liking school.”

This model is called “Behavioral Leadership,” created by education consultant Scott Ervin. It involves spending more time pointing out when students exhibit good behavior than bad ones, which creates incentives for students who are seeking attention to be on their best behavior.

“Even really difficult kids are actually using positive behaviors 90 percent of the time,” Ervin told The Hechinger Report.

During the legislative session, Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, introduced Senate Bill 860 , which would create a “high risk population” charter school within a public high school.

“High risk” students include those who have been suspended more than 10 days in a school year, students who are habitually truant, wards of the court or dependents of the court, foster children and homeless students.

The bill did not make it past a second reading.

I reached out to Rucker to find out more about these schools. In an email she said that she learned about the specialized charter schools at educational conferences she attended, and she visited one of Menta Education Group’s schools in Arizona. She said both Menta and Learn 4 Life out of California are interested in coming to West Virginia.

Menta launched its first school in 1973, and now lists 35 schools on its website in Arizona, Illinois and Texas, with four more scheduled to open up in Illinois this year.

Like the Greater Dayton School, Menta has a policy of no expulsion and no suspension. According to its website, each school “utilizes the data provided in the student’s current evaluation and IEP to implement specialized instruction, support and services designed to meet each student’s individual needs.” The schools serve students with autism, developmental delay, emotional disability, hearing and visual impairment, intellectual disability and traumatic brain injury.

Learn 4 Life is a state-funded network of nonprofit schools in California and South Carolina. Formed in 2001, the schools have a student teacher ratio of 25:1, and 100% of teachers receive trauma-informed training.

“The focus is on this community that needs a little bit more individualized instruction, smaller class sizes … sometimes just greater flexibility,” Rucker said during the session. “It just blew me away how amazing they’re handling this very challenging population in a very efficient manner. These students are getting the help they need.”

Charter schools may not be the answer either. In West Virginia, charter schools don’t require teachers to be fully certified by the state Department of Education. In fact, all you need is to be to able to legally work in the U.S., be at least 18, be able to pass a criminal history record check, have some relevant academic or occupational experience and “be physically, mentally, emotionally, and morally qualified to perform the duties of a teacher, as determined by the charter school.”

No matter what the answer is, funding is going to be needed. Now that COVID-19 funding has ended, schools budgets are tight. Lawmakers need to be prepared to give more money to schools if they really want to fix behavior issues.

The Legislature could look into the trauma training teachers receive at these “high risk” charter schools, and see if that’s something that could be offered to teachers in West Virginia. Our teachers are already doing so much for too little and are burnt out, but they care about their students. I’m sure most would be happy to receive training on how to better help children who need additional support instead of just kicking them out of class and making them someone else’s problem for a few days.

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