Greece schools change approach to suspending students with disabilities after state citation

Students with disabilities have been suspended at a disproportionate rate compared with their classmates at Greece schools, according to state records. Now the district is course correcting under scrutiny.

Disabled students of color at Greece were especially vulnerable to higher suspension rates , according to the New York State Department of Education (NYSED).

The state issued the district two citations for those discrepancies: one for all disabled students, and one for students of color in special education.

"We have to make sure that we don’t continue to remove them for expected behavior,” said Melanie Stevenson, Director of Pupil Personnel Services at the district’s special education department. “When I say expected, I don't mean acceptable. I mean that it's part of their disability. So, then our job becomes to shape that behavior so that it doesn't result in continued removal.”

In response to NYSED's citations, which were based on numbers from the 2021-22 school year, Greece’s special education department is flipping a standard procedure on its head.

The district is establishing a new due process protocol for students who have already been suspended for 10 or more days in a school year.

So, instead of suspending a student and then holding meetings about the incident and behavior, the district will now hold those meetings before taking disciplinary action for qualifying students.

Last year 52 students reached that threshold, said Stacey Brindisi, executive director of pupil personnel services. The year before, there were 74 such students.

“It's not a significant number relative to our overall population,” Brindisi said in a school board meeting last week, "but it’s certainly significant in the buildings that our students are enrolled in, who are struggling and demonstrating patterns of behavior.”

The procedural change went into effect in July. However, special education department leaders are still working to dispel myths around the new practice — for instance, that students with disabilities would no longer be removed from class or suspended from school.

“The code of conduct still applies to our students with disabilities. We're just taking into account their disability-related needs,” Brindisi said. “Ultimately, we're required to ensure that special ed students are not removed from class for their disability related needs.”

The district is one of three in the area that the New York state Education Department flagged for such discrepancies. Both the Rochester City School District and Gates Chili have suspension rates of students with disabilities that are well above the state’s threshold.

Greece, on the other hand, was one-tenth a percentage point outside of that threshold, cueing the citations.

“This isn't about us prioritizing students with disabilities over general ed students," Brindisi said. "This is about affording them their opportunity, their due process rights, while also figuring out how to support our teachers. And I really think that we can do both.”