Friday, March 29, 2024

School District mandated to change classroom management, discipline, corrective action

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The Cascade School District board has adopted new rules regarding classroom management, discipline and correction. At the Aug. 21 school board meeting, Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker said there were lots of changes coming from the legislature regarding those items, especially long term suspensions and expulsions from school. 

He explained the new policy is about 50 pages, talking about short and long term suspensions. 

“With the policy, they’ve indicated the districts should distribute it’s discipline policy and procedure to students, concerned citizens and parents annually. We can do that with our website and email for families with kids in school,” Motsenbocker said. “We need to put something in the newspaper as to where they can find that on our website. It’s a pretty lengthy document. That is something we will start this year.”

Students and parents will be provided with all the required procedures and due process with regard to grievances or appeals of corrective action. Any time there is any kind of disciplinary action toward a student, families have the right to grieve those or ask for a hearing, even for detention, which is no more than 60 minutes after school. 

They can have a hearing with the principal to decide what is going on. 

“There is an appeal process that goes from the principal to the superintendent to the school board. All of those are going to be closed sessions since it is a hearing which is not part of the open public meetings act,” Motsenbocker said. 

The school district will assist long term and expelled students to return to school as quickly as possible through the reengagement process and plans tailored to the needs and circumstances of the student. If the student is going to be out of school five, 10 days or more, they’ll be a meeting that happens before the students returns, to find out what is going on with the child, why they are having difficulty in school and can any barriers be removed before they return to school?

There’s also an opportunity for the parents to come talk to the principal beforehand, but there has to be a plan in place when the student returns to school. 

“The district will periodically collect and review data on disciplinary actions against students in each school. That data needs to be disaggregated into sub groups as required by a new RCW to insure no acts of discrimination are occurring,” Motsenbocker said. 

There are racial groups that are looked upon.

“If you are a special needs student...In each of those, we look at the gender and all other kids of data. Our schools are going to have to get into a system of coding every single disciplinary action so that at the end of each semester, we can call each of them up, otherwise it would take forever. That’s something our district will be doing this year,” he said. 

An academic term is defined as one semester or 90 days for CSD. In almost all cases, no suspension or expulsion can exceed that time. No school district can remove the right to an education from a student even though they are expelled or suspended. 

That means the school district must provide some kind of educational service for those kids, he said. 

“As a result, some large schools on the west side decided to not suspend or expel kids. Instead, they hired three or four more teachers and had more classes for in-school suspensions,” Motsenbocker said. “You kind of have to do that anyway, although you can use online schooling with those kids or you can do one-on-one tutoring with them so many hours a day.”

If you remove the student for any time long enough to have them get behind in their studies where they might have credit retrieval problems or their grades might substantially drop, the school is going to have to provide that. 

“In our district, anything over three days will probably be that, we would probably have to provide some type of educational program for them. I think three days is reasonable. Kids can get their homework assignments and tests,” Motsenbocker said. 

Emergency expulsion cannot exceed 10 days unless being converted to some other type of disciplinary action. The benefit of an emergency expulsion if you have a violent situation with a kid and bringing them back would be a detriment to the environment of the school, he said. 

Even if the parent appeals, the student still stays out of school, but only on an emergency expulsion. If it is 10 days or longer and the parent appeals, then there is state law where the kids come back to school until the appeal is heard and whatever action is taken. 

“An expulsion just keeps a kid out of school until we can figure things out. Detention cannot last longer than 60 minutes after school. Suspended or expelled students must be given a reengagement meeting or plan for reentry,” he said. “Immediate emergency removal of a student can occur without other forms of corrective action or the administrator has good and sufficient reason to believe the student’s presence will be an immediate and continuing danger or a continuing threat of disruption to the educational process long term.”

“What they are telling us with the law is you just can’t remove kids from school. You have to have worked through some things first. There’s items in the law that allow to do that if you have good reasons there.”

Board member Brenda Biebescheimer asked if the school district would reintroduce after school detention. Motsenbocker said he wasn’t sure. 

“We’ll have to find how that works. It works in some cases. The one that works best in secondary schools is lunch detention. They don’t get to socialize with their friends but then they don’t miss the bus. Parents don’t have to be able to come get them. That could be a factor as well,” he said. “Most of the schools I’ve been in the last 10 years have done away with detention because the transportation problem is huge and you have hire somebody to stay there until after 5 p.m. because that’s when the parents get off work. If it works, I wouldn’t hesitate to bring it back.”

Discretionary discipline does not include long term expulsion other than major issues. If the school is dealing with criminal activity, felonies, you can go right to the expulsion, but it can’t ever exceed 90 days, unless a student brings a gun to school. Any weapon brought to school is an automatic expulsion for one full year. 

Motsenbocker said they don’t have that problem here, but it does happen. In school service work can be imposed as long as supervision is provided. That means weeding, garbage collecting, minor janitorial duties. 

Motsenbocker said you used to not be able to do that, because that was taking work away from your custodial staff. 

There is a grievance process that happens in any type of disciplinary action, from an expulsion all the way down to a detention. Parents can grieve a disciplinary action. It must be within two days past. If there is nothing orally or in writing to the principals, it is a done deal. 

“It goes all the way to expulsion. The appeal goes to the principal, the superintendent and then to the school board. No K-4 students can be suspended more than 10 days in any semester, unless they do the really horrible stuff,” he said. “No student in grades 5-12 can be suspended more than 15 days per semester. All homework assignments and tests are to be made up in cases where the students are out of school. In school suspension shall last no longer than 10 consecutive days.”

Students must agree to the guidelines and expectations and are expected to be working on class assignments while there. 

Board president Carrie Sorensen asked Motsenbocker what he thought of that. 

“I’m getting older. I started teaching in the early ‘80s. Things have changed a lot. I think it is unfortunate the social ills that are out there with our families. It’s unfortunate the responsibility always falls back on the school. We’re there to educate kids, but we’re starting to parent kids,” Motsenbocker said. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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