California law banning suspensions of disruptive kids could have a big impact in Sacramento

A new California law that bans schools from suspending disruptive students could have a particularly large impact in Sacramento County, where educators are disciplining kids for “defiance” more often than in other communities.

Schools in Sacramento County in the 2017-18 academic year handed down the most suspensions for defiance, outpacing even much larger counties like Los Angeles, according to state education data.

In the school year that ended June 30, Sacramento’s suspensions for defiance declined somewhat, but the county was second only to Los Angeles.

The school district in Sacramento County with the highest number of willful defiance suspensions during the last two years was San Juan Unified School District, according to the California Department of Education.

Dominic Covello, director of student support services at San Juan Unified, said that all schools in San Juan have been working to reduce willful defiance and that the new law will help district staff adopt best practices for disciplining students.

“School staff will expand their capacity in the area of alternatives to suspension by implementing positive behavioral Interventions, restorative practices and social-emotional learning opportunities,” Covello said in an email. “Students will receive the benefit of remaining in school and working to improve their behaviors through these alternatives, rather than being sent home.”

The new law, Senate Bill 419, builds on a 2015 measure that banned schools from suspending students from grades 1-3 for disrupting school activities or defying authority.

At the end of this academic year, the new law permanently bans defiance suspensions in grades 4 and 5 and bans the practice for grades 6-8 through 2025.

Suspension rates have declined since the previous law took effect.

After its first full year of implementation, suspensions decreased by nearly 30,000 compared to the previous school year, according to a Senate bill analysis.

By 2017-18, the rate of willful defiance suspensions dropped by 82 percent since 2011-12.

Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, wrote the new law and argued it would help keep students in school and improve student success rates. She said she pushed for it because willful defiance suspensions are subjective and an educator’s implicit biases can affect discipline.

“We know that there is implicit bias throughout all of our structures, and through each of us individually,” Skinner said. “And while we work on trying to — through training and other means — correct that, we want to make the structural corrections for where that implicit bias can have these kinds of negative consequences that aren’t even intentional.”

Schools in Sacramento County administered 6,377 suspensions for willful defiance in the 2017-18 academic year. That figure fell to 4,583 in 2018-19.

Young black males are five times more likely to be suspended in Sacramento County than the statewide average, according to a 2018 report by the Community College Equity Assessment Lab — a research lab out of San Diego State focused on underserved students of color.

Native American boys are another group of students disproportionately impacted by this issue in the Sacramento area. The statewide suspension rates for young Native Americans are 7.2 percent, much higher than the average of 3.5 percent.

According to a report compiled by the ACLU of Southern California and the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of UCLA, in 2015-16 more than 11 million days were lost in out of school suspensions nationwide. In California, that number is close to 745,000. Black students and disabled students were much more likely to miss instruction days, the report said.

The Charter Schools Development Center was the only organization to go on the record opposing the new law. Caitlin O’Halloran, the organization’s school governance and policy specialist, said there’s a concern that decision making has been taken out of the hands of school administrators..

Skinner countered that the new law still puts the discipline in the school’s hands and allows students who are interfering with a teacher’s ability to instruct the class to be temporarily removed.

“The law was structured so that the teacher still has the right to remove the student from their classroom,” Skinner said. “The school site just has to provide an alternative for the student. It’s not that there is no alternative for the teacher or no discipline, it’s just (that) they would not be able to use this category of suspension.”

Donna Artukovic, an education advocate with the California State PTA, said that when kids act up in school, “they are crying out for help.” According to Artukovic, this bill is an important step in the right direction.

“(The California State PTA) believes that it does no good to kick kids out of school,” Artukovic said. “It doesn’t help the teacher and it doesn’t help the school. It’s just unfortunate that this has been our practice, especially when you look at the statistics.”

This story is part of a collaborative project between McClatchy and seniors in the journalism program at Sacramento State University. For more information about the program, or to send a message, visit facebook.com/sacstatejournalism.