Updated report finds Sacramento City Unified suspends Black students at ‘egregious’ rate

An updated report addressing Sacramento City Unified School District’s suspension rate found that Black students were disproportionately suspended and expelled from school at a higher rate than other students.

Among some of the more striking statistics, the new report found Black boys in early childhood are 10 times more likely to be suspended in a Sacramento City Unified school compared to the state average.

The Five Critical Facts Series, a follow-up to the 2018 report, identifies Sacramento City Unified as the “most egregious suspension district in the state,” having the highest total suspensions of Black males in California.

Dr. J. Luke Wood, a San Diego State University professor who co-authored the report, said the Sacramento area is “Ground Zero” for suspensions in California. Sacramento City Unified had the third highest total number of suspensions of Black students among California school districts, following Elk Grove Unified and Fresno Unified.

In 2018, the report documented that Black students in Sacramento County experienced high rates of exclusionary discipline and were 5.4 times more likely to be suspended than the state average.

In the 2018-19 school year, SCUSD saw an overall suspension rate for Black students of 13.5%.

The Sacramento City Unified suspension rates for Black boys is at 17.7% — five times the statewide rate.

Native American males were suspended at a 13.1% rate. White males were suspended at a 4.4% rate.

The average suspension rate across the state — where a student has been suspended at least one time — is 3.5%.

The data is not new, Wood said. But several community organizations — including the Black Parallel School Board, the Greater Sacramento Urban League and the Greater Sacramento National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — have called for change.

While the highest suspension rates are occurring in middle school, Sacramento City Unified students in grades K-3 are being suspended 10.4 times more than the state average.

“It sounds like we are making numbers up, because the numbers are so high,” Wood said.

Wood also said that Native American students are also disproportionately suspended in Sacramento schools.

“Oftentimes there is blame to students and parents,” Wood said. “What we see with the data itself is really is a function of bias and how students are perceived, and how the differential treatment produces differential outcomes.”

Some schools reported higher suspension rates than others. Cesar Chavez Intermediate School had the highest suspension rate of Black males at 45%. John D. Sloat Elementary had the highest suspension rate for Black females at 26.8%

“I don’t think anyone can look at this chart and say that everything is OK,” Wood said.

Mohamed Khadar Abdi-Salam Qas, who co-authored the report, called the numbers historical.

“I’ve looked at previous years. It’s very concerning that districts report these numbers but are not really moving to change these numbers,” Qas said.

New California legislation banned schools from suspending students for willful defiance.

The 2019 new law builds on an earlier measure that banned schools from suspending students in grades 1-3 for disrupting school activities or defying authority. The law now permanently bans defiance suspensions in grades 4 and 5 and bans the practice for grades 6-8 through 2025.

The researchers offered advice to parents of Black children:

• Never leave your child in an unhealthy environment. “A school could be a great school, but not a great school for Black children,” Wood said.

• Never assume that a school is aware of challenges.

• Never allow a teacher or principal to refer to your child as a “problem” or “bad.”
• Never allow a school to reprimand a child without questioning what occurred and ask other children were involved.
• Never assume a child is facing isolated challenges. Likely, other parents have faced the same thing.

Researchers called for school districts to implement restorative justice as an alternative, professional development on biases and racial microaggressions, enhance school resources to identify and support students who have trauma, and provide ways for students to report educators who are targeting them.

As part of the district’s commitment to addressing racism, Sacramento City Unified implemented some of these recommendations, including anti-racists training for school principals in the district.

“When racism shows its ugly face, it is our most vulnerable families, our most historically and generationally oppressed who suffer the most,” Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said to principals during the training. “It is why it is important that we, as educators and leaders positioned to make a difference for our students, continue to address the persistent issues of systemic racism in our district, because of the longstanding impact that it has had on our students and the effects that it will continue to show and manifest for generations to come. It is easy to call out injustice, racist attitudes and racist behaviors. It is much harder to acknowledge and confront our own role in how racism is deeply rooted in the system that we are responsible for overseeing here in Sac City Unified and what we can do to disrupt it. I acknowledge that this is a long-term journey and that it will require all of us to stay committed to the process.”

Carl Pinkston, operation director at the Sacramento Black Parallel School Board, also said the educational system is racist by design.

Betty Williams, president of Sacramento’s NAACP, said she has worked with districts to identify specific schools and teachers who were repeatedly suspending 5- and 6-year-old students repeatedly.

“This is California. if we can’t fix this, then who?” Williams said.

This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.