WESTFIELD — School administrators were not pleased when they presented for a vote by the School Committee new required state changes to school suspensions that needed to be added to the school handbooks.
“This new legislation was passed by the state Legislature without consulting [the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education], any superintendents, the Mass. Association of School Superintendents, or the Mass. Association of School Committees. None of those groups — the ones who are in the trenches, had their opinion sought on this legislation,” said Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski, adding that nobody knew it was coming.
Christopher Rogers, administrator of student interventions and safety, said the handbooks have to change to meet the new requirements. He said all districts received a letter on Nov. 7, notifying them that effective Nov. 8, “the law regarding student suspension of students changed, I would say, rather dramatically.”
Rogers said the changes to Chapter 71, Section 37H 3/4 of state law now require additional steps before suspending a student.
“What they are asking us to do is to put in place some alternative remedies with our students prior to an external suspension. Alternative remedies are things we need to show proof and to show evidence of that we’ve tried to do prior to [the suspension]. Some of the pieces they talk about; we have to prove they have been unsuccessful with our students in order to move to a suspension,” Rogers said.
He added that schools have to make a claim that there’s a risk of serious harm to not follow the rules verbatim the way they’re written.
Rogers said if any of the three most serious infractions are involved, then the rules do not have to be followed before suspensions. These include assault of staff; possession of weapons, or any possession of controlled substances on school grounds.
He said alternative remedies must be documented, unless the situation is such that the student’s presence in school is a safety hazard to themselves or others.
“The full language that needs to go into the handbook is six pages long, coming to us from legal,” Rogers said.
“Didn’t we try alternative remedies to keep kids from being suspended anyway, is this just formalizing it a little more?” asked School Committee member Timothy O’Connor.
“We’ve always been a district that has followed progressive remedies,” Rogers said. “Now the state is really pushing us to try what they’re calling alternative remedies that we don’t have guidelines on; things like restorative justice, mediation, counseling or behavior plans.”
“Again, we want to reiterate that anything that jeopardizes the safety of students in our building, we can bypass those alternative remedies immediately,” Rogers added, before the School Committee agreed to the requirement.
“Our district recognizes the potential negative consequences of externally suspending students and has made significant efforts to develop practical alternatives. However, this new law is ambiguous at best and offers little support to school districts. This law and its intent could have been much more effective had members of the state legislature actually consulted with school leaders across the state to gather relevant input and feedback,” Czaporowski said after the meeting.
The new language from the state will be incorporated into the district handbook at www.schoolsofwestfield.org in the near future.
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