Legal Clips, [May 2007]In response to a mandate that the Maryland Department of Education handed down last summer, Baltimore City school officials have drafted a schools safety plan filled with initiatives they say will address an upswing in student gang violence. Interim schools Chief Executive Officer Charlene Cooper Boston says the additional funds approved by the school board will allow school police officers to teach drug and gang prevention programs, primarily in middle and high schools. If adopted by the school board and approved by the state, the plan would incorporate the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program in schools identified as having gang problems.
The district’s safety plan calls for the reduction of suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and truancy by focusing on initiatives to prevent violence. For example, the plan proposes training teachers in classroom management. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires states to determine which of its schools are “persistently dangerous” and to give students attending those schools the opportunity to transfer elsewhere. All five of Maryland's "persistently dangerous" middle and high schools are in Baltimore. The state defines a school as "persistently dangerous" based on the number of student suspensions for violent offenses, such as fighting, arson, sexual assaults, and assaults on teachers. Some critics say the label is counterproductive because it uses the number of suspensions, rather than the actual number of offenses that occur. Consequently, some administrators are reluctant to suspend misbehaving students because it might result in a school being stigmatized.
At the same time, advocates from groups including the Open Society Institute have been pushing for in-school suspension programs and other suspension alternatives. They say allowing violent or misbehaving students to be on the streets during school days only perpetuates crime, drug use, and other social ills. School officials, noting that $700,000 has been provided for in-school suspension plans in middle schools in next year's budget, insist they want to get away from a zero-tolerance policy mandating automatic suspension or expulsion for fighting in school. “We're not going to police our way out of the problems we're having with school safety,” says April Lewis, the safety plan’s coordinator. “We have to build relationships between students and adults, between adults and adults, and model what we want students to do.”
Baltimore Sun
By Brent Jones
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The G.R.E.A.T. Program’s website is below. In a No Child Left Behind world, there is a self-defeating aspect of heavy reliance on disciplinary tools that equate to less time on task. In addition, a 2002 statement from NSBA provides some other general guidelines for school districts to consider when weighing zero tolerance policies, especially the need to preserve some degree of professional discretion for school officials in order to avoid embarrassing, formulaic results. In the memorable formulation of COSA board member Dean Pickett of Mangum, Wall, Stoops & Warden in Flagstaff, Arizona, “You can have zero tolerance for the conduct, but not zero thinking for the consequences.”]
[G.R.E.A.T. Program website]
[NSBA statement on disciplining students for serious offenses]