What Can Schools Do When Suspension Is Illegal Under State Law?

What if suspending students from school is against the law?

A lot of states have passed bans on suspension for the early grades or entirely for certain offenses.

And I think certainly we don't need to use suspension for lots of just kind of routine misbehavior, right?

There are in school things that we can do that don't send kids home.

if they're able to safely be at school.

Kids get in trouble for lots of things.

Suspension is not the only consequence we should have in place, not the only system we should have in place.

But for violence, for extreme behavior that makes it impossible for everybody to learn, I think we do have to be able to send kids home.

And when state law says that's no longer allowed, what do we do?

Well, I think one thing that we can do in the most extreme cases to start to change the legislation is simply expel kids for violence.

And that sounds really, really extreme until you realize, wait a minute, we have teachers who are getting surgery because their ACL or their rotator cuff was torn due to violence.

We have other kids who are getting traumatized and not getting an education because of student violence.

And you're telling me we can't do anything other than tolerate this behavior at school?

Absolutely not.

So, you know, even before you get to the point of expulsion, I want to encourage you to actually check what the law in your state says.

And there are so many states, so many laws.

There are lots of different moving parts here.

But check what your laws actually say.

They probably do not say that you cannot suspend a student from school for any reason.

Even if they do, you can do things like district alternative educational placement.

You can do things like long-term suspension.

You know, it's not the case that everything is off the table.

And I mean, obviously I'm slightly kidding on this one, but i feel like making a kid get a signature from their state legislator might be a good alternative consequence you can't come back in school until you get a signature from your legislator like legislators have to see how necessary this is they have to see that it is impossible to operate schools safely with no real consequences and sometimes those consequences need to include suspension so if you want to hear more on suspension i've got a playlist here that i'll add this to check out especially part one where I address some of the myths around suspension and the myths that say it doesn't work and it motivates kids to misbehave more.

We've got a lot of knowledge that we can draw on.

And what we're doing with banning suspension is really untested water, right?

This is not something that was research-based.

This was not something where we had proven alternatives that were better.

This was just our discomfort with something.

Nobody likes suspension, so we banned it in a lot of places.

And now we're dealing with the consequences of having no consequences.

Let me know what you think.

Let me know what the law is in your state.

And if you think it bans suspension completely, please check.

Let me know what you find out and look into what the alternatives are up to and including expulsion, changing a school.

Like I really feel like we have to have some sort of boundary in place for the most extreme violence, especially when, you know, when people are getting hurt.

So leave a comment.

Let me know what you think.