Schools

Fairfax County Council Of PTAs Asks For Fewer Involuntary Transfers, More Parental Involvement

Group sends report, recommendations to school board members and Superintendent Jack Dale in advance of Monday work session

As in advance of a May 16 school board work session on discipline reform, the Fairfax County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations , urging them to discontinue automatic involuntary transfers of students who are expelled from their schools and involve parents earlier in the disciplinary process.

The FCCPTA, which represents all of the PTA groups in Fairfax County, sent school board members and Dale three resolutions and a six-page report Tuesday detailing their months of conversations among their working group on discipline, at the Superintendent’s Parental Advisory Council (SPAC) meetings, and with  teachers, parents, staff and .

The FCCPTA resolution supports all of Dale’s recommendations, but highlighted areas they felt needed more attention or urgency. It divided recommendations between actions needed before September 2011, and those that would help the system make long-term improvements.

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“The biggest and hardest discussion was about finding balance,” said Pam Kondé, the group’s education committee chair. “Parents want their kids to be safe. They don’t want drugs in the school, they don’t want weapons in the school. On the other hand, they don’t want their kids unduly disciplined. As a community, we don’t want kids suspended out of school for four months. So [this is about] trying to find that balance between a safe and secure environment for students, teachers and staff at the schools, and also doing right by all kids, including the 636 who went through the process last year.”

The documents in full are attached to this article.

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Dale , a list that includes refining parental notification rules, helping parents prepare for the disciplinary process, helping students and parents better understand their rights and responsibilities, providing more support for students in the system, giving principals more discretion to handle certain disciplinary cases and collecting and analyzing more data on the process, among others.

Part of the FCCPTA's work involved digging into what little data was available on the current process. They found:

  • There were 69,430 incidents of school-based consequences for “unsafe or harmful behavior" in the 2009-10 school year
  • Of that group*, 636 students went through the county’s hearing office.
  • Of those students, 43.5 percent had IEP or 504 plans; 70 percent were transferred to other high schools, Kondé said.

Kondé said the working group found the hearing office’s “go-to” or reflexive response for students who enter the process, in addition to suspension, was an involuntary transfer. While some of those students went to alternative high schools, many were forced to simply enroll in another "regular" high school, a practice that doesn’t give students the support they need and likely doesn’t get to the root of the problem, Kondé said.

“One thing group members couldn’t quite wrap their hands around was why we are transferring kids to another regular school, paying for it and then giving them an option to come back,” Kondé said. “If it’s a kid that needs help, sending problems to another school didn’t seem like an appropriate consequence."

While the group supports the mandatory hearing office deliberation for statutory violations — like drug, alcohol or weapon possession, or sexual assault — it argues principals should have more discretion over things like prescription medication. Currently, principals are not required to send students through the process for possessing over-the-counter medication, so long as they did not have intentions to abuse or distribute it, Kondé said. But prescription medication is in the same category as statutory violations, which means the principal is required to refer the student to the hearing office for expulsion.

Along with that discretion, the group thinks revising the language for hearing office referrals from “recommendation to expel” will give the office more options when deciding on consequences, including treatment, prevention programs and community service.

The group also recommended — and is working toward developing — a parent program at each school beginning this September that helps “ parents understand and participate comfortably in the process of administering and communicating rules and procedures related to behavior, discipline, and mental health.”

“From a parent perspective, this is starting a dialogue that maybe wasn’t happening enough,” Kondé said. “Understanding a policy is the best way to advocate for or against it.”

For meaningful changes to take place, Kondé said, the school has to take an in-depth look at its current practices and put measures in place to analyze them.

“How are we treating some kind of offenses. Is it working? Is it deterring other kids? Are the bad behaviors going down? Do we have a lot of kids dropping out? Are they getting the support we need?” Kondé said. “The school has to start talking colleagues in Virginia under the same law, and other systems in the greater D.C. area, and figure out what works. “

Dale will present his discipline recommendations, along with community feedback, at the board’s work session at 4 p.m. Monday at the Fairfax County Public Schools office in Falls Church.


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