Judge hears suspension rate of black pupils, calls it high

LITTLE ROCK — One out of every two male, black secondary-school students was suspended at least once last school year in the Pulaski County Special School District, a top administrator in the county district testified Wednesday.

Receiving suspension were 996 of 1,841 such students, or 54.1 percent, said Brenda Bowles, assistant superintendent for equity and student services.

“I’m not proud of the numbers,” Bowles, who has oversight over student discipline, said. “It’s a problem.”

Bowles testified for about six hours during the third day of a hearing before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller on whether the 17,734-student district is complying with its desegregation plan.

The county district, the third-largest in Arkansas, would be released from court monitoring if Miller determines it is in compliance with its plan and declares it unitary.

That means the court would no longer monitor the districts’ student-assignment plan, staffing practices, student-discipline rates, the achievement gap between black and white students, gifted-education programs, special-education services, multicultural-education programs and the construction and location of school campuses.

Bowles confirmed black suspension rates, which are higher than those for their white peers, under cross-examination from attorney John Walker, who represents the class of black students called the Joshua intervenors who oppose the district’s request for unitary status.

Walker spent Wednesday trying to show that the district is not meeting the requirements of its desegregation plan as it relates to student discipline.

The plan requires the district to attempt to reduce “racial disparities in school discipline.”

In addition to black males, the number of black secondary-school female students suspended at least once last year was high.

Suspension was imposed on 666 of 1,817 female students, or 36.7 percent, during the 2008-09 school year

For both the black males and females, the rates were the highest since at least 1992, Walker said.

At one point, Miller interrupted Walker’s cross-examination and said the percentage was striking.

“That number just seems extremely high,” Miller said.

Despite the apparent disproportionately high number of suspensions among black students, the county district lacks a plan that includes written goals and timetables for reducing it, Walker said.

He also outlined numerous other ways he believes that the district is not complying with the discipline components of its desegregation plan.

They include:

The district’s lack of a comprehensive, districtwide Discipline Management Plan until 2006.

The district’s failure to collect and turn over to the Joshua intervenors data on rates of atypically high racial disparities in discipline within a timely manner.

The district’s lack of remediation plans for individual teachers who discipline disproportionately.

“You all were limping along in meeting the requirements of [the desegregation plan],” Walker said.

Despite the problems, there has been progress, Bowles said.

The district created a comprehensive District Management Plan in 2006, she said.

The document is a tool designed to help with classroom management, Bowles said.

It includes information about some of the cultural factors that contribute to student discipline problems and encourages teachers to find alternative strategies to control student behavior beyond suspensions.

It’s a good-faith effort to improve the application of discipline systemically in the district, she said.

As part of the districtwide plan, each school is required to develop its own discipline-management plan.

A team of teachers works to develop the school rules and the consequences for breaking the rules. The rules and consequences are then explained to students at the start of the school year, Bowles said.

Bowles’ department has also begun tracking data on student discipline, she said.

The district uses the information to identify schools and teachers that have disproportionately high rates of suspensions.

While individual remediation plans aren’t written for the problem teachers, Bowles said, the information is supplied to school principals, who can then address the matter with the teachers.

Teachers also have access to a new professional-development program on discipline that features a strong equity component, Bowles said.

In addition, the district has opened “student assistance centers” on each secondary-school campus.

Teachers can send disruptive students to the centers for up to 10 days per year. In the centers, students can continue to do some class work. It’s an alternative to suspensions, Bowles said.

There are other matters at play beyond race in regard to the racial disparities in student discipline, Bowles said.

“I just don’t believe that just because students are a certain race that they are going to be a statistic,” Bowles said. “There are a lot of other symptoms.”

A major culprit are “social ills,” she said.

Poverty and poor home environments often are at the root of discipline problems, Bowles said. She said many district students are homeless, hungry and lack adequate medical care.

Other times, academic deficiencies prompt students to act out. If a high school student cannot read, for example, he will grow frustrated in the school environment, Bowles said.

The district treats these “social ills” with the hope that it will lead to improved behavior, she said.

The district feeds homeless students, provides nursing and dental care and offers mental health services to students, she said.

While the number of suspensions among black students has gone up, the number of referrals at some schools are down, Bowles said.

There should be more improvements over time. It won’t happen overnight, she said.

“We are doing a lot of things trying to help African-American kids,” Bowles said. “Maybe it’s not good enough, but we are making that effort.”