Out of school suspension in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Come to my inner city school and he won't ever get suspended even when he throws chairs at teachers and other students, threatens to kill people, etc.

Same in my MCPS elementary school.

Opposite experience at a Silver Spring ES. 2 problematic kids in my son's class suspended many times this year for similar behavior. Also, suspended from school bus a few times.

Wow! Sounds like a good principal. Consider yourself lucky.

We have had issues of an ES kid attacking a teacher, attacking other students, tossing desks. Several kids. Kids end up with the counselor or in the office but only not suspended.

Our principal has been at the ES for a while, so not new.

[Anonymous]

Non ever suspended

[Anonymous]

Talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying staff are extremely aggressive and grounds for out of school suspension. What are you doing at home to address this? Those behaviors start at home. Sorry, it’s an inconvenience for you but safety is a priority.

[Anonymous]

What are the suspension stats for your school, IP? Are lots of other kids getting suspended? You need to know if he is being treated more harshly than his classmates. How many times has he been suspended?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

Or maybe her kid can start behaving himself.
Black and Hispanic kids get suspended from our school, so stop the trolling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

Or maybe her kid can start behaving himself.
Black and Hispanic kids get suspended from our school, so stop the trolling.

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

Or maybe her kid can start behaving himself.
Black and Hispanic kids get suspended from our school, so stop the trolling.

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

That doesn’t mean black and Hispanic kids don’t get suspended and/or the only options for white and Asian kids is legal counsel or private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

Or maybe her kid can start behaving himself.
Black and Hispanic kids get suspended from our school, so stop the trolling.

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

Yes, that is why sometimes my principal unofficially suspends kids. Basically when it goes too far to be ignored but they don’t want the data to show they suspended an AA or HI male. I am in a position at my school where I am able to see suspension data and the kids who most deserve it (most egregious behavior over multiple instances) aren’t on there as having received suspensions. I know my principal unofficially suspends them but doesn’t want the data to reflect that because then they’d have to hear it from their boss and Central Office. This shouldn’t be allowed at all but it happens. If a kid’s behavior is egregious enough for a suspension then it should be properly documented for the student’s sake as well. Sometimes an alternative placement is the best environment for the student and there needs to be documentation to help make that argument.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read the MCPS code of conduct and discipline policy and it seems to be saying that out of school suspensions should not be used unless efforts to keep the kid in school really are not working. The document talks about things like restorative opportunities, opportunities for apologizing, peer justice, etc. These all sound like great things but our middle school keeps suspending my kid for nonviolent offenses such as talking back with inappropriate language and disobeying requests from staff. They’ve never given them a behavioral plan, they’ve tried to work with him but today I had to ask if he could even talk to a counselor before he was booted out the door on his suspension. They don’t seem to offer anything but out the door you go. Come pick him up. Has anyone found that MCPS handles suspensions a little more lightly than I am experiencing? Have you ever complained or fought the suspension and how do you do that in MCPS? In my opinion suspension is just stupid unless the kid is a physical threat to someone at school. Sending him home for a few days does nothing to help him change his behavior and I thought MCPS was getting that point.

If your child is white or Asian, he is out of luck. MCPS trys to reduce the suspension rate for blacks and hispanics now. They can neither keep the troubled bl and hispanic students in the classroom or suspend more white or Asian students so the rate of bl and hispanic students being disciplined will go lower. You need either find a lawyer to navigate the system or find a private school for your ds.

Or maybe her kid can start behaving himself.
Black and Hispanic kids get suspended from our school, so stop the trolling.

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

Yes, that is why sometimes my principal unofficially suspends kids. Basically when it goes too far to be ignored but they don’t want the data to show they suspended an AA or HI male. I am in a position at my school where I am able to see suspension data and the kids who most deserve it (most egregious behavior over multiple instances) aren’t on there as having received suspensions. I know my principal unofficially suspends them but doesn’t want the data to reflect that because then they’d have to hear it from their boss and Central Office. This shouldn’t be allowed at all but it happens. If a kid’s behavior is egregious enough for a suspension then it should be properly documented for the student’s sake as well. Sometimes an alternative placement is the best environment for the student and there needs to be documentation to help make that argument.

FTR, it’s not only MCPS that has this problem.

I have a good friend who is an administrator in Anne Arundel County and they have been dealing with the same pressures.

Kids at her school are incredibly disrespectful at times, and know they can get away with it. They have had kids at the HS letting in people through the black doors (people who do not attend school there) so that they could sell drugs at the school.

It’s an issue in other districts as well. There is pressure to decrease punitive consequences and the kids are smart enough to know that they can get away will all sorts of craziness with little consequence.

[Anonymous]

OP, the student code of conduct for MCPS has a decision matrix for discipline. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/students/rights/#StudentCodeofConduct
It looks as if suspensions for nonviolent things like disrespect and disruption are not typical. However, those infractions can lead to suspension if they are persistent or rise to the level of verbal abuse of students of staff.

[Anonymous]

I love how every discussion comes down to race... this is totally NOT helpful for the OP nor is what she sees right now. Unless you have a child in this type of situation, then please STOP... and move on to another discussion where you can complain about MCPS and how your genius children are being short-changed.

OP -- if this is happening multiple times, you need to ask that the school evaluate your child for a potential disability that is impacting his functioning in school. Perhaps he has ADHD or something? Have you had him evaluated? Perhaps the suspensions are just now ringing alarm bells for you that something bigger is happening. Children with suspected disabilities have rights... and one of them is that suspensions are not used in place of interventions that can really help them. Please take your child to a psychologist or a developmental pediatrician if you think something bigger is at play here. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

I know and this is part of the problem. MCPS needs to shut down its office of data assessment. MCPS is so incompetent that it almost instinctively looks for ways to reshape the numbers rather than figuring out how to solve the problem.

There was a study that found racial bias in punishments. AA and hispanic students were more likely to receive harsher penalties than white students for committing the same offense in the SAME school. Blair students did an excellent journalistic piece on racial bias at their school. They highlighted how a white student walking through the halls was simply told to go back to class while a black student was given a penalty. The problem of racial bias is worse in schools with high FARMS where there is a large % of URM lower performing students and UMC higher performing students. These schools all suffer deeply from racial bias as every day the staff see URM students underperforming and UMC students performing well. Interestingly, the same bias is not as present in schools where the minority students are as wealthy as the white students.

MCPS can't control or reshape WHO create an offense but they are responsible for ensuring that the penalties for the offenses are not racially influenced. The way to solve this problem is through diversity training for principals, establishing a review board to look at penalties given out within a school not based on the overall numbers but weighing variations in penalties for similar offenses to ensure the cases were treated equally. There are other programmatic approaches to addressing bias but these would require the MCPS central office to think.

MCPS did not do this. Their first attempt was to lesson all the penalties which created significant community push back in schools with more violent offenders. By trying to reshape the numbers by making it harder for schools to suspend or expel students, they were putting an attacker back into the same environment with his/her victim. It also created an unsafe situation for staff if they were pressured not to fully report threats to themselves to avoid the numbers looking bad.

So now they are looking at the numbers which creates and will create a whole host of bad outcomes downstream .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

She’s not trolling. I work for MCPS, and the county is carefully tracking these numbers.

I know and this is part of the problem. MCPS needs to shut down its office of data assessment. MCPS is so incompetent that it almost instinctively looks for ways to reshape the numbers rather than figuring out how to solve the problem.

There was a study that found racial bias in punishments. AA and hispanic students were more likely to receive harsher penalties than white students for committing the same offense in the SAME school. Blair students did an excellent journalistic piece on racial bias at their school. They highlighted how a white student walking through the halls was simply told to go back to class while a black student was given a penalty. The problem of racial bias is worse in schools with high FARMS where there is a large % of URM lower performing students and UMC higher performing students. These schools all suffer deeply from racial bias as every day the staff see URM students underperforming and UMC students performing well. Interestingly, the same bias is not as present in schools where the minority students are as wealthy as the white students.

MCPS can't control or reshape WHO create an offense but they are responsible for ensuring that the penalties for the offenses are not racially influenced. The way to solve this problem is through diversity training for principals, establishing a review board to look at penalties given out within a school not based on the overall numbers but weighing variations in penalties for similar offenses to ensure the cases were treated equally. There are other programmatic approaches to addressing bias but these would require the MCPS central office to think.

MCPS did not do this. Their first attempt was to lesson all the penalties which created significant community push back in schools with more violent offenders. By trying to reshape the numbers by making it harder for schools to suspend or expel students, they were putting an attacker back into the same environment with his/her victim. It also created an unsafe situation for staff if they were pressured not to fully report threats to themselves to avoid the numbers looking bad.

So now they are looking at the numbers which creates and will create a whole host of bad outcomes downstream .

Yes thank you for this balanced perspective—perfect example of MCPS missing the big picture—how their decisions have ripple effects and unintended consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love how every discussion comes down to race... this is totally NOT helpful for the OP nor is what she sees right now. Unless you have a child in this type of situation, then please STOP... and move on to another discussion where you can complain about MCPS and how your genius children are being short-changed.

OP -- if this is happening multiple times, you need to ask that the school evaluate your child for a potential disability that is impacting his functioning in school. Perhaps he has ADHD or something? Have you had him evaluated? Perhaps the suspensions are just now ringing alarm bells for you that something bigger is happening. Children with suspected disabilities have rights... and one of them is that suspensions are not used in place of interventions that can really help them. Please take your child to a psychologist or a developmental pediatrician if you think something bigger is at play here. Good luck!

When policies are changed to address racial bias that aren’t well thought through, then it is about race for everyone. It’s the trickle down effect.