California middle schools won’t be able to suspend disruptive students next year
Next school year, it will be illegal for California middle schools to suspend students for disruptive behavior.
The new law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, goes into effect July 1, 2020.
When it does, it will be unlawful for both public and charter schools to suspend students from kindergarten through eighth grade for unruly or disruptive behavior. Previously, the ban was in place just for kindergarten through fifth grade.
The law does not apply to grades nine through 12.
Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who sponsored the law, said that she is working to decrease school suspensions and expulsions, “because our goal needs to be to keep kids in school and to have them be successful.”
The law also aims to address the racial disparity in school suspensions. Black students made up 5.6 percent of the total enrollment for academic year 2017-18, but accounted for 15.6 percent of total suspensions for willful defiance, according to the California Department of Education.
White students, who made up 23.2 percent of total enrollment, accounted for 20.2 percent of unruly behavior suspensions.
“These particular kinds of suspension are being used to harm young people and especially black people in particular,” said David Turner, with the Brothers Sons Selves Coalition, part of the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, a group that co-sponsored the law.
School suspensions for disruptive behavior have been on the decline in California.
In the 2011-12 academic year, schools issued 335,079 suspensions for willful defiance, according to education department data. In the 2017-18 academic year, fewer than 51,000 suspensions were for willful defiance.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 9:26 AM with the headline "California middle schools won’t be able to suspend disruptive students next year."
