2020 Youth Suspensions And Arrests Committee Update
The problem:
For many years, the Pinellas County School District used a “zero tolerance” policy of discipline which focuses on immediately punishing misbehavior with referrals, suspensions, or arrests. Unfortunately, this does not work. Sending children out of the classroom does not improve their behavior and causes them to instead fall behind on schoolwork.
Over the last few years, the district has taken steps to move away from “zero tolerance” discipline in the classroom. However, stories we heard in house meetings from both families and teachers indicated that the policies embraced by the district were not fully implemented or fully addressing the problem. Reports indicated that children were still experiencing out of control classrooms, while teachers shared that they were not receiving proper training and support from the district. We know that even one out-of-school suspension doubles a child’s chance of dropping out of school1. Additionally, black students in Pinellas County schools have historically been more likely to receive a suspension than white students.
The Solution:
Other school districts have been able to decrease suspensions and arrests by moving away from zero-tolerance policies. One of the most successful approaches has been “restorative practices” which focus on restoring trust and communication in schools, while holding misbehaving students accountable to victims and their peers. In schools that have done full implementations of restorative practices, the suspension and arrest levels have significantly decreased, and racial gaps in discipline have also decreased. Additionally, teachers report feeling safer and teacher turnover has gone down.
In response to our concerns, over the past few years, Pinellas County Schools have embraced restorative practices and rolled it out to all 123 schools. The district worked with the highly experienced International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) to train school staff in Sept of 2018. However, despite an optimistic start, its implementation over the 2019 school year proved to be inadequate. Due to the lack of a comprehensive roll-out of RP, reports showed inadequate training available (and that the training was not being provided by experts like IIRP,) a lack of support for teachers in the classroom, and a lack of comprehensive and cohesive discipline for students across schools.
Through talking to the experts at IIRP and researching other school districts implementing RP, we identified four missing and critical pieces necessary for RP implementation to be a success. Those four missing pieces included: 1. Restorative Justice Conferencing, which is an intervention for children who commit serious behavioral infractions; 2. Monthly coaching for teachers and staff attempting to use restorative practices in their classrooms; 3. An expert- like IIRP – must conduct training for all teachers and staff before the start of the school year; and, 4. A clear evaluation plan that sets standards for implementation and outcomes, and that incorporates a detailed process for collecting data.
Over the course of the past year, we met with School Board members, PCS Staff, our allies at the Teachers Union and other community organizations to pressure the District to fully implement Restorative Practices in our schools. And we have recently seen the results of this hard work! On August 25th, 2020, we watched as the School Board voted to approve a $450,000 contract with IIRP – the experts – for a contract that includes nearly everything we have recommended and asked for! The contract includes:
- Restorative Practices training, provided by the experts at IIRP, for all schools.
- Restorative Justice Conferencing training for a cohort of schools.
- And, additional monthly coaching, by experts, for that cohort of 20 schools.
The District has also assured us that an evaluation process will be created, with the establishment of measurable outcomes.We are encouraged by this VICTORY and are grateful for the district’s commitment to this issue! We are also especially excited to celebrate the inclusion of Restorative Justice Conferencing as part of the implementation plan for the coming year and look forward to seeing the results in our schools and for the schoolchildren of Pinellas County. With this victory, the Youth Suspensions and Arrests committee made the recommendation at the October committee meeting to move “into monitoring.” This recommendation was approved, and we have already received commitments from the District for 8 meetings throughout the year to ensure that proper monitoring of this issue is accomplished.
We applaud the School Board members and staff who have been advocating for and leading the efforts on Restorative Practices here in Pinellas. We look forward to the tremendous impact of monthly coaching for teachers, and the promise of the development of a thorough evaluation plan in the coming year.
The Youth Suspensions and Arrests Committee is committed to following up on and monitoring this to see the results of full implementation of Restorative Practices in our district. We are also excited to see the results of fully implemented RP in Pinellas County – the results of the tireless and persistent work of FAST membership.