(Updated at 6:35 p.m.) Black and Hispanic students remain more likely to be suspended from Arlington Public Schools than their peers, according to new data.
Specifically, Black students make up 11% of students yet 30% of suspensions, while Hispanic students make up 30% of the population and 45% of suspensions, per a presentation to the Arlington School Board yesterday (Tuesday).
Meanwhile, students with disabilities and those learning English are also over-represented in suspension rates. APS says they are, respectively, 2.5 and 1.5 times more likely to be suspended than their counterparts.
APS has made some inroads, noting a 5-percentage point drop in suspensions of Black students, a 4-percentage point drop among students with disabilities and a 2-percentage drop among males. Suspensions rose 2 percentage points for Hispanic students and females and remain unchanged for English-language learning students.
Disproportionate suspensions along race and ethnicity, ability and sex have long existed in APS, which has recently taken steps to reduce these gaps and improve its school climate more broadly.
This includes staff training in implicit biases and the root causes of problematic student behavior as well as in how to prevent crises using de-escalation. Also, the School Board two years ago voted to remove School Resource Officers from school grounds to tackle disproportionate arrest rates among non-white students.
More recently, APS hired six Deans of Students this school year to address student behaviors at Yorktown, Washington-Liberty and Wakefield high schools as well as three middle schools. Middle schools in particular have seen problematic student behavior, including fights and verbal threats to teachers.
Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer Julie Crawford described to the School Board how school administrators plan to tackle suspension rates.
“We would like to continue to focus on building our alternatives to suspension at the school level,” she said, adding that the new deans work “to proactively program and build relationships using instructional time, as opposed to removing our students from the school.”
Sometimes, students have to be removed from school. APS says the top reasons for out-of-school suspensions are disruptive behavior, followed by attendance issues — such as skipping class — and drug offenses. The top two reasons for in-school suspensions are the same, followed by fighting.
Tiffany Woody-Pope, dean of students at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, emphasized the importance of good staff-student relationships.
“I think the more that we are intentional about developing our interpersonal relationships with our students, the more comfort they’ll feel in classrooms — so they won’t necessarily have to be classified as ‘disruptive behavior,'” she said.
Seeing “disruptive behavior” top charts set off alarm bells for School Board member Mary Kadera.
“Disruptive behavior gives me a little heartburn… because historically, and broadly, outside of Arlington, ‘disruptive behavior’ has been a catch-all for a wide variety of behaviors and self-expression of students that a teacher may not like,” she said.
Crawford noted it is a broad definition with any of 17 different indicators, including disrespect and defiance.
June Prakash, the president of the teachers union, Arlington Education Association, would also like to see more daylight on “disruptive behavior,” questioning whether teachers and administrators have the ability to record a more accurate, specific reason for removing a student from class.
“Believe it or not, educators will put up with a lot before sending calling for help,” she said. “Staff often don’t feel supported, as it feels like their expertise is disregarded in the building.”
