Proposed by District 09 California State Senator Nancy Skinner, California Senate Bill 274 will protect students TK-12 from suspension and expulsion for willful defiance or excessive truancy, starting July 1. While we support the intention of the bill, multiple reasons prevent us from supporting the bill altogether.
The bill protects students that are “disrupting school activities or otherwise willfully defying the valid authority of school staff” which includes acts such as refusing to comply with a directive to put one’s phone away.
Proponents say SB 274 will help eliminate unnecessary suspensions that disproportionately target disabled students, LGBTQ+ students, students without a stable home and students of color. Marginalized students not only face more challenges and thus are more likely to act out in response, but they are more likely to be suspended than their non-minority peers for the same actions. Black students, for example, missed nearly 5 times more classes due to school disciplinary actions than their white counterparts.
The bill supplements Ed Code 48900, which automatically suspends or expels students who commit specific offenses such as threatening to act violently, non-self-defensive violence, possession of weapons, possession of drugs and other acts that risk severely endangering the school.
Considering the broader goal of the measure, The Campanile commends the Bill’s effort to promote equity and improve school attendance, especially by eliminating the counterintuitive approach of punishing truant students with suspensions.
While we support the intention of this bill, The Campanile thinks willful defiance is too loosely defined, and banning suspension and expulsion risks stimulating further non-compliance. The lack of a clear definition of “willful defiance” in the bill and its lack of concrete steps to mitigate defiant action may encourage disruptive students to continue to cause disturbances in classrooms. The Campanile hopes at the very least that the State Department of Education will release guidelines related to the bill to help guide the many California schools that have struggled to deal with consistently defiant students.
A study conducted by the National Library of Medicine found that, on average, a student’s chance of graduation decreases by 20% after each suspension due to increased disengagement and the reduction of instructional minutes. Expulsions and suspensions that trap students in a cycle of punishment should be replaced by restorative school intervention programs –– adjustment plans centered around communication between students and administrators –– which allow schools to better support misbehaving students. Furthermore, the tardy intervention plan implemented at the beginning of the year has proven successful in improving attendance, according to Assistant Vice Principal Jerry Berkson.
The Campanile also does not think the bill is necessary considering the vast improvements made in schools to combat unnecessary and discriminatory suspensions. Paly has already made strides to reduce suspensions, going from over 100 to less than 20 a year in the past 18 years. Across the state, willful defiance rates have already decreased by 94% and school suspension rates have decreased by 58% in the last decade.
Nationally, expulsions and suspension of students with IEPs — Individualized Education Programs — require legal hearings before going through. Paly’s suspension policy also prevents students from being excessively punished for noncompliance. Snap suspensions, where teachers declare a student suspended in the moment, are rare as they must be followed up within 24 hours by a hearing justifying the reasoning for the suspension. And the vast majority of cases, teachers must write referrals to administrators before a student can be suspended. Thus The Campanile thinks pre-existing improvements in limiting defiance rates render SB 274 unnecessary.
While the Campanile agrees with the bill’s goal of mitigating discriminatory practices and disadvantages stemming from suspensions and expulsions, we encourage legislators to confront willfully defiant and truant students by proposing a standardized solution similar to Paly’s defiance intervention program.
