School bill is labeled ‘lunacy’
A bill that prohibits school administrators from expelling students if they willfully defy educators, set to take effect next year, was panned by Burbank school officials last week.
Introduced by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento), the bill aims to lessen the number of suspensions and expulsions of students.
Come January, administrators will not be able to suspend a student in kindergarten through third grades or recommend an expulsion for students in first through 12th grades if those students disrupt school activities or defy authority figures on campus.
Burbank Unified Supt. Jan Britz said the bill aims to keep kids in school, following statistics in some districts showing that students have missed a good amount of school days due to being suspended or expelled for defiance, but she doesn’t believe the bill solves the problem.
“If we ask a kid to leave our class for whatever reason, [and] they sit there and say, ‘I don’t want to leave,’ that’s defiance, and we can’t do a darn thing about it,” Britz said.
“What’s happening in the schools right now, with the violence that occurs…I think there’s a lot of worrisome things that can happen because they have tied our hands as school administrators,” she added.
Hani Youssef, director of safety and student services for the district, said state officials are pushing for administrators to take other types of action.
“Our state is paying closer attention…because of how broad that definition [of defiance] is and how often it was being used in a punitive manner to suspend students,” Youssef said.
He tried to reassure Burbank officials that students, for the most part, are well behaved.
“I just want to let you all know, it’s not the wild, wild west in our classrooms, at least I hope not,” Youssef told the school board. “So we are maintaining order and students are not being allowed to abuse the system and they’re not being allowed to detract from the education of others,” he said.
Even so, school board member Larry Applebaum called the new bill “lunacy.”
“I’m going to say it publicly — that is just insane,” he said of the bill. “The ones who create the problems are going to be empowered to do more.”
School officials said they would continue to discuss the matter and raise the issue at the Five Star Education Coalition where officials from Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada, Pasadena and South Pasadena schools meet to discuss matters influencing local districts.