Teaching Them a Lesson : When Students Get Suspended, They Go to Class

It seemed a simple case of showing off when the 14-year-old Ocean View Junior High School student pulled out a hunting knife and flashed it in front of his friends last year on the playground of the Oxnard school.

But before he could put away the nearly 6-inch-long knife, school authorities discovered he had the weapon on campus. The infraction--a violation of state law--could have led to an immediate expulsion.

Because his school record was relatively unblemished, school officials consulted with the boy’s parents and asked the district superintendent to let him stay in school--but not in regular classes, Principal Frank Samuels said.

Instead, he was sentenced to 10 weeks in Ocean View’s in-school suspension program.

“We wanted to make sure that he and his parents both knew that this was a real dangerous situation,” Samuels said.

State law provides clear grounds for disciplining students, including suspension or expulsion for threatening or physically harming another person at school, selling drugs, robbery and damaging school property.

But for problems deemed less serious, ranging from unruliness in the classroom to habitual tardiness, Ventura County school districts and individual schools use varied techniques to get students on the right track.

At Ocean View, for example, instead of being sent home--a break some students may view as a welcome vacation from school--suspended students are sent to teacher David Moore’s class, either for the 10-week independent guidance program for serious infractions, or to serve time for two- or three-day suspensions.

Several other districts in Ventura County have similar programs, including the Oxnard Union High School District and Simi Valley Unified.

“In-school suspension is in lieu of booting kids out of school, which is the craziest thing I ever heard,” Moore said. “Oftentimes in the past, a kid who cuts school gets suspended out of school, if you can figure that. So we’re eliminating that.”

Moore’s class ranges from six to 12 students throughout the year. Instead of changing classes over the course of a six-hour day, they remain in the same room for four hours straight, with short bathroom and lunch breaks. They are bused home at 12:20 p.m. Students must accumulate 50 “perfect” days, with regular attendance and good behavior, to earn the right to return to regular classes.

Moore, a teacher for 25 years, said the program removes troublemakers from class and allows teachers to be more effective with other students.

“Regular classroom teachers will maybe spend up to 20% to 30% of their time with kids who are causing a lot of heartaches,” Moore said.

Having the program on-campus has proved an advantage, because administrators can send errant students there for short suspensions of two to three days or for just one school period.

“Some teachers and kids just do not get along. It’s a personality thing,” Moore said.

To ensure that a student is not sentenced unfairly to the program, at least four of a student’s six teachers must agree that he should be in the program. Parents, who generally would already have been informed of a child’s behavioral problems, are advised of the recommendation.

One eighth-grade student said he landed in Moore’s class for 10 weeks because he argued with two students, cursed a teacher who asked him to remove his hat during class and was caught ditching classes.

“I was hotheaded,” said the 13-year-old, whose name is being withheld at school officials’ request. He said he was frustrated by having to stay all day in Moore’s classroom, despite its wall-to-wall colorful decorations. But since he’s been there, he said, his grades have improved from Cs and Ds to mostly Bs.

Friday was the student’s 50th and final day in Moore’s class. On Monday, he will return full-time to a regular schedule. If his problems recur, he may be put in an independent study program, requiring him to check in with Moore once a week to receive assignments to complete at home. He would then be given a final chance in a regular classroom.

If the problems persist, under the school’s policy he could be expelled.

This year, Channel Islands High in Oxnard started a similar suspension center, a pilot program in the six-school Oxnard Union High School District, Dean of Students James Edwards said.

And both the Oxnard district and the Conejo Valley Unified School District have Saturday work-study programs, requiring students who have been reprimanded to spend two hours cleaning on the campus and another two hours studying, officials said.

Many schools have a progressive system for dealing with students who misbehave.

In the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District, for example, discipline starts with a verbal warning from the teacher to the student, Assistant Supt. Erich Anders said. Continuing problems lead to conferences with the student’s parents and ultimately with administrators, who decide what action should be taken.

Often, schools have student study teams, groups of teachers, administrators, school psychologists, counselors and other staff members who review the records of problem students and decide whether they should be placed in special programs. Parents are also asked to attend to discuss their child’s behavior.

Corporal punishment in schools was outlawed statewide when Gov. George Deukmejian signed a bill that went into effect in 1987, barring teachers and other school employees from spanking youngsters, even if the school has written parental permission. Many school districts had already banned the practice before the law was signed.

Expulsions, usually recommended by a school principal after consultation with teachers and other staff, require school board approval and are usually decided in closed meetings. Students are usually expelled for the remainder of the semester and one additional semester.

But expulsions are the last resort and are rare in many county school districts.

The Ocean View School District in Oxnard, for example, has not expelled any students in four years, said Supt. Robert Allen, although 52 students were suspended last year for a variety of infractions.

Andrew Smidt, superintendent of the 3,400-student Ojai Unified School District, could recall only two student expulsions in the past six years.

Expulsions become more common at the high school level, as problems with weapons and drugs on campus increase. Several county districts reported slight increases in recent years.

Expulsions in the Conejo Valley, for example, averaged about 10 a year until the figure jumped to 17 in 1988-89, and then to 23 last year, Simpson said. One reason for last year’s high figure was the expulsion of six students involved in a pipe bomb incident at Newbury Park High, he said.

In the Oxnard Union High School District, 19 students were expelled last year, and eight have been expelled so far this year, said Christine Smith, director of student services.

Simi Valley’s Assistant Supt. Allan Jacobs said there have been two expulsions in the district so far, “almost in every instance” related to a weapon either used in a fight or in a student’s possession.

Helping students understand the consequences of acts such as bringing drugs or weapons on campus may bring such figures down, some officials said.

“That’s the whole goal of the program,” said Edwards, the Channel Islands High dean. “It changes student behavior.”