MOORPARK : Board Expands Plan for School Discipline

The Moorpark School Board agreed Tuesday to include teachers in a new discipline process for violent students, hoping to quell the teacher union’s demands for a harsh policy that would expel any student caught with a weapon on campus.

The board also supported a plan to separate the hearing process for violent students into two phases--one in which they will make a judgment based on the facts of the case and a second phase in which they decide the appropriate disciplinary action.

Board members have said a “zero tolerance” policy toward weapons, recommended by the teachers union, would be unnecessarily rigid. They say that it would force them to expel students who, for example, might have inadvertently brought a pocket knife on campus.

“Zero tolerance makes no sense,” said board member Clint Harper. “It prevents individuals from thinking and making reasoned judgments.”

The Moorpark Educators Assn. recommended the strict policy after a series of incidents at Moorpark campuses, including one in which a 13-year-old middle school student was caught with a knife in his backpack.

The school board disciplined the student but decided against expelling him. The decision angered teachers, who felt the board made the decision without asking for the opinions of teachers who knew the student and witnessed the incident.

Recognizing that teachers were indeed left out of the process, Harper recommended that their opinions be included in the hearing process.