Schools Are Taking All the Fun Out of Suspension

Suspension just isn’t what it used to be.

Once, frustrated school officials could rest assured that if they kicked a misbehaving student out of school, the student’s angry and embarrassed parents would do the rest in terms of punishment.

But these days, too many parents are working, while others couldn’t care less, to be effective jailers. For some students, suspension has become another holiday, all the sweeter because everyone else is in class.

Now, several Ventura County principals are having second thoughts about the whole concept of suspension. They are revamping discipline policies and endorsing a revolutionary approach to punishment--instead of sending students home to the living room couch and daytime talk shows, they are keeping more troublemakers at school.

Students who break school rules are still suspended, but are exiled on campus, where they catch up on homework, write personal goals or clean up the school.

“It’s not as fun to be at school as it is to be at home,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Miles Weiss, who supervises the juvenile unit. “And if you are a delinquent or you misbehave at school, you should suffer a consequence, not a reward.”

Administrators are also concerned about teens falling behind in school.

“We want to keep students in school because that’s our business,” said Bob La Belle, principal of Royal High School in Simi Valley. “We don’t want the students to fall further behind, and penalize them unfairly for what may have happened in one period.”

La Belle said on-campus suspension prevents the “snowball effect,” when a student who gets in trouble in one class is sent home for a few days and ends up behind in all six classes. At Royal, students are suspended for specific periods.

Though some schools have been punishing unruly kids on campus for a decade, in-school suspension has become much more widespread in the last three or four years.

Between one-third and one-half of Ventura County schools have implemented in-school suspension, and the trend is catching on statewide as well, school officials said.

Some local schools, however, are prevented from starting similar programs because they can’t find the classroom space or because they can’t recruit teachers to supervise the kids.

In extreme situations, including drug or weapons offenses, students are still sent home. But most cases result in on-campus suspension. Those violations may include using profanity, ditching school, lying to a teacher or skipping detention.

Supporters say on-campus suspension ensures that students are supervised during their punishment, while separating the troublemakers from their classmates.

But not everyone is convinced of the public spirit of schools in changing their policies. Critics say there is a more practical reason for the change: money. Schools that send suspended students home lose about $20 per child each day in the formula the state uses to reimburse schools for the cost of educating students.

They also argue that just placing students who misbehave in a separate classroom does not correct their behavior problems.

“The students who are suspended should be doing more than going into a study hall,” said Bill Csellak, who supervises study hall and teaches English at Westlake High School. “They should be reevaluating their behavior. And I think an administrator ought to supervise them.”

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In several schools, teachers or campus supervisors take on the burden of watching suspended students--who, for the most part, aren’t the least bit cooperative.

Despite the naysayers, the change in policy is popular with law enforcement officials. They say that too often when a student is suspended, he or she becomes a problem for police. Weiss said schools can help prevent juvenile delinquency by supervising all students, especially the ones who cause trouble. Sending students home only gives teens more freedom, Weiss said.

“The reality is that both parents--if there are both parents in the home--work, and there is not going to be anybody at home to take care of the kids,” he said. “They are going to be bored and get out and about and start getting in trouble.”

Some schools call their on-campus suspension classes “opportunity rooms.” Educators say it’s a good name, underscoring the idea that these are places where students have the opportunity to turn their lives around.

“Behavior is an outward sign of an inner problem in school,” said Ventura County Supt. of Schools Chuck Weis. “Suspension can give us an opportunity to work on that real underlying problem.”

Whenever a student is assigned to on-campus suspension, the principal contacts the parents. Principals say involving parents and school counselors is the key to improving students’ behavior.

Educators point out that the program doesn’t work for all students, especially those who do not take the punishment seriously. Sometimes, students have to be referred to alternative or continuation schools for ongoing discipline problems.

Suspended students at Santa Paula High School spend about an hour and a half in study hall each day. Students who are repeatedly referred to in-school suspension may end up in the Bridge program, a semester-long class that teaches them effective study and social skills and gives them time to get caught up in school.

Ventura Unified School District sends all its suspended middle school students to a special “suspension school” held on Fridays at Ventura College. They spend from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. there, involved in activities aimed at controlling their anger, boosting their self-esteem and improving their attitude toward school. In return, the suspension doesn’t show up on their school record.

“We’re actually fixing something instead of just putting a Band-Aid on it,” said Cynthia Dillon, assistant principal at Anacapa Middle School in Ventura. “This way, the problems aren’t repeated.”

On a recent Friday, two girls and seven boys showed up for suspension school. They sat nervously in desks too large for them. One boy cracked his knuckles, another flipped through his binder. A girl played with her glasses.

At 8:15 a.m., teacher Peter Shedlosky asked the students to introduce themselves: their names, grades, schools and reason for suspension. A few kids’ voices cracked as they took their turns reciting their transgressions.

I got kicked out of class. I pushed this guy. I beat up some kid. I got in a fight. I brought a stink bomb to school. I received the stink bomb.

“The reason you guys are here in day suspension school is because you have made some bad choices at school,” Shedlosky told the students. “Our goal is to help you so you don’t make those bad choices again and so you can be better students.”

Last time eighth-grade student Rachelle got suspended, she was sent home.

“I just watched TV and talked on the phone,” she said. “This is better because I’m not just stuck at home all day, and it won’t go on my record.

Ventura educators say having the suspension school on a college campus also motivates the students to improve their behavior and grades. During the day, they take a tour of the college campus, eat lunch in the student union and look through the college catalog. They also talk about careers.

Westlake High School’s on-campus suspension program, held every Wednesday, is much less structured--and less supervised. Students spend the morning in various study hall classrooms--thrown in with other students--and the afternoon picking up trash on campus.

Two students reported to Westlake’s on-campus suspension on a recent Wednesday. For much of the morning, they played cards and ate potato chips. Jeremy, a heavy-set teen with ruddy cheeks, was suspended for tripping a teacher’s aide and for using profanity in class. Aaron, thin and talkative, was suspended for ditching Saturday school, an all-day detention.

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Jeremy, 16, said he would rather be home playing video games. Aaron, also 16, said he would rather be home sleeping. But they both preferred on-campus suspension to Saturday school, where they aren’t allowed to talk, sleep or eat in class.

Aaron said he didn’t understand the idea of in-school suspension. He missed an English test Wednesday. “I’m allowed to go out on breaks and do everything else, but I can’t go to class,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. Isn’t school a place to learn?”

At 11 a.m., a third teen showed up. The freshman had skipped Saturday school, then forgot about his on-campus suspension. An administrator tracked him down and sent him to study hall.

At noon, the boys reported to campus supervisor Tom Doler, who promptly handed them trash bags and ordered them to work. The three teens traversed the hillside and the parking lot, picking up coffee cups, soda cans and fast-food bags. A few classmates drove by, pointing and laughing at the trash collectors.

“Keep it up! Let’s go!” Doler yelled at the students from his golf cart. “I wanna see some sweat. And I don’t want to see you take trash from the barrel and put it in the bag. Let’s do it right.”

Parents praise on-campus suspension programs. They don’t have to take time off work to keep an eye on their suspended children. Nor do they have to leave them at home alone.

Jeremy’s mom works full time and would have left him at home unsupervised if he had been sent home on suspension.

“I wouldn’t have any way of controlling that punishment,” she said. “I would say no TV, no computer and no PlayStation, but I wouldn’t have any way to enforce it.”

Westlake High Dean David Graber said on-campus suspension serves both the students and the staff.

“If we can get them to be at school and work cleaning up campus, not only do we get the [average daily attendance] dollars for them, we end up getting some campus beautification,” Graber said.

Principals who favor on-campus suspension say that only a few offenses, including fighting or possessing weapons, warrant home suspension. Newbury Park High School only sends teens home on suspension if the family is responsive and promises to supervise.

“If the parents are supportive and we know they’ll handle it, then it’s a punishment,” said Josephine Bisciglia, dean of students at Newbury Park High School. “But if the [students] are going to play Nintendo all day or hang out in the streets, the suspension is not effective.”