School Discipline Data, Enforcement Focus Of Two Bills In House Education

Lawmakers have been grappling for years with how best to legislate the growing issue of school discipline, and this session is no different.

House Bill 4775 would require lawmakers to receive annual reports and periodic updates on statewide school discipline from the state’s Department of Education.

The department already creates an annual report on school disciplinary incidents that it presents to lawmakers during interim meetings, and publishes some of the data on its data portal ZoomWV. 

But bill sponsor Del. Elliot Pritt, R-Fayette, and a teacher, told the House Education Committee Monday he wants more detailed information available to lawmakers and to the public.

“I’m just a big believer in data,” he said. “And if we really want to know what’s really going on in our schools and look in the mirror at ourselves and fix problems, then we need to be real, and data needs to be real. It doesn’t need to be covered up or obfuscated.”

Pritt said he knows the level of detail he is asking for exists from his personal experience filling out school incident reports.

“I think this is data that’s very important for people to have,” he said. “I think it’s very important for our public parents and members of our community to see what’s happening in our schools and what the plan is annually to address those concerns.”

Another bill discussed Monday, House Bill House Bill 4440 would permit law enforcement to issue a citation when students are caught with nicotine in schools.

New House Education Committee Chair Del. Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, explained that recently passed legislation disallowed officers from issuing citations in schools.

“What happens is just the warnings,” he said. “They are still going to continue to do warnings. They’re still going to continue to do educational things. They try to reach out to these students to try to make them understand the dangers, but it’s still continuing to happen.”

Statler said that efforts to install smoke and vape detection devices in school bathrooms have done little to deter student use of tobacco products, and he hopes that citations will bring teeth back to enforcement.