Alternative Education Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

New Disciplinary Measures Would Extend To Elementary Grades

Student discipline continues to be an issue in West Virginia schools, and lawmakers continue to try and address the issue through legislation. A bill in the state Senate is trying to expand on a law that was passed last year.

House Bill 2890 passed the legislature in 2023 and gave school teachers and administrators more leeway in school discipline. But the law that allows a teacher to remove a disruptive student to a different environment to protect the integrity of the class only applies to grades six through 12 and educators say more needs to be done.

Tuesday morning, the Senate Education Committee discussed Senate Bill 614, which intends to expand the ability to remove disruptive students to the elementary level, from kindergarten through sixth grade.

Committee Chair Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, is the bill’s lead sponsor and said discipline is the number one issue teachers bring to her, and is driving them to leave the profession.

“Teachers who have been teaching for 25 plus years have said ‘I’ve had enough, I’m done. I feel like my hands are tied. I do not have the backing of my administrators,’” Grady said. “A lot of our principals are great but a lot of the comments have been ‘My principal feels like we can love these kids so much that it’s going to change their behavior.’ God bless them for that because that’s what we try to do. But in reality, we can’t. A lot of them, we can’t change the behavior just by love.”

The bill requires that once a teacher determines that a student’s violent, threatening or intimidating behavior is creating an unsafe environment, then the teacher may take action. The student will be removed from the classroom for the remainder of the school day, parents will be notified to pick the student up from school – preferably immediately – and the student will not be allowed to ride the bus.

“If the student is not picked up by the end of the day, the principal or other district employee shall notify law enforcement,” the bill continues.

A student’s removal from the classroom under the bill would result in an automatic suspension for the next one to three school days. Alternative learning accommodations are then made and once that is done, the student may not return to school until a risk assessment is done. Even then the student’s return to school is on a provisional basis of five to 10 days, and if another incident occurs within the time frame, the student will return to the alternative learning environment for the remainder of the school year.

If the principal or vice principal disagree with the teacher, the teacher may provide documentation and appeal to the county superintendent.

Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, invited Lindsey McIntosh, general counsel for Kanawha County Schools, to speak on the bill. She brought up several concerns, including a lack of funding for behavioral intervention programs required by the bill as well as no clear definition of the violent, threatening or intimidating behavior that could have students removed.

“They can’t express their emotions correctly, K through sixth grade,” McIntosh said. “I’ve had students that will literally say, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’ They don’t mean they’re gonna actually kill you. They just mean that they, again, can’t express their emotions correctly, and they use that term because that’s the term that they hear. That could be considered violent or intimidating.”

McIntosh went on to say that the law’s requirement of suspension took administrators out of a serious disciplinary decision, and would take students out of the best environment for them.

“I think the law changed last year to allow more teacher input on that issue,” she said. “However, when we’re talking about suspensions, those are always made or should always be made by an administrator just for consistency’s sake.”

Appeals to the county superintendent was also a sticking point for McIntosh, who pointed out the significant burden that it would create in Kanawha County.

“This is the hard part about writing laws,” she said. “You’re writing them for the smallest county which may experience this maybe three or four times a year. We would experience this probably 10 times, I would say, a week. So for the superintendent to have to go in, get to that level of discipline would be a lofty assignment.”

Kanawha County Schools is the state’s largest school district with more than 23,000 students enrolled, accounting for close to 10 percent of the state’s public school enrollment.

Committee members, including Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, stated their support for the bill and ultimately for teachers.

“I have confidence in our teachers,” he said. “Many of them are certified or trained or experienced, and as far as fleshing out the language when a kindergarten through sixth grade teacher in elementary school determines that the behavior of a student is violent, threatening, intimidating towards staff or peers or creates an unsafe learning environment or impedes another student’s ability to learn in a safe environment. That’s pretty clear.”

Trump moved to lay the bill over to allow more time to work on language. All other senators spoke in favor of the bill and voted down Trump’s motion.

Grady conceded that the bill was imperfect but necessary for the sake of teachers. She said educators cannot put the needs of one disruptive student over those of the dozens of other children in the classroom.

“Is this a perfect bill? Absolutely not,” Grady said. “It’s introduced today or it’s on the committee agenda today, because I worked with counsel, I bless him, to try to get it perfect. And I realize we can’t get it perfect. It’s never going to be perfect. But does it solve the problem of what teachers are bringing to me? Yes, they feel like it does.”

The bill was recommended to the full Senate with the recommendation it pass. The committee adjourned shortly after approving SB 614 without taking up any of the other four bills on the agenda for the day.

Despite Legislative Action Last Year, Discipline Continues To Be Focus Of Session

Discipline has always been a part of a school education. But in recent years, concerns over student and teacher safety have elevated discipline to be the school issue of the day. The West Virginia Legislature has attempted to address the matter, and has indicated it will continue to do so this year.

This story originally appeared as a video package on the Jan. 24, 2024 episode of The Legislature Today.

Discipline has always been a part of a school education. But in recent years, concerns over student and teacher safety have elevated discipline to be the school issue of the day. The West Virginia Legislature has attempted to address the matter and has indicated it will continue to do so this year.

Last year, state education groups told legislators that school discipline was at a near crisis level. Since then, the West Virginia Department of Education has analyzed discipline data that shows it is a multifaceted, complex issue.

Adam Henkins, director of Safe Schools, Athletics and Title IX for Monongalia County Schools, said things have changed a lot for students in recent years, including the pervasiveness of vaping and cellphones. But another big factor is that the environment outside of the classroom, at home and beyond, has changed.

“Maybe 15 years ago, a student misbehaved and a parent was called home or a student was suspended from school for a day,” Henkins said. “The outside environment, the home environment would take care of that behavior, we’d come back to school and we’d see a different child. That’s not the case anymore.”

He said suspension could now mean giving a student exactly what they want because they don’t want to be in school in the first place. In more serious cases, it could mean sending a student away from caring educators and back to an unsafe home environment. Henkins believes that keeping a student in school provides the opportunity not only to, in many cases, meet their basic needs, but also teach correct behavior.

“Behavior is nothing different than teaching math or English,” he said. “They need to know what they don’t know, and it’s our job to teach them. If you don’t know addition or subtraction, we don’t discipline a child, right?”

Behavioral issues were only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Younger students in particular returned to classrooms without the social conditioning of previous generations.

State education officials are hopeful that identifying these trends is the first step towards correcting them, but what the legislature’s role is in the process remains to be seen.

The legislature attempted to address discipline issues last year with House Bill 2890. It was written to give school teachers and administrators more leeway in school discipline that results from a personality clash between teacher and student. The intent is to allow a teacher to remove a disruptive student to a different environment to protect the integrity of the class for the duration of that class period.

Henkins said he appreciates the flexibility HB 2890 has provided educators, while recognizing that the law could use some clarification in certain areas, such as in cases of special education students.

“It basically gives you an opportunity to sit down with the principal as the teacher, sit down with the parent as the teacher, and express what is going on,” he said. “So now the principal has had a chance to correct the behavior. Now you’re bringing the family in, you’re bringing the teacher in, you’re bringing the principal in to try to correct the behavior.”

Teachers and educational leaders say the law has been implemented inconsistently, and with potentially serious consequences. For example, statute mandates that students be suspended if removed from a classroom three times in one month.

Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, is the chair of the Senate Education Committee. She is also a third grade teacher and said she has heard from other teachers around the state that HB 2890 is only being implemented intermittently.

“It baffles me, it baffles me that you have a state law and people just decide that they don’t want to do it, or you know, that they don’t have to follow it,” Grady said.

Grady said once the law is passed, it is out of the hands of legislators, and it needs buy-in from everyone in the system. Not only are students being disrupted, she said school discipline is contributing to teachers leaving the profession.

“This is the number one thing that they have brought to me and said, ‘This is our number one issue,’” she said. “This is the problem that we think is facing education today, whether it’s learning, affects the learning of others, or whether it affects any other part of the school. It’s driving teachers away.”

Grady said she has spent the months between sessions listening to educators across the state, from teachers in classrooms to administrators and board of education members. She’s also spoken to parents and even companies involved in alternative education solutions to ensure she’s considering all of the state’s various needs.

As for a specific legislative solution, Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, indicated during a legislative lookahead event that alternative education for disruptive students will be a focus for lawmakers this session.

“What we need to do in the classroom is be able to take that disruptive student out, move them to a classroom where there’s cameras, behavior specialists, and allow those teachers to do their jobs without the disruption,” he said.

Grady said whether it be a clarification of HB 2890 or a new approach to alternative education, the legislature needs to take action. But she said part of what makes legislating the issue so difficult is schools are still dealing with the fallout of the state’s addiction crisis, leading to students with a lot of adverse childhood experiences.

“We have to find that balance of meeting the emotional needs of the traumatized child, but also making sure that that child’s trauma does not inflict trauma on somebody else,” Grady said. “And that’s the hardest part is it’s, you know, it’s not as cut and dry as saying, well, one way is great for everybody, because it’s not.”

Raleigh County Schools Embrace Alternative Approach To School Discipline Issues

An increase in disciplinary issues in schools is leading to a new approach in elementary schools across the state.

Rather than send students with the most serious disciplinary issues to a virtual learning or traditional Homebound program, Raleigh County has implemented an intensive academy that aims to address the traumas and triggers that are the core cause of the students’ behaviors.

Allen Sexton, director of special education for Raleigh County Schools, told the interim meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Education Sunday, Jan. 7 about the county’s alternative education program for elementary schools.

He said it was developed after observing similar existing programs in other counties such as Monongalia County and adapting it to fit Raleigh’s needs. Named the RCSD Four Academy, Sexton called it the fourth tier of academic support for the county’s elementary school students with severe disciplinary issues.

“We call it ‘T-4’ because we know that next layer of support that teachers are expecting, they know we can’t provide it at the school level,” he said. “Administrators at the school level and teachers are saying ‘Please help. We don’t know what to do next.’”

Sexton walked the legislators through the support process, starting with teaching students how to behave, observation of disciplinary issues in the classroom and finally to determining whether students have a disability or a conduct disorder.

“The labeling of a student with a disability is not a benign act, that is a label that follows them lifelong,” he said. “A lot of conduct disorders mirror a disability. My job as the special education director is to protect IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act) and make sure that we provide supports to students with disabilities, but I also am to make sure we’re not over-identifying. We don’t want to mislabel someone that will follow them the rest of their life.”

Many of the students that have been identified by the new program have high Adverse Childhood Experience scores, Sexton said, meaning they have had childhood trauma that manifests in negative behavior in the classroom. He said that data from traditional, exclusionary alternative education, such as virtual learning or Homeward Bound programs, showed behaviors did not improve when students returned to the classroom.

“When they come back, they often have the same or worse behaviors than what they did previously, so we’re dealing with those again,” Sexton said. “That’s what our board recognized in 2016, 17 is that we’re seeing the same behaviors.”

In comparison, Sexton said that only two of the 35 students that have gone through the new program since its implementation in 2019 have repeated high-level behaviors. He attributes that success to low student to teacher ratios – there are currently only eight students in the program – as well as specialized support.

“Those educators collaborate together with three aides…because as you can imagine, when you’re working with students that have the most challenging or difficult behaviors, you can reach your saturation point as well, you need a break,” he said.

The extra help ensures that everyone can maintain a very high level of professionalism and support for students. Sexton said students tend to participate in the program for six to nine months before being transitioned back to school with support, which includes teaching the teachers about the students’ needs and best practices.

“We’ve had a very high success rate, only having one student ever pulled back from the school setting, back to the T4 setting to provide additional support because the transition didn’t go well,” he said.

Del. Heather Tully, R-Nicholas, asked about the involvement of the families of disruptive students in the program. Sexton replied that families must agree to the terms of the program before a student is involved in the program, which includes a weekly family engagement day.

“Those days, sometimes families visit the center, they receive parent education, sometimes they perform tasks with their children,” he said. “Other times they report to our Community Health Agency, and they receive their family therapy or their individual therapies as well.”
Senate President Craig Blair indicated during a legislative lookahead event Friday that alternative education for disruptive students will be a focus for lawmakers in the upcoming regular session which begins Wednesday, Jan. 10.