SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s elementary and middle school students won’t be suspended for things like falling asleep in class or talking back to the teacher under a bill signed by the state’s governor.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday he had signed a law banning public and charter school officials from suspending students for “willful defiance,” a broad category that includes disrupting class or willfully defying teachers.
California banned these types of suspensions for students up to third grade beginning in 2015. The law Newsom signed permanently bans these suspensions for grades four and five and temporarily restricts them for grades six through eight until 2025.
“We want the teacher to be able to teach their class and not have disruptive students, but we also want to minimize these suspensions,” said bill author Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley. “The more a child is suspended, the more likely they are to do bad in school and just do bad overall.”
The new law takes effect July 1 of next year. Teachers can still remove students from the classroom for willful defiance, but they could not be suspended.
When California banned willful suspensions up to third grade, suspensions fell by 30,000 in the first year. Since 2011, suspensions for willful defiance have dropped 82%, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
But data from the California Department of Education shows a disparity in who is getting suspended. Black students, while accounting for 5.6% of enrollment, made up 15.6% of all willful defiance suspensions in the 2017-18 school year. White students accounted for 20.2% of willful defiance suspensions while making up 23.2% of enrollment.
Lawmakers and school officials have been debating the issue for some time. Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Grown vetoed similar bills twice, once in 2012 and again last year, writing in a veto message: “Teachers and principals are on the front lines educating our children and are in the best position to make decisions about order and discipline in the classroom.”
This year, Skinner noted groups like the Association of California School Administrators supported the bill.
That’s nice. Let’s just give a bunch of third world animals a free pass to disrespect their educators. I hope all the teachers quit and move out of that shithole state.
This is no different than letting the lunatics run the asylum. Children need to be disciplined in order to learn right from wrong. Take that tool away from teachers and students will feel empowered to treat everyone with disrespect. When they reach adulthood that will lead to major problems.
Private schools would be an option if those who sent their children there were able to get the tax money they spent on their local school districts back.
Nothing surprises me about California anymore. It’s like every single elected official in the entire state is trying to drive everything into the ground. They love boasting about their economy and all that nonsense but their entire state sucks. It’s geographically beautiful but who wants to go visit it anymore? If you go to a California city you’re likely to catch some kind of medieval disease, step in human shit, or maybe get poked by a random hypodermic needle.
So now what they’ve decided to do is take one of the most basic fundamental rules of our educational system and break that too. Kids that act like little shits in class deserve to be humiliated by the teacher and suspended. They are disruptive to other students who are trying to learn and have no place in the classroom. None of that obviously matters in California though. I’m sure most of the kids in California public schools don’t even speak English anyway. I don’t really care what happens to them either.
Did you read the op. The suspension process was being abused. Righting wrongs is not driving anything into the ground. And it’s your fellow Americans living in California that are the constituents of their own elected officials.
No. It was not being abused. Blacks typically make up a smaller portion of the population but are generally more disruptive than the majority. They should be punished appropriately regardless of skin color. Being black shouldn’t give them a pass.
What the hell are you talking about? Have you not lived in the real world and been around inner city black kids? Don’t give me that fainting on the couch left wing bullshit. Be real.
Well, respectfully, you seem to be ignoring the very real institutional racism that’s holding back people of color, and worse, the overt hyper bigoted racist filth and hatred of people of color that fills the pages of this message board on a daily basis in the name of free speech. In fact, many members here express their filthy racism in their avatars and user names.
Amazing how these idiots can’t see anything but color and we’re the damn racists. This is exactly like the incarceration rate. If you commit offenses, you’re going to be impacted by the rules and consequences of those rules. We don’t need to focus on a problem and try to figure out how to get the suspension rates to equal the white rates, we need to focus on the problem and figure out how to get these disrespectful little shits to follow the rules. . . REGARDLESS of color.
I was born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I travel a lot for my work as a contractor to the Army but my primary residence is still in Vicksburg. My family has lived in this city for over 200 years.
Don’t even start in with me for a second about institutional racism and how bad black people have it. Black people have been given a tremendous amount of opportunities and help. So much so that too many of them have become dependent upon this help and don’t know how to pull themselves up by their boot straps anymore.
My family has been close with many black families here in Vicksburg for generations. We are all collectively well aware of the issues. It’s a frequent discussion at church. But if black people want to start getting ahead they need to stop being so dependent on the government and stop believing that they are victims of some kind of oppression. They need to start putting God back in their lives and putting family first. When that happens they can accomplish anything that any other group can.
I think people like you, even though you think you have good intentions, are actually the driving force on why many black people don’t advance.
Great point. All they do is take about skin color and then they have the nerve to call conservatives racist! A conservative would never pass a law that removes punishments just because they want to manipulate some race-related data points - not solve the actual problem.
True. I will never be so arrogant as to believe another human being cannot succeed without my help. Will I and have I offered a hand up for people struggling? Of course. Do I assume they need help based on skin color? Of course not. That would be very racist and very stupid.
These children are set up to fail with the lack of discipline needed for them to succeed professionally, in university and after. But hey, they can always cry “institutional racism” at shake their fists at the [insert founding fathers] monuments, not to realize that the institutional racism consists of the very system they voted and endorsed, i.e. lower disciplines in schools, and the welfare state, among other things.
Alot of these kids don’t come from suburban middle class homes.They have one parent at best that works a full time and part time job with little if any family support. By hanging out out with project or hood nggrs they develop this arrogant violent behavior.
Discipline should be done without regard to race or gender without fear of lawsuits.
Everyone has the same opportunity for higher education if qualified. There are plenty of non college educated jobs to be had.
The racism exists because blacks won’t get past slavery and Jim Crow Laws.When they don’t have any other answer,the race card is played.
Why should teachers disipline studenrs because they are the ones that will face the consequences. No one in this country should become a teacher.
