In 2009, when the Kings Canyon Unified School District in California's rural Central Valley offered its 19 schools the opportunity to adopt a system that would reduce school suspensions and expulsions, Reedley High School jumped at the chance.
Today, Reedley is in its fourth year of changing a zero-tolerance policy that has failed this school and community miserably, just as every zero-tolerance policy across the country has. The school, which has 1,900 students, is feeling its way out of those draconian days by integrating PBIS -- Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support -- and entering into a unique partnership with the West Coast Mennonite Central Committee and the local police department to implement a successful restorative justice program.
This approach is already having remarkable effect. The school saw a 40% drop in suspensions from the 2010-2011 to the 2012-2013 school year -- from 401 to 249 suspensions involving 198 and 80 students, respectively. Expulsions went from 94 in 2010-2011 to 20 last year. But this year’s trends indicate that impressive decline may have stalled out.
Although everyone interviewed for this story – including the principal, learning director, and a teacher -- says that suspensions don't work, Reedley is still stuck with a harsh suspension policy that the district and the school board have barely loosened. Although the district was forward-thinking enough to support program changes and the school is beginning to deliver, like any entrenched system, the old ways of discipline pull hard against change, even if the data and the science that show the old ways damage kids are indisputable.
"It's been a journey," says Mary Ann Carousso head of student services. "We're taking it in pieces."
To read the rest of this article, part of a series of stories on trauma-informed schools, go to the article on ACEsTooHigh.com.
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