Backpacks are placed outside a classroom at Louise Van Meter Elementary School on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022, in Los Gatos, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
By Elissa Miolene, The Mercury News, October 30, 2023
Across California, two groups of children living among the most difficult environments — foster youth and those experiencing homelessness — are also the most likely to be sent home through punitive, out-of-school suspensions, new research shows.
That’s according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Oakland-based National Center for Youth Law, which published a report Monday examining suspension data throughout the state. In 2021-22, the report found that California educators punished students who are in foster care with out-of-school suspensions at the highest rate: For every 100 foster students, 77 days of instruction were lost due to out-of-school suspensions, compared to an average of just 10 days for all students.
Homeless students were the second most likely to be suspended, with 26 days lost per 100 students. Despite the high figures, those numbers actually represent a slight drop from before the pandemic. In 2018-19, the year before COVID-19 drove students from the classroom, homeless students lost 28.5 days of school due to suspensions, while foster students lost 83.
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