By Jennifer Mrozowski and John Byczkowski
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When it comes to disciplining wayward school kids, Greater Cincinnati tops the lists.
Just last year:
• Cincinnati Public Schools expelled students 645 times, more than any district in the state and nearly four times the expulsions in Cleveland or Columbus, both much larger districts.
• Of the 10 Ohio school districts with highest expulsion rates, five were in Greater Cincinnati.
• Schools in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky suspended students for at least a day on more than 40,000 occasions - sending an average of 220 kids home every school day.
Big-city expulsions
Cincinnati Public Schools expelled more students in 2002-03 than any other
big Ohio city school district: |
| District |
Expulsions |
Per 100 students |
| Cincinnati |
645 |
1.51 |
| Toledo |
492 |
1.38 |
| Dayton |
266 |
1.34 |
| Youngstown |
108 |
1.08 |
| Akron |
182 |
0.62 |
| Canton |
40 |
0.32 |
| Columbus |
162 |
0.25 |
| Cleveland |
163 |
0.23 |
|
Source: Ohio Department of Education; Enquirer research
More:
• Top 10 in expulsion rates
• Expulsions at local schools
• Find your school.
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Day in and day out, elementary, middle- and high-school students are turned out of school for carrying weapons, sexually harassing classmates, assaulting teachers and beating up on other students. The get-tough stance is so widespread that two-thirds of local districts expelled students last year, an Enquirer analysis of school disciplinary records shows.
Schools say they have no choice but to kick kids out when they create crisis situations or risk the safety of others.
"We don't turn our backs on incidents that are in our books and break the code of conduct," says Aaron Mackey, associate superintendent of Princeton schools, which issued 76 expulsions and 2,401 out-of-school suspensions last year. "There are things that happen where we don't think a slap on the wrist is the way to go."
But now, a backlash may be growing, led by parents, educators and community leaders who say schools are overreacting and the punishments don't work.
Cincinnati schools superintendent Alton Frailey worries that out-of-school punishments are often misguided. Troubled kids don't benefit when they're sent home with no schoolwork and few prospects for returning to class prepared to keep up, he says. His district issued 13,200 out-of-school suspensions last year.
Frailey says those numbers suggest the district is failing children. He started a program this month in which troubled high school students enroll in special classes at Taft Information Technology High School in West End or Withrow High School in Hyde Park. Instead of being sent home with no work, kids now receive counseling and instruction in academic courses.
"We have to stop suspending and expelling kids to the street," the superintendent says. "Our response has gotten to where we remove them from the school system. We cannot continue with that being our response."
Four expulsions a day
In Cincinnati Public Schools, violence and misbehavior result in nearly four students getting expelled, on average, every school day. Expulsion, the most severe discipline, keeps students out of school for at least 11 days and up to a year for offenses including alcohol or drug use, sexual assault, robbery and possession of a gun.
Out-of-school suspensions, for one to 10 days, are given for infractions such as fighting and disorderly conduct.
Among recent cases: A fifth-grader at Schwab School in Northside was expelled for 11 days for bringing a knife to school.
An eighth-grader at Quebec Heights School in Price Hill was expelled for 80 days after pressing another student up against a garbage bin and sexually assaulting him with a pencil or crayon.
A 10th-grader at Withrow Traditional High School in Hyde Park was expelled for 70 days because the student "stomped" on another kid, causing face and body bruises.
Kristin Greene of Over-the-Rhine says her fifth-grade daughter was attacked in September by three students in the girls' locker room at Washington Park School. The girls beat her daughter with a belt on the back of her legs. Each girl received a 10-day suspension, Greene says.
"I would have liked for them to be expelled, one, for the viciousness of the attack and, second of all, because these children have been chronic problems to the school for years," Greene says.
Even the youngest students sometimes use profanity toward teachers, says David Schmitz, principal at Taft Elementary in Mount Auburn. He says that's a three-day suspension.
"The kind of behavior we see today is 100 times bolder than when we were growing up," he says. "Most people would be appalled."
Cincinnati school officials won't talk about individual cases. But they say that extreme misbehavior in the classroom makes it nearly impossible to teach the mostly well-behaved students who want to learn in a safe place.
"The point is to not let them either endanger other kids or totally disrupt their ability to learn," says Tom Mooney, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
Mooney helped negotiate a tougher discipline policy for Cincinnati schools about a decade ago. At the time, he says, 45 percent of teachers surveyed said discipline problems disrupted classroom instruction "a great deal."
Today, as then, disruptive students must be ousted from school, he says. "But we believe the best option is to create more alternative placements of high quality."
Does it work?
Some students and parents say that current forms of discipline are hardly productive, especially in states like Ohio, which don't require alternative educational opportunities for kids forced out of school. In Kentucky, expelled students must be educated in other settings while they are not in their regular schools.
Most students interviewed for this story say they or their peers don't mind getting sent home, where they are free to enjoy video games and television. It's better, they say, than the rigid, quiet rooms that often characterize in-school suspension.
"You should send kids to a learning center or somewhere so they're not at home where they can do whatever they want," says Ronald Hale, 15, a 10th-grader who was suspended twice last year for fighting at Hughes Center in University Heights.
"When you're at home, you just sleep late and watch TV," he says.
Jay Steinau, a senior at Walnut Hills High School in Evanston, was suspended for kissing a girl in the hallway. His parents punish him when he gets in trouble by making him do chores such as painting a fence and polishing silver. But many parents just leave their children alone, Steinau says.
"I don't think kids really mind too much getting a three-day break from school," he says.
Educators, too, lament the time lost for those students.
"We are beginning to accept and believe that out-of-school suspension and expulsion are not the best way to help children," says Jennifer Tribble, a kindergarten teacher at Cincinnati's South Avondale Elementary and a member of the district's discipline committee.
"Children need to be in school to learn," she says.
Crimes during expulsions
Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon says her court sees young offenders facing charges for criminal offenses committed during expulsions from school. She's concerned that some kids expelled from school are really expelled to homes that are ill-equipped to help them work through problems.
"So many of these children are coming from disenfranchised, dysfunctional families that relying on the parent to step up to the plate is a little bit naïve," she says.
Even caring parents can't always help their children.
Fifth-grader Fenitra Long, 11, has been suspended so many times at Heberle Elementary that her mother, Paula Long, has lost count.
Fenitra was out for more than 20 days two years ago for bringing a butter knife to school, her mother says. The girl says she was tired of a boy picking on her and wanted to scare him. But she says she had no intention of using it.
Long says her daughter also was suspended for repeatedly getting out of her seat and arguing or being defiant to teachers. Fenitra attended Project Succeed, a Cincinnati public school for students with behavior problems for the first half of this school year, but is back at Heberle now. She was suspended this month for three days for fighting, her mother says.
"I don't know what else to do," Long says. "I can't beat her to death. I don't let her go outside. I make sure she eats. But other than that, all the fun little things, I take them away."
Long says suspending her daughter makes things worse: "She's really, really falling behind."
11 days for a nail clipper
Some educators attribute Greater Cincinnati's high discipline numbers to vigilant reporting by officials and a high percentage of poor students bringing troubles from home. Others say conservative Hamilton County, from its schools to its courts, is renowned for being intolerant of bad behavior.
Some experts say expulsions and suspensions have soared nationwide since implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act a decade ago. The policies require suspension or expulsion for specific offenses, such as bringing drugs and alcohol to school, pulling a fire alarm or fighting.
Elaine Fink, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati and a critic of zero tolerance, says her agency represents families in about 50 expulsion cases a year in seven Southwest Ohio counties.
One recent case involved an 8-year-old second-grader who, in spring 2002, brought a nail clipper to her Cincinnati public school. Another child saw it and thought it was a knife. The second-grader was sent home and avoided expulsion only after Legal Aid interceded. Still, she was out of school for 11 days, Fink says.
"In many cases, we are incredulous that they want to put kids out," Fink says. "Zero tolerance, in its worst incarnation, suspends discretion, judgment and intelligence."
Educators also are weary about expelling students because of high-stakes federal rules requiring schools to show annual, academic improvement. Students who have been expelled or suspended usually return to the classroom, where they have to take state tests along with everyone else.
If the students can't perform, and their schools don't improve enough, officials have to allow students to transfer to higher-performing schools or overhaul their curriculums. Cincinnati Public Schools are struggling to move up from their current bottom state ranking for performance, labeled "academic emergency."
Considering everything that's at stake, John Gilligan, Cincinnati school board member and former Ohio governor, says the community should be alarmed at the rates of expulsions and suspensions.
"Unless one starts out with the proposition that we have a disproportionate number of bad kids - and I don't believe that is the case - then there is something amiss here," he says.
"We need to look at that. It isn't a helpful educational device to exclude kids. That's just washing your hands of them."
E-mail jmrozowski@enquirer.com and johnb@enquirer.com
Ohio's Top
10 expulsion rates
