Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools officials met Tuesday afternoon to discuss what is and isn't working in the district’s student code of conduct.
WS/FCS rolled out the new Code of Character, Conduct, and Support in 2022, after spending a year developing it with community stakeholders.
It provides a matrix of varying levels of offenses and corresponding consequences and restorative interventions. The goal was to unify the district in handling student behavioral issues, and more specifically, reduce out-of-school suspensions (OSS) and racial disparities in discipline.
But some school board members, like Leah Crowley, expressed concerns at the Tuesday meeting that teachers have been without support in handling disruptive students.
“It’s not working keeping kids who are repetitively disruptive in the classroom. That's what's burning out our teachers," she said. "That's what's making parents angry, and having them pull kids out.”
The data from this school year shows the number of out-of-school suspensions did decrease slightly, but it’s still the district’s second most-used consequence. And there are still racial disparities.
Black students account for nearly 61% of out-of-school suspensions for kindergarten through third grade, even though they make up about a third of the district’s population.
Vice Chair Alex Bohannon spoke about the need to recognize the perspectives of educators, but also of district officials who want to reduce the loss of instructional time for students.
"If teachers are saying, 'I would rather remove the students from our classrooms that are causing me issues and be able to teach everyone else,' then we have to contend with that," he said. "If we, as a district, are saying that we understand that OSS doesn't work, and it basically puts the problem out temporarily, then they come back and it's causing problems, and it's not really addressing recidivism — which is what we want to address — then we have to deal with that as well."
District officials say they plan to revise elements of the code this month, and continue to work on implementation next year.
Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.