A bill that would make it easier to suspend or expel students from schools met with harsh testimony Thursday in a legislative committee.
“You’re going to put kids out of school for being kids,” said John Thompson, a St. Paul Public Schools worker.
State Rep. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls, is chief sponsor of the legislation that would remove the word “willful” from the current law.
Kresha said he put forward the proposal to spark debate after the Minnesota Supreme Court said in August that schools have to prove that students “willfully” broke the rules.
Some school leaders say that makes it more difficult for them to remove students who commit serious offenses.
“I’m hoping we can have the conversation, so we get to a respectable place and come back with a compromise that solves this problem,” Kresha told members of the House Education Innovation Policy Committee.
Thompson spoke in opposition to the bill, saying he believes it would worsen the already large discipline disparity between students of color and white students. In St. Paul schools, black students have been suspended or expelled much more often than white students.
“Kicking them out of school is a cop-out,” said Thompson. “We need graduations, not suspensions.”
In August, the state Supreme Court sided with a United South Central School District student, ruling that school leaders should not have expelled her for accidentally bringing a small pocketknife to school in her purse. After the knife was found during a random search, the student told school officials she had used it over the previous weekend while baling hay and forgot it was still in her purse.
In its decision, the court said state law requires schools officials to prove intent. Attorneys who represent public schools testified Thursday that the ruling makes it overly difficult to prove students who commit serious offenses did so intentionally.
“The standard the Supreme Court is holding the school districts to, to prove a willful violation, is higher than what a criminal prosecutor would have to prove in a criminal case,” said Peter Shaw, an attorney for the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district, the state’s fourth largest.
Attorney Andrea Jepsen, who argued the pocketknife case before the Supreme Court, disagreed with that characterization. She said her research into the origin of the statute found state lawmakers clearly wanted school officials to have to prove intentional misbehavior.
Jepsen added that district leaders have a good deal of discretion, but that they should face a high standard when making decisions about something as serious as removing a student from school. “We are talking about the loss of a child’s education,” she said.
Last year, state lawmakers created a task force to recommend to the Legislature ways to make school discipline policies more equitable. Among those ideas are increased funding for mental health services, better training for teachers and reviewing the impact of the recent court ruling.
Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, said she expected several more bills dealing with student discipline to come before the Education Innovation Policy Committee she chairs, which will also consider including a version of Kresha’s proposal in a broader education policy bill.