Private vs Public school debate

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Here is an article that proves how bad mobile's schools are from Sundays mobile register

One student in every six suspended

Middle schools have highest suspension rates, according to school system report

Sunday, June 17, 2007

By RENA HAVNER and SUSAN DAKER

Staff Reporters

About one in every six children enrolled in Mobile County public schools was suspended this past school year, with middle school students getting into the most trouble, according to a report released recently by the school system.

Eight of the 10 schools with the highest percentages of suspended students were middle schools. Those eight each had more than 40 percent of their pupils sent home for bad behavior.

The totals do not specify the activities for which the students were suspended, which can range from not wearing the proper school uniform or talking in class, to fighting or bringing a gun to school.

Andrea Barbour, the Mobile County Public School System's assistant superintendent who handles discipline issues, said most often students are suspended for minor offenses, such as carrying a cellular telephone to school.

According to the Student Code of Conduct, a student can be suspended the first time that he is caught with a cell phone, which officials said might be used to cheat on tests or to text message each other during class.

Suspensions can last one, three, five or 10 days.

"The public does not need to take this list as a red flag that our schools are in difficult situations with behaviors," Barbour said. "The vast majority of these are minor offenses. They should not look at this and say, 'Oh, my gosh, this is a bad school. I'm not sending my child there.'"

As an example, Barbour mentioned Hillsdale Middle School in west Mobile, which had the highest percentage of student suspensions at 58. More than three-fourths of the 375 suspensions at Hillsdale were for minor offenses, Barbour said.

Very rarely are students caught bringing weapons or drugs to school.

Barbour pointed out that no Mobile County schools are listed as being "persistently dangerous schools" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which has a provision allowing students in such schools to transfer out.

All Mobile County schools follow the system's Code of Conduct. While it is often left up to principals to determine at what point a student should be sent home, some of the more severe offenses result in automatic suspensions. Officials have said that some schools are more likely to suspend students than others.

In-school suspensions were not counted as suspensions for the purpose of the report.

Besides Hillsdale, the following schools, all middle schools, suspended at least half of their students last year: Calloway-Smith (54 percent); Pillans off Dauphin Island Parkway (53 percent) and Mobile County Training School in Plateau (50 percent).

Other middle schools with high numbers were: Chastang in Trinity Gardens (45 percent); Denton off Pleasant Valley Road (42 percent); Scarborough in northwest Mobile (41 percent); and Washington in Toulminville (41 percent).

One elementary school, Fonvielle in Toulminville, made the top 10 list at 42 percent, due in large part, according to Principal Tomica Bradley, to the school's zero-tolerance policy on fighting.

The high school with the highest number of suspensions was Davidson off Pleasant Valley Road, which sent home 41 percent of its students.

A similar list for Baldwin County public schools has not been made available.

Davidson Principal Lewis Copeland said he doesn't issue warnings to students before he suspends them. At the beginning of each school year, he said, students receive the Student Code of Conduct, and he considers that their warning.

If any student utters a curse word, leaves campus for lunch or is late to class four times, for example, they are immediately suspended, Copeland said.

"If a child is 14 years old, he should be able to read the book and follow the rules," Copeland said. "We're responsible for teaching a student. A high school student should be old enough to come to school and behave, and my teachers should not have to spend time telling them how to behave."

Calloway-Smith Principal D.H. Robinson said she makes her suspension decisions on a case-by-case basis. If a student curses at a teacher or is physically aggressive, she suspends him immediately. But sometimes, she said, students receive three warnings; other times, they may get nine.

"I look at how my teacher writes up a recommendation. She states everything she's tried. Sometimes that means keeping them after school or having them come in for Saturday school. They've called the parent. They've had the conferences. They'll list everything they've done to try to reprimand the problem," Robinson said. "After that, I'll be honest, it's time for us to suspend."

The fact that middle schools have a higher suspension rate than elementary and high schools did not surprise Mobile County school officials.

Over the last several months, system officials have identified middle schools as one of the system's biggest weaknesses and adopted a plan to revamp the 12 most troubled middle schools.

As part of that effort, the schools will be responsible for developing discipline plans. And administrators were shuffled around so that middle schools will have principals "who will be able to set the tone in the schools and set expectations from Day One," said Linda Carroll, an assistant superintendent.

Barbour said one way to solve some of the discipline problems would be to put more social workers and attendance officers in schools. Social workers can help identify students' underlying problems, while attendance officers can actually drive to students' house and pick them up if they are skipping class.

A limited number of high school students who frequently misbehave can be removed from their school and enrolled either at the Continuous Learning Center or in the Phoenix Program, an alternative school run by the 100 Black Men of Mobile. System officials have talked about opening an alternative school for middle school students and maybe even eventually for elementary children.

Some school and law enforcement officials met Wednesday to discuss discipline problems in the county's public schools. At the meeting, school officials released the suspension totals for the 2006-07 year.

Officials there proposed opening an alternative school at the Strickland Youth Center for fourth- through eighth-graders, who have been or are in risk of a short-term suspension. The proposed site is a modular building that formerly housed youth inmates behind Strickland.

"I was not surprised to see the suspension numbers, I knew it was 18,000 kids," said Jayne Carson, a counselor with the Mobile County district attorney's office. "There were quite a few people at the table who were surprised."

Carson works with students through the Helping Families Initiative, which targets students with behavior problems.

"It's very disappointing to see the numbers as high as they are," school board member Ken Megginson said.

He questioned how the school system would be able to pay for an alternative school.

Mobile County Juvenile Judge Edmond Naman said the youth center would provide the building, and he hopes that there will be some federal funding that will cover other costs.

While the proposal is still being fine-tuned, the general idea would be to provide counseling for the students as well as to continue teaching them their regular school curriculum, Carson said. "Nobody is looking at this as being punitive," she said.

Carson said there is a gap in service for students on short-term suspension, who are sent home and probably have no supervision.

Students who have been suspended from school in the past don't think it's a big deal to get suspended again, Carson said, so they continue their poor behavior. The report showed that many students received more than one suspension last year.

All totaled, 10,147 of Mobile County's 64,290 students were suspended last year, according to the report. Those students were suspended 18,937 times, averaging nearly two times per student.

Some students were suspended for skipping school, which Carson said doesn't make much sense.

Carson said that if funding were unlimited, she would like to have an alternative school in each of the five school districts, so the effort would be community-based. Until then, Carson said, "I think this is a darn good start."

[AUslug 1]

It is your choice as a parent where you want your child educated and I have no problem with either choice. It just irritates me when people call teachers "glorified babysitters", that is insulting to a profession that gets no respect or even a thank you once in a while. My mother is going into her 30th year of teaching and she has a masters, yup that is a babysitter if I ever saw one. The educational system is nothing but one big game of pass the buck starting with the parents.

Actually, I think teachers are heroic people. But "babysitting" isn't really referring to them. It's referring to a system that is more occupying the kid's day with busywork than actually giving the child knowledge. I've know teachers who entered the workforce idealistically, and have become burned out by the strange politics, the utter defiance of reason, and the certainty that they're working with an educational model that guarantees mediocrity.

Good points, I have never understood why politics are so involved when it comes to education.

[CCTAU 3,327]

It is your choice as a parent where you want your child educated and I have no problem with either choice. It just irritates me when people call teachers "glorified babysitters", that is insulting to a profession that gets no respect or even a thank you once in a while. My mother is going into her 30th year of teaching and she has a masters, yup that is a babysitter if I ever saw one. The educational system is nothing but one big game of pass the buck starting with the parents.

Actually, I think teachers are heroic people. But "babysitting" isn't really referring to them. It's referring to a system that is more occupying the kid's day with busywork than actually giving the child knowledge. I've know teachers who entered the workforce idealistically, and have become burned out by the strange politics, the utter defiance of reason, and the certainty that they're working with an educational model that guarantees mediocrity.

Good points, I have never understood why politics are so involved when it comes to education.

Really? It's not like the budget for education is in the billions. Money IS what politics is all about.

LINK to BILLIONS