New law makes it difficult for schools to suspend or expel students, and this is generally a good idea.

In this reaction essay, a student discusses her feelings about the new law changing the educational laws to make it more difficult to use expulsions and suspensions in Illinois. 

I chose to write about Senate Bill 100 (105 ILCS 5/1-2, Public Act 99-0456), which was just passed this year. This bill makes it very hard for a child to be suspended or expelled from school. In order for a child to be expelled or suspended the approval for that punishment must go all the way up through the school board. This bill gets rid of the zero tolerance approach to establishing discipline and a safe learning space in schools. 

I believe this is a good idea in most cases. It helps children who have had to miss class be able to catch  up with the rest of the class. I believe it also helps because before this law, children would see that if they get suspended their punishment is more like a reward: they get to sit at home instead of going to school. Now those kids must stay in school and just may not get to be with their classmates all day. I feel like for some kids they shouldn’t be sent home because it may not be safe for them, and school is supposed to be a safe place. If they get in trouble at school, it should be taken care of at school ,and the child should not be sent home to a unsafe place. I know at the schools I work at they have created a thing called a buddy room. When a child gets in trouble they are sent to the buddy room to cool down and write out what went wrong and how they can fix it. The bill states that a child who it suspended for longer then four days they will be offered support services and mental health support. I agree with this also, even though the child was in the wrong, somehow to be missing this much school they do need help to make sure that they know their school things. The child also may need the mental health care because maybe there is actually something going on in their emotions or mind to cause them to act out the way they are acting. This is why I do agree with this bill, because it is better for the school district and the growing population.  This is all public knowledge and can be googled, but as I am working in the school district, things like this are things I must know and work hard to enforce and get approved.

SB 100 is very significant, since zero tolerance policies were popular for years, and this act repudiates those laws.  Do you have any ideas about why some people might have opposed this act?  It passed with broad support, so it makes me wonder about what the people in the legislature thought about the practices that were common up until this year.  

Ending reliance on Suspension and Expulsion in Illinois Schools with Senate Bill 100

        Reaction Paper about law to end zero tolerance tendencies to suspend or expel students.

In August of 2015, Bill SB 100 was been passed into legislation by the Illinois General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Rauner. Senate Bill 100 was created by the group; Voices of Youth in Chicago due to their concern for children who were not receiving instructional time because of suspensions or expulsions. This new law will require schools to adjust their forms of discipline. They are now required to exhaust every possible form of disciplinary action before expulsion, suspension, or referral to alternative school will be allowed. This was an effort to keep children in school and to minimize the amount of instruction time lost due to suspensions and expulsions by decreasing the usage of those forms of punishment (NCTV, 2016). 

I fully support this bill because suspensions and expulsions seem to be more problematic rather than a solution. They cause children to lose instruction time and fall behind in classwork, which is not beneficial to either the instructors or student. Students may also be getting sent home to unhealthy situations. The root of the problem may be within their household and sending them back there may make it worse. If the disruptive student may be acting out due to bad situations at home, then the school ought to provide a safer and healthier environment where the student can learn and get away from family troubles. 

A site maintained by the Voices of Youth in Chicago mentions the idea of suspension and expulsion being the cause of “pushing students out of the school system and into the juvenile” (Voyce,2014). I agree with this because suspensions can lead to students falling behind and dropping out of school and getting into illegal activity. With this law, schools are required to allow students to make up work that they have missed if they are suspended. 

Bill 100 will hopefully keep students in school and therefore better their chances at a good future. 

Source: http://www.nctv17.com/district-204-and-senate-bill-100/

http://voyceproject.org/campaigns/campaign-common-sense-discipline/sb100/ 

 

It's just a reaction essay, so I guess it's okay that you didn't explore while people might oppose this law, or why the policies of suspensions and expulsions became so widespread and common.  It seems to me that this law requires a complimentary law that helps (and funds) school attempts to make classrooms safe and supportive. I suppose schools will use special classrooms or study rooms and tutoring to deal with discipline problems that have until recently been addressed with suspensions and expulsions.  I suppose when it comes to actual fighting or threats, schools could always just call in police and encourage students and teachers to press criminal charges for assault and intimidation, and let the courts deal with the worst discipline problems.

You didn't put this paper in the context of the general criticism of "zero tolerance" as part of a "school-to-prison pipeline". We know (and we have known for about 25 years) how to identify young children who will be most likely to have discipline problems or end up in juvenile justice detention, and we also know how to provide supports to such children in their schools in ways that drastically reduce their chances of ending up in serious trouble (and causing serious problems for others).  And yet, there has been more political will for locking up people than for doing preventive interventions to reduce behavior problems in schools. 

Does the law provide any extra financing to help schools do preventive work or offer services to help students with behavior problems?

You did not mention that the people who pushed this bill were actual students from Chicago.  This new law is exciting because it came from people who were very young, and in some cases too young even to vote.