Three years ago, a Bolingbrook teenager pulled a steak knife from his lunch bag so he could slice an apple to share with his teacher. The teacher reported the incident to school administrators, who, under the district’s zero-tolerance weapons policy, recommended a two-year expulsion.
But Valley View District 365-U school board members found the punishment excessive and, instead, kicked the student out of school for only one semester.
“We have no tolerance for weapons, but we just did not feel a two-year expulsion really (is) a fit punishment for what this kid did,” said school board President Robert Rutkoski. “Two years out of school is a punishment we reserve for the worst cases, and we did not feel this was deserving of that treatment.”
Under Valley View’s policy– and by state law–school officials could have expelled the student for up to two calendar years. But the board’s decision highlights the wide latitude school board members have in imposing punishment and underscores the rarity of the ultimate two-year penalty.
Decatur officials have defended their decision to expel seven students for two years by pointing to the district’s six-sentence resolution, which simply declares a “no-tolerance position on school violence.”
But school officials across the state say they impose the two-year punishment in only the most egregious cases, and some can’t remember ever doing so.
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The state board does not keep statistics on why students are kicked out of school or the length of those expulsions, but Steven Drizin, an attorney with the Northwestern University Legal Clinics, Children and Family Justice, said multi-year dismissals are rare.
“It’s quite extreme and usually reserved for weapons-related offenses,” said Drizin, whose agency has represented hundreds of students kicked out of school. “But as zero-tolerance policies are taking hold, we are seeing more and more kids referred for expulsions. That’s why I argue that zero tolerance sometimes makes zero sense.”
In Chicago, Blondean Y. Davis, the public schools’ chief of schools and regions, said while the incident in Decatur was serious, fighting on public school grounds usually leads to a suspension, not an expulsion.
If the Decatur incident had happened in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest public school system, the students probably would have been given 10-day suspensions and required to complete counseling and guidance sessions before being allowed to return to class, Davis said.
Two-year expulsions are a relatively new phenomenon, according to Tom Hernandez, spokesman with the Illinois State Board of Education. Until 1995, school officials could expel students only for the remainder of the school year. In 1995, legislators passed a law that allowed expulsions for two school years.
They passed another law a year later that permits dismissals for two calendar years for “gross disobedience or misconduct.”
The law states that every district must adopt a student discipline policy, but the statute is silent on how to deal with acts of aggression, leaving those decisions up to individual school boards. Consequently, a punch thrown by a student in one district might result in a three-day in-school suspension, while in another district it might draw a two-year expulsion.
“Discipline is strictly a local issue, and we have no say-so, no control over what kind of punishment is meted out by school boards,” Hernandez said. “We’ve gotten involved in the Decatur incident only so far as offering advice, but we have no authority to tell the school board how they should punish students.”
Decatur has a discipline code that allows school board members to oust any student who causes or “attempts to cause physical injury” to a student or employee.
But the discipline policy in 2,300-student Downstate Harrisburg Unit School District 3 permits expulsions for only six reasons: aggressive behavior toward a school employee; possession of a weapon; arson; bomb threats; setting off a false fire alarm; and use of drugs or alcohol. Fighting is punishable by a three-day suspension and criminal charges.
In Orland Park, Stuart Swenson, director of student services at Community Consolidated School District 230, said officials do not take a two-year expulsion lightly and only reluctantly impose it in the most extreme cases.
“We have expelled kids for two years but only when a weapon was involved,” Swenson said. “In the case of, say, a fight, we’ve gone up to one year but two years is a long time and it would have to include more than simply fighting.”
Similarly, Carbondale High School students can get kicked out if they tote weapons, assault employees or use drugs or alcohol, said Supt. Steve Sabens. They can be expelled for fighting only if their “actions are considered life threatening.”
The one commonality among discipline policies is that they all allow broad latitude in doling out punishment. Even districts with zero-tolerance philosophies rarely issue blanket penalties, allowing wiggle room on virtually every case.
“We have a no-tolerance policy, but expulsion is never automatic because there is always tolerance under certain circumstances,” said John Day, director of community relations for Peoria School District 150.
Bob Rozycki, associate superintendent in Township High School District 211 in Palatine, said his district uses a “graduated discipline consequence” based on the incident and the discipline history of the student. “Our policy allows us to suspend or expel, but we certainly don’t expel every student who’s been in a fight,” Rozycki said.
Still, expulsions have soared in Illinois, and across the country. In the 1990-91 school year, 1,182 students were expelled in the state. Seven years later, that figure climbed to 2,744. And even though minorities make up only 40 percent of the state’s school-age population, they compose 58 percent of expulsions.
The high rate of minority expulsions and the sometimes arbitrary nature of zero-tolerance policies has raised the hackles of civil rights and students’ rights advocates.
In light of the Decatur controversy, state schools Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee has called for statewide public forums on expulsions and suspensions. McGee said he wants to examine whether the penalties are unfairly doled out to minorities and initiate a far-ranging discussion about alternative education for students who have been expelled.
“As a state board of education, we support local control of these decisions, but as a state board we need to be a leader and an authority in the state on educational matters,” said McGee, who spent two days in Decatur trying to forge a compromise between Rev. Jesse Jackson, who wants the students returned to school, and the school board that expelled them.
“Legally, I cannot force (school board members) to change their decisions, but I want to draw public attention to this issue and get people thinking about it,” McGee said.