Dallas ISD considers community service, parenting classes instead of alternative school
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Dallas ISD considers community service, parenting classes instead of alternative school

Dallas students who misbehave may receive community service or tutoring rather than a stint in alternative school.

DISD leaders want more options for dealing with students who get in trouble, which could also include parenting classes for guardians.

School districts have faced scrutiny for years over the discipline methods they use to address student misbehavior. Dallas ISD officials are weighing a code of conduct change that could have students do community service rather than serve time in alternative school.

Keisha Crowder Davis, the district’s director of student engagement and support, said the idea is to give campus administrators another tool to address behavior problems while still helping kids.

“We’ve taken the restorative approach as opposed to always penalizing our students,” she said.

The proposal builds on a Dallas ISD discipline overhaul that’s been years in the making. It’s part of a broader plan to make campuses more equitable, in acknowledgement that suspensions, expulsions and alternative school placements disproportionately affect students of color.

Proposed revisions to the district’s code of conduct — which will be voted on later this summer — include a variety of approaches in lieu of sending a student to DAEP, Texas’ moniker for disciplinary alternative schools.

Among them is an option for six hours of work for the student, which could be community service, tutoring or a project tailored to a certain issue.

“It’s vague intentionally because it gives us some space to get creative,” said Thomas Jefferson High School principal Ben Jones, who served on the code of conduct task force.

A parent would also need to complete three hours of classes designed to provide guidance on what’s going on with the child, as well as to review the student’s academic and behavioral progress.

Having these alternatives to traditional discipline is intended to get kids back on track, such as those who consistently skipped class or who are disrespectful to teachers in a disruptive way.

“These aren’t the kind of infractions you need to exclude a student from school for,” Jones said. “I would rather continue to pour into that kid and that family and support this success than give that problem to someone else to solve for a few weeks and then take them back and hope that it changed.”

This path would not be used for the most serious offenses, such as assault or drug possession. DAEP would remain on the table for a variety of issues.

Dallas was among the first cities in Texas to prohibit kicking out kids in prekindergarten through second grade except in the most extreme cases, which later became state law in 2017.

DISD took that approach a step further after the pandemic. Trustees voted to eliminate nearly all suspensions — both in- and out-of-school — and replace them with trips to “reset centers,” where students could stay in school while working on their behavior. The district focused on restorative justice, including ways to use social-emotional learning to help students work through issues via appropriate responses.

Thousands of Dallas students still are sent to alternative school each year. Students must go to DAEP for certain serious offenses, such as selling drugs or assaulting someone.

But many end up in DAEP based on a campus administrator’s discretion. These placements are generally for lower-level offenses.

In the 2022-23 school year, state data shows DISD logged roughly 1,000 alternative school placements for discretionary reasons. Nearly 2,300 were mandatory.

The proposed code of conduct change in DISD is reminiscent of another recent discipline change.

A new state law requires that students caught vaping on campus be assigned a stint in DAEP, though local district leaders are given flexibility in how long the punishment lasts.

A Dallas high schooler caught for the first time with a nicotine vape faces a 20-day placement in alternative school. But if that student completes a substance abuse intervention program, the punishment is reduced to five days. DISD parents also must attend a half-day orientation for the shortened term. The district offers these sessions on Saturdays.

The various requirements for parental involvement could be difficult for some guardians to participate in, depending on work schedules and other factors. Jones said the district should consider equity implications and make the classes available at a wide variety of times.

“We hear pretty often from parents, ‘Yeah, we struggle with this behavior at home too,’ ” Jones said. “Well cool, you know, let’s help each other out.”

Trustee Joyce Foreman said she has questions and needs more input before voting on the proposed changes to the code of conduct.

“If children don’t feel like they have consequences to their actions, what is to make them change their actions?” she said. She noted that the “reset” approach is working in some places but not others.

Crowder Davis stressed that the district’s top priority is ensuring schools are safe and orderly. Still, a “cookie cutter approach” to discipline isn’t needed, she said.

Shamonica Wiggins Mayes, a DISD parent volunteer, said she is encouraged by the proposed change. Just sending a child to alternative school isn’t always the answer, she said, adding that she remembers kids returning from such punishments with worse behavior.

“Community service could really help kids,” Wiggins Mayes said. “This will make parents make their children behave, if they get affected too.”

Miguel Solis, a former DISD trustee now with The Commit Partnership, said he’s heartened by the way district leaders continue to reform discipline policies. The way they’ve made changes — after confronting racial inequities — could be a model for other schools, he said.

“What you haven’t seen along the totality of the process has been any major regression towards historical practices,” Solis said.

The proposed code of conduct also adds a new offense: Hate speech. It could be punished with alternative school.

The offense is defined in the draft document as “any form of expression motivated in whole or in part by the individual’s bias against a group or class of person on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, skin color, sex/gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender identification, gender, expression, religion, disability, or age that causes a true threat, incites a school disruption, discriminatory harassment or hostile school environment.”

District leaders said they’ve dealt with instances of students using derogatory language, directed at a certain person, related to their race or gender.

“Hate speech, derogatory language, and offensive behavior is not tolerated at Dallas ISD. Our schools are safe havens where we welcome inclusivity and celebrate all cultures, ethnicities, and religions,” Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde recently said, in response to allegations of antisemitism at a DISD high school.

Former trustee Edwin Flores, who left the board last month, urged the district to proceed with caution and ensure such a rule isn’t enforced more strictly in one neighborhood over another.

“As one of the lawyers in the group, this is a serious question that needs to be addressed with a lot of training,” he said.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

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