Panel proposes school discipline changes

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 24, 2008 - Page: 4B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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A special panel Wednesday recommended modest changes to the East Baton Rouge Parish school system student disciplinary rules, including setting a higher bar for principals punishing children who are disobedient, tardy or who violate the dress code.

The 18-member Disciplinary Policy Review Committee is made up of a cross section of school employees, as well as one School Board member, Tarvald Smith.

The committee annually reviews the school system’s student handbook, which contains student disciplinary rules. The School Board will consider their recommendations and approve the student rules for the 2008-2009 school year, likely at its May 15 meeting.

Much of the discussion Wednesday was dominated by a rule change last year: allowing students to possess, but not use cell phones and MP3 players during class time.

School officials made the change because Louisiana law allows students to use cell phones in emergencies, implying they have the ability to possess them at school.

Smith said that law did not apply to IPods and game players. He suggested banning all such devices, except laptops from schools.

“I don’t see why we can’t prohibit this,” he said.

Domoine Rutledge, general counsel for the school system, persuaded Smith to hold off. He noted that sometimes students use such devices before and after school when they’re on the bus or engaged in extracurricular activities.

Capitol Middle School Principal LaMont Cole worried that he would spend all day looking for electronic devices.

“That would be very difficult to police,” he said.

The committee, however, did recommend some changes for the 2008-2009 school year:

• Students would now have to “willfully disobey” a school employee, rather than just disobey them to get written up.
• Students who are repeatedly tardy or violate the dress code could not be expelled on that basis alone. Principals could still potentially expel these same students if they judged them to be willfully disobedient repeatedly.
• The dress code would specify not only that students wear pants with belts and wear them at the “natural waist level,” but also that the pants “shall not be excessively baggy nor sagging.”
• Schools could discipline students for misbehavior they engage in “off school grounds” even if students are doing things “independent of classes and school-sponsored activities.” The school system could intervene as long as “the interest of the system is involved.”

Attorney Ken Sills explained that this gives schools more leeway to discipline, for instance, students who are discovered off-campus hurting or planning to harm fellow students.

The committee also removed a specific reference to a traditional disciplinary option, a “supervised work detail.”

Rutledge said he’s not a fan of having schools force students do menial work because of possible legal liability if a child gets hurt during such activities. “It would behoove administrators to be more creative,” he said.