In Dallas, misbehaving students can receive community service and tutoring instead of attending alternative schools.
DISD leaders want to provide more options for dealing with troubled students, potentially including parenting classes for parents.
Keisha Crowder Davis, the district’s director of student engagement and support, said the idea is to give campus administrators new tools to address behavioral issues while helping students.
“We have always taken a restorative approach rather than punishing students,” she said.
The proposal builds on Dallas Independent School District discipline reforms years in the making and is part of a broader plan to make campuses more equitable by acknowledging that suspensions, expulsions and alternative school placements disproportionately impact students of color.
Proposed revisions to the district’s code of conduct, set to be voted on later this summer, include a variety of approaches instead of sending students to DAEPs, Texas’ name for disciplinary alternative schools.
Among them, students have the option to work six hours, which could be community service, tutoring or projects tailored to a specific problem.
“It’s intentionally vague to give people some room to be creative,” said Ben Jones, principal of Thomas Jefferson High School, who is a member of the code of conduct task force.
Parents also must complete a three-hour class designed to provide guidance on what is happening with their child and review the student’s academic and behavioral progress.
The goal of these alternatives to traditional discipline is to get children who frequently skip classes or behave in a disruptive manner toward teachers back on track.
“This is not the type of infraction that requires removing a student from school,” Jones said. “We want to remain committed to that child and their family and support their success, rather than having someone else resolve the issue for a few weeks and then bringing them back to school and hoping that things have improved.”
This approach does not apply to the most serious crimes, such as assault and drug possession, and DAEP remains on the table for a range of issues.
Dallas was one of the first cities in Texas to ban expulsion of students from pre-kindergarten through second grade except in extreme circumstances, a move that later became state law in 2017.
DISD has taken this approach a step further since the pandemic: The board voted to eliminate nearly all suspensions, both in and out of school, and instead implement visits to “reset centers,” where students can improve their behavior while remaining in school. The district is focusing on restorative justice, including how social-emotional learning can be used to help students solve problems through appropriate responses.
Dallas still sends thousands of students to alternative schools each year, and students who commit certain serious crimes, such as selling drugs or assault, must go to DAEP.
However, many students are sent to DAEP at the discretion of campus administrators. These disciplinary actions are generally taken for low-level offenses.
For the 2022-23 school year, DISD recorded about 1,000 alternative school placements for discretionary reasons, about 2,300 of which were mandatory, according to state data.
The proposed changes to DISD’s code of conduct are reminiscent of another recent discipline change.
The new state law requires that students found vaping on campus face DAEP disciplinary action, but gives local school district leaders flexibility on the length of the punishment.
A Dallas high school student was sentenced to 20 days in alternative school after being caught with nicotine e-cigarettes for the first time, but the suspension will be reduced to five days if the student completes a substance abuse intervention program. DISD parents must also attend a half-day orientation for the shortened semester. The district is holding those sessions on Saturdays.
Different requirements for parent participation can be difficult for some parents to participate depending on work schedules and other factors, Jones said, and school districts should consider equity and allow classes to be available at different times.
“We hear quite often from parents that, ‘Yeah, we struggle with this behavior at home, too,'” Jones said. “Well, OK, let’s help each other out.”
Board member Joyce Foreman said she had questions and wanted more input before voting on the proposed code of conduct changes.
“If kids don’t feel the consequences of their actions, how are they going to change their behavior?” she said, noting that the “reset” approach has worked in some places but not in others.
Crowder Davis stressed that the district’s top priority is ensuring safety and order in schools, but she said there is no need for a “one-size-fits-all approach” to discipline.
Shamonica Wiggins Mays, a parent volunteer with DISD, said she was encouraged by the proposed changes. Simply sending a child to an alternative school isn’t necessarily the answer, she said, adding that she remembers kids who have been punished in this way coming back with even worse behaviors.
“Community service can really help kids,” Wiggins-Mays said, “and it can encourage parents to get their kids to behave if they’re influenced by it.”
Miguel Solis, a former DISD board member now with The Commit Partnership, said he is encouraged that district leaders are continuing to reform their discipline code, and the way they made changes after confronting racial inequities could be a model for other schools, he said.
“Throughout the process, we have not seen any significant setbacks to historical practices,” Solis said.
The proposed code also adds a new offence of hate speech, which could be punished by attending alternative schools.
The draft bill defines the crime as “a form of expression that is motivated in whole or in part by prejudice against a group or class of individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, expression, religion, disability, or age, that creates real threats and induces school disruption, discriminatory harassment, or a hostile school environment.”
District leaders said they have addressed cases where students have used derogatory language related to race and gender toward specific individuals.
“Hate speech, derogatory language and offensive behavior will not be tolerated in the Dallas Independent School District. Our schools are safe places that welcome inclusion and celebrate all cultures, ethnicities and religions,” Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said recently after allegations of anti-Semitism emerged at a Dallas Independent School District high school.
Former board member Edwin Flores, who left the board last month, urged the district to proceed with caution and to be careful not to enforce such rules more strictly in some districts than others.
“As one of the lawyers in the group, this is a serious issue that requires a lot of training to address,” he said.
The DMN Education Lab deepens coverage and conversation about pressing education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative supported by Bobby and Lottie Lyle, Texas Community Foundation, Dallas Foundation, Dallas Area Chamber of Commerce, Dee Dee Rose, Garrett and Cecelia Boone, Meadows Foundation, Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sidney Smith Hicks and The University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News will retain full editorial control of Education Lab journalism.
