Thursday, March 23, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Humboldt County School District Assistant Superintendent Will Jensen said he had seen teachers in his office in tears on a regular basis, drained by violent young students and a feeling of hopelessness from a state law that largely prohibits the long-term removal of children younger than 11.
Teachers can manage some growing pains of new policies, he said.
“They can’t tolerate being hit and then having that student know and understand that there’s little to nothing we can do about that violence,” said Jensen, whose district includes rural communities in and around Winnemucca in northwest Nevada. “(Younger students) can’t be disciplined to the same extent as an older child would be. They know and understand that, and that’s dangerous.”
In conjunction with reforms to Nevada’s laws on restorative justice in schools, lawmakers are considering whether to drop the age minimum for expulsions as part of a bipartisan review of student discipline policies in the post-pandemic era — which educators and police say has been marked by intensified violence in schools around the state.
Assembly Bill 194 allows suspension or expulsion of students as young as 6, and permanent expulsion for students as young as 11, for drug distribution or assault or battery against school staff or fellow students.
The Assembly Education Committee first heard AB194 on Thursday, when it also heard Assembly Bill 285, which would remove the requirements that each district have a restorative justice discipline plan and have individual restorative justice plans in place before administrators can remove, suspend or expel students.
Restorative justice is rehabilitative in nature and seeks to repair harm rather than excluding students through suspension or expulsion.
State law allows suspension or expulsion of students who commit battery resulting in injury against a school employee or who sell or distribute drugs at school as long as they are at least 11 years old; it also limits the ability to permanently expel students younger than 11 to “extraordinary circumstances,” with school board approval.
Opponents of AB194 suggested that expelling elementary school-aged children would mean “throwing them away.”
Holly Welborn, executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Alliance of Nevada, told lawmakers to consider the practical effect of expulsion on vulnerable youths who may be subject to abuse and neglect at home.
“I was a really bad kid in that developmental stage of my life, and I just can’t imagine the direction I’d have gone if I had been thrown away at that period and what my life would have been like if I didn’t have teachers and people who cared about what my home environment looked like,” Welborn said.
John Piro with the Clark County Public Defender’s Office said the bill didn’t give the matter the robust examination it needed. He wondered where students who had committed infractions would go.
“Sometimes schools are the only places where kids get meals,” Piro said. “Sometimes schools are the only places where kids get some form of love, especially the kids that we see that come through the juvenile justice system,” or the state child welfare system.
Daniel Kirk, who is the principal of Lemmon Valley Elementary School in Reno, said alternative long-term placements existed in the past for younger children — he recalled sending a third-grader to such a program when the child used a chair as a weapon to nearly break a dean’s leg.
Jensen, in Humboldt County, recognized that discipline could disproportionately affect some students — but, he argued, disproportionality could also affect victims.
“When we say the kids remain in school no matter what, don’t assume that classroom is functioning in tip-top shape, because it is not,” he said. “We have to do something.”
New legislation
Here are three education-related bills that were introduced last week:
AB282: This bill would require school districts to pay its long-term substitute teachers — those who work 15 or more days in the district during a single school year — at least $450 extra per month, per covered person, to purchase health insurance.
The Clark County School District does not provide benefits to substitutes, including those who take long-term, sometimes open-ended assignments that require as much planning and instruction as a permanent teacher.
Under this legislation, the teacher would get a monthly health care subsidy for themselves and up to three dependents. The district’s school board would set the amount, but each person — the teacher and each dependent — would get at least $450.
The bill is sponsored by 10 Democrats, led by Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong of Las Vegas.
AB296: This bill seeks to limit the amount of time teachers spend preparing for and conducting standardized tests to no more than 2% of their annual instructional minutes.
Instructional time and testing frequency vary by grade level, and among specialty programs and services, including English-language learner programs.
The proposal excludes assessments and prep for advanced placement courses that allow high school students to take an end-of-course exam for college credit, end-of-program skills assessments for career and technical programs, and services to improve literacy in elementary school students.
The bill is sponsored by Assemblyman Reuben D’Silva and Assemblywoman Selena Torres, both D-Las Vegas and both schoolteachers.
AB330: A restorative justice reform bill introduced by the office of Gov. Joe Lombardo, this bill has similarities to AB285. Like that bill, Lombardo’s proposal would remove the requirement that schools have individual restorative justice plans in place before administrators can remove, suspend or expel students.
Lombardo’s bill also requires the state superintendent of instruction to review data on disproportionality in punishments and potentially put schools under corrective plans to remedy disproportionality.
AB330 also gives principals authority to restrict a teacher’s ability to remove a student if the principal deems it unnecessary; relaxes the three-day deadline to hold a conference after removing a student if the principal believes the student continues to pose a threat; and includes a requirement that students be expelled on their first offense for selling or distributing drugs at school or committing a battery against a school employee resulting in injury.
The Assembly Education Committee will hear AB330 today.
