California legislators may ban schools from suspending or expelling Disruptive Students, reports Andrew Sheeler in the Sacramento Bee.

Under Senate Bill 419, which is moving through the Legislature, schools would not be allowed to suspend any student “who disrupts school activities or otherwise willfully defies the valid authority of supervisors, teachers, administrators, or school officials.”

The bill, if it becomes law, also would apply to charter schools, writes Sheeler. The charter provision and the ban on defiance suspensions for high school students expires in 2025, unless extended. Suspensions already are banned for students in kindergarten through third grade.

A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office “found that black students, boys, and students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined in K-12 schools. They found this was the case regardless of the type of disciplinary action, poverty at the school level, or type of public school the students attended,” according to an Assembly floor analysis of the bill.

Parents worry about their children’s safety, reports KABC. “That is going to tell other kids . . . go ahead and hit them or do what you want because you aren’t going to get in trouble and that is not OK,” said parent Laura Vogt.

Before banning suspensions, talk to teachers, writes Jason Sanchez on EdSource. He left teaching after 10 years. “A major tipping point” was lack of support for handling defiant students, including one boy who “disrupted practically all learning and my ability to teach.”

Many other educators are leaving the profession citing similar concerns. Teaching is an extremely stressful job and student behavior is always one of the top reasons why people leave.

. . . We need your help. Schools are struggling. It’s affecting students’ attitudes about learning and their perceptions about tolerable classroom behavior, and it’s making teachers’ jobs even more difficult. In many of these school districts the number of suspensions has gone down, but student learning has also been reduced.

Most schools don’t have the staff to make restorative justice programs work, writes Sanchez. Teachers want to build relationships with students, but they’re “overwhelmed with poor student behavior, students who are significantly behind academically and students with special needs who receive too little support.”