In-school suspension report indicates improved quality of discipline in Chico Unified School District

The number of in-school suspensions for Chico Unified School District are much higher than its number of out-of-school suspensions, according to data compiled by the district.



But why do these numbers make a difference? It turns out that in-school suspensions are allowing children to remain not only in school, but in classrooms, supervised, with a credentialed teacher and access to counseling services.

David McKay, principal of Academy for Change, Center for Alternative Learning, Oakdale Secondary and Fair View High School, said that in-school suspensions are somewhat like study hall: students are in there working on stuff quietly for most of the day, and the teacher often discusses life-skills issues with them individually.

David McKay, principal of continuation schools in CUSD.

"The idea is for them to complete work in a structured environment where they could get help if they need to get help or get their stuff done instead of being at home unsupervised," he said. 

This is a stark contrast to out-of-school suspensions, where the punishment for disruptive behavior in school is sending students home where they can misbehave, self-medicate or be unsupervised, which is not actually a punishment, McKay said. 

"It's an alternative to traditional suspension, which we've found doesn't work. It's not much different than the logic of suspending a kid for not coming to school. ‘Hey you're truant, so we're going to suspend you from school, because your truant,'" he said. "They're already struggling in school; now we're taking them out of school more."

Students who are sent home also don't necessarily have access to counseling services or a way to help deal with any trauma they are experiencing that is most-likely the underlying cause of their misbehavior, McKay said. 

The elementary schools have a different in-school suspension site, which is at McManus Elementary School. But every other campus sends kids to Fair View High School for its in-school suspension program. The truth of the matter is that not all schools can afford in-school suspension classrooms or the teacher(s) to supervise students. 

"Any school can adopt its own in-school suspension program. It's just challenging to allocate your (monetary) resources accordingly," McKay said. "So it's more effective in our situation to do it one classroom for the district."

And the in-school suspension program has made strides recently to combat out-of-school suspension numbers. 

The program used to require that any students sent to in-school suspension had to be there for five days. If the offense was minor and didn't warrant five days of in-school suspension, the child would be sent home instead. 

Now the program accommodates two and three day suspension instances. And that means there are less children being suspended out-of-school.

The program also has two counselors available to students, who occupy a counseling center that was designed and built by the students of Fair View High School. 

McKay said the schools' biggest challenge is the overall approach they take concerning students. This has a lot to do with how students who are suspended are perceived. 

“I think if people were honest and they weren't trying to be politically correct that the average person on the street would associate a kid in an in-school suspension classroom as being a ‘bad kid,’” he said. “But what we're finding out is that more and more of our students are behaving the way they are because they’re traumatized; that their brain is telling them they’re in danger. … It’s not necessarily because they’re a bad kid, it could be that what they were doing is a coping mechanism to deal with their trauma.”

The trauma-informed approach is something that McKay has backed wholeheartedly, and cites it for being one of the biggest positive changes at the school. This includes changes within its in-school suspension program and training of that program's teacher and counselors.