This is the last in a three-part series on the use of exclusionary discipline in public schools. A regular Source feature, Undercurrents explores issues, ideas and events as they develop beneath the surface in the Virgin Islands community.
While hundreds of V.I. youth are donning caps and gowns this spring, too many of their former classmates are being fitted for orange jumpsuits. Statistics indicate that a young man without a diploma is more likely to go to jail than one who graduated from high school.
According to the 2010 Census, 31 percent of territory residents over the age of 25 did not make it through high school. That figure seems grim, but it gets worse if you compare it with numbers for the prison population.
Theshia Nieves, the education coordinator for the Bureau of Corrections, said last year that between 60 and 65 percent of inmates have not finished high school.
“There is a connection” between education and the criminal justice system, said U.S. Attorney Ronald Sharpe. If a person isn’t educated, not only is he outside of society norms, he also very likely will never have the economic wherewithal to take care of himself or of a family. Both situations ease him toward a life of crime.
That’s why both nationally and locally, there is concern within the justice system that students not be pushed out of school because of behavioral problems.
Sharpe said his aim is not incarcerating criminals; it’s the betterment of society as a whole. He said he’d rather prevent criminal behavior than punish it.
“As prosecutors, we try to put ourselves out of business,” he said.
“What’s important is that we break this pipeline,” Sharpe said, referring to the so-called “school to prison pipeline” that starts with a student being suspended or expelled for infractions of school rules and ends with him or her in a jail cell.
“They get labeled and earmarked and that has long-term effects,” Sharpe said. “If a kid doesn’t feel part of something, they’ll seek that social connection somewhere else.” And “somewhere” may be within a gang, or with friends or acquaintances who operate outside the law.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has made “breaking the pipeline” a priority. Earlier this year he and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan jointly released a set of guidelines aimed at reducing suspensions and expulsions across the country.
In the territory, statistics indicate that the number of such exclusionary discipline practices has declined in recent years, but it is still higher than deemed acceptable by the V.I. Board of Education.
“I can’t say it’s a problem specific to our district,” Sharpe said, acknowledging it’s a general “concern.”
While he was quick to acknowledge that it isn’t his role to tell educators how to handle students, Sharpe said there are some commonalities that bear considering. In the justice system, people are more likely to accept a penalty if they feel they were treated fairly, he said, adding that they react more positively when they believe the system is consistent.
The V.I. Board of Education policies reflect similar thinking.
In its Student Discipline Policy, which is supposed to govern the Education Department, the board states, “Putting children out of classes or suspending students for trivial matters is not a solution to the behavioral problem. It merely removes the problem or the offender from one locale to another.”
Suspension should be a last resort, taken only after careful study “indicates that no other disciplinary approach is feasible,” according the guidelines. “Student suspension without proper controls seems of little therapeutic value. Placing students out of the supervision of the school may possibly serve to increase their antisocial activities.”
It also puts them further and further behind in class work and can trap them in a cycle of failure.
So what are the alternatives?
For relatively minor infractions, the Board of Education lists a number of acceptable forms of discipline, including verbal reprimand, special work assignment, withdrawal of privileges, detention, demerits, the confiscation of unauthorized materials or objects, and counseling, as well as consultation with the parents or guardian.
For major infractions, when nothing else works and when the student’s presence in the classroom is a serious disruption, the Education Department has developed approaches to keep the student learning.
St. Croix District Supervisor Gary Molloy said that, since about 2010, the department has offered “blended learning,” a program which allows students to continue to attend some classes the traditional way – that is physically in the classroom – while having them take another course online. In the summer, a student may take two courses online.
For really difficult cases, there is alternative education. Students in sixth through eighth grade attend from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. High school students, grades ninth through 12th, combine academics with job skills. They work with the Labor Department in the morning and attend classes late in the day, from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m.
This school year, Molloy said there were between 50 and 60 students in the middle to junior high program and between 70 and 80 in the high school program.
“It’s not perfect, not the silver bullet, but it is working,” he said. It helps to keep the youth on track much longer. “It’s a beautiful thing once a student takes responsibility for his own learning,”
Meanwhile, the department also tries to reach kids who are just beginning to drift.
One initiative introduced in the St. Thomas-St. John district by Superintendent Jeanette Smith, and quickly expanded to St. Croix, is the Junior University. Seventh- and eighth-grade students who are considered “at-risk” of dropping out of the system because of academic or behavioral problems take classes in the summer on the campuses of the University of the Virgin Islands. They learn more than academic subjects; they get an idea of college life and future careers.
And in the stop-it-before-it-starts department, Molloy said there are times throughout the regular school year when students tend to act out more, such as after the Agricultural Fair or around other holiday times. He said he used to avoid scheduling vacations for security personnel during those times. Now he takes a more proactive approach and increases group counseling, individual counseling and guest speakers to keep the students engaged and focused on school.