Is banning school suspensions the ‘bold’ step Dallas needs to help Black students?

Dallas ISD trustees want to ban out-of-school suspensions except in the most extreme cases to help close equity gaps for Black students.

Black students are routinely kicked out of Dallas classrooms and identified as having emotional behavior issues at higher rates than their peers, mirroring nationwide trends.

During a special workshop Thursday that was focused solely on improving outcomes for Black students, DISD administrators and trustees began discussing a range of ideas to end systemic issues that have led to many of those students falling far behind their peers for generations with routinely lower test scores. They’re also underrepresented in advanced programs that put students on track for college success.

Ideas discussed included aggressively recruiting more Black men to become teachers in Dallas; improving access and fairness in advanced courses and school-choice options; and having better accountability of how resources are allocated among campuses.

One idea trustees wanted to explore is banning suspensions. DISD was among the first in Texas to ban kicking out youngsters in prekindergarten through second grade, which later became state law.

Trustee Miguel Solis said now is a unique moment to be bold and ban most suspensions forever.

Suspensions are “the old way of thinking. That’s one of the documented steps that we took to criminalize black children,” Solis said. “So if we take another step to say we want to wait two or three years and document whether or not this process is right, we are missing the moment.”

Black students are overrepresented in DISD’s discipline, which the Texas Education Agency has noted for a few years in a row. In 2018-19, the most recent state data available, Black students made up about 22% of students but nearly 52% of out-of-school suspensions and 35% of in-school suspensions.

Administrators said one way to address inequities in schools is to provide better training so educators can focus on why students are acting out instead of just kicking them out of class, which does little to change bad behaviors.

They also want to amp up implicit bias training and keep better track of data to address teachers who might be seeking harsher discipline for Black students compared with their peers — which research repeatedly has shown happens across the country.

Trustee Joyce Foreman expressed frustration that DISD hasn’t listened to Black community members who have been raising concerns about this for years.

“We’ve known it, and we’ve done nothing about it so now I am worrying about whether we’re really going to do what we say we’re going to do,” she told administrators. “Are we just responding to a possibility of being dinged? That is an issue for me.”

Stephanie Elizalde, DISD’s chief of school leadership, said the district has been working on efforts to improve discipline in recent years, including using restorative practices, which focus on helping students talk through issues, and other social-emotional learning approaches.

But trustees said DISD needs to ban out-of-school suspensions except in the most extreme cases, such as when a student commits an assault.

Trustee Dustin Marshall noted that when DISD banned suspensions for the youngest students, the board heard numerous concerns from teachers and others that the move would make classrooms more dangerous. But that didn’t happen, he said.

Elizalde said that the district’s discipline task force is reviewing banning suspensions and that it should be considered given how disproportionately they affect Black students. But principals are also hesitant to take that option out of their toolbox.

She noted that moving forward, at least, any out-of-school suspension longer than one day must be approved by a principal’s superior. Elizalde noted that it’s important to her to move away from suspensions because they are punitive and “it’s a reactionary removal of a challenge, rather than an understanding.”

Research routinely suggests a “school-to-prison pipeline” showing that students who are suspended from school are more likely to have run-ins with law enforcement later in life.

DISD plans to have additional meetings related to the recently passed resolution declaring that “Black Lives Matter” in the district. Several trustees — including Foreman, Justin Henry and Maxie Johnson — are working on proposals to address inequalities across Dallas.