Opinion: The Power of ‘Precovery': Building Safer, More Resilient Schools
In 1984, I was part of the first responder team sent to 49th Street Elementary School in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after one of the country's first school shootings happened there. Two children were killed, and a dozen children and staff were wounded.
Following that heartbreaking tragedy, I saw the outline of an approach that has developed further since my time operating on the frontlines of trauma response and recovery. The steps we take to prevent violence and tragedy in schools matter. These steps matter because prevention makes terrible situations less likely to occur; and when they do happen, the prevention protocols in place minimize physical and psychological harm.
We call this planning 'precovery,' which can be defined as strategies and actions to prevent and to limit harm to the school community. It has been well-documented in the aftermath of disasters and mass violence that students and adults suffer from emotional distress, cognitive impairment, and a range of behavioral changes. In students, the reactions include school absence, emotional withdrawal, depression, and traumatic stress. In some cases, abusive, hostile, and aggressive behaviors develop after students are victim or witness to violence or the threat of violence.
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
This is no small problem. In 2020, the National Center for Education Statistics found that 77% of all schools in the U.S. grappled with at least one act of violence on the school campus. In addition, the rate of school shootings has risen 963% over the past 20 years. Natural disasters like wildfires have increased in numbers and intensity, destroying homes, hospitals, churches, and schools as well as other vital institutions representing places of safety. As one of those institutions that function 'in loco parentis', schools must make precovery a watchword.
Michelle Kefford, principal of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, gave this sage advice after commemorating the seventh year after the massacre of students and staff in her high school: 'Don't wait until tragedy takes place. Take precovery seriously. Start now!'
Recognizing this, the policy and procedures bulletin for the LAUSD Crisis Intervention in Schools has been regularly revised and updated since originally written in 1984. Annual training of the crisis teams is based on the updated policy bulletin.
inline_story url='https://www.the74million.org/article/7-school-security-storylines-that-topped-2024-and-will-evolve-in-2025/']
Any precovery work must have the following essential elements: a clear action plan shared with staff, a process to put policies and procedures in place to prevent harm, a review process to improve established procedures using lessons learned from schools that have suffered from mass violence or destructive natural disasters, and training for educators to prepare them to participate in the recovery process and maximize the return of all students to the classroom.
A prominent survey in my field once asked educators about their school safety plans. At the administrative level, everything appeared to be in order: School leaders reported that the plans were in place, they were updated, and they were understood. The plan was located in a binder in the front office.
However, as researchers posed the same questions to faculty and other staff, massive gaps in communication became clear. Although staff members knew that there was a plan, somewhere out there, they did not know what it contained or what their role was should a shooting or disaster occur. Many indicated that in a widespread disaster they would be torn between their responsibility to the students in their classrooms and their responsibility to ensure the safety of their own children and families.
Building and maintaining a strong foundation for precovery requires:
Establishing trusting relationships with all school stakeholders – students, educators, parents, and the community.
Establishing open channels of calm and helpful communication.
Building and maintaining crisis response and recovery infrastructure with meaningful policies, roles and responsibility that are spelled out in advance, giving educators the opportunity to plan for both classroom and family safety.
Expanding capacity to train staff in their individual roles as well as in a variety of prevention and intervention scenarios.
For students, open communication and meaningful connections are invitations to seek help when they're in distress, reducing the feelings of isolation that can lead to harmful behaviors. Simultaneously, these relationships enhance an entire school community's capacity for early intervention, as teachers and peers are more likely to recognize warning signs of trauma and to reach out to troubled students with help and support.
At a time when roughly two-thirds of public schools are reporting at least one violent incident each school year and natural disasters are intensifying, we need more proactive safety measures in place. Precovery strategies offer schools the means to reduce or nullify potential threats and extreme anxiety, social and emotional pain before they escalate.
Being able to navigate both personal and community crises with the support of a school system that protects all members of the learning community and plans ahead builds resilience in the face of future adversity. Over the past 40 years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has been exemplary in these efforts.
The most recent example of precovery can be seen in the many steps that the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) took in advance of the devastating Eaton Wildfire that destroyed homes, businesses, and schools. In the past three years, district leaders created and maintained effective school and district-level crisis teams. They implemented training for staff in Trauma Informed Schools for Educators that expanded knowledge about trauma recovery.
They provided training to staff in Psychological First Aid, an evidence-based intervention designed to reduce the distress of students who have experienced a traumatic event and restore their ability to return to school in a safe and supportive environment. All of these actions created a comprehensive precovery action agenda that prepared the district and its educators to welcome 9,000 students who had experienced evacuations and, for some, the loss of their homes and schools.
We may not know how long recovery from this widespread disaster will take, but we do know that putting precovery into action not only prevents trauma from becoming worse, it also helps to heal it.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Yahoo
Opinion: After a Stray Bullet Kills a NYC Teen, Chancellor Calls for Community Support
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in our increasingly online post-pandemic world, our families are forced to navigate resources alone. In many communities, including my own, the responsibility to care for, monitor and protect our children falls solely to families and schools. Imagine how much stronger our cities would be if we were to embrace an ecosystem of care, with faith institutions, businesses, and local organizations working alongside families and schools. Across the country, there is a deep youth mental health crisis that is fueling a trend of violence among our babies. In Denver, Colorado, an average of 700 young people under 25 are affected by gun violence each year. In Alameda County, California, gun violence is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 17. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter According to Everytown statistics, 60 children and teens are impacted by firearms every day in the United States. As parents and guardians, we pour our whole selves into our children. No one should ever have to endure the agony of losing a child, especially to something as preventable as gun violence. Earlier this month, in my community, Evette Jeffrey, a 16-year-old girl in the Bronx was killed by a stray bullet fired by another teenager. As a mother, an educator, and a lifelong Bronxite, this tragedy was personal for me, and I saw firsthand the impact of this devastation across the borough. The following week, another two babies were victims of gun violence in Brooklyn. It is unacceptable that over 30 children under the age of 18 have been killed or injured in New York City this year alone. The pandemic lockdowns left our young people feeling isolated and emotionally adrift. The CDC reports the number of children experiencing persistent sadness or hopelessness remains 10% higher than in 2013. For two years, we told our children that their entire lives are online, from their instruction to enrichment, and beyond. Now, we're seeing the repercussions: Our kids don't know who to talk to or where to go when they are in crisis. Related Teens are increasingly tethered to their phones — half of those aged 12 to 17 reported four or more hours of daily screen time between July 2021 and December 2023. Throughout the pandemic, our children were forced to live their lives through social media and virtual schooling. Now, as we bring them back to in person socialization, it's no wonder that they're ill equipped. As the leader of the nation's largest school district, it is my responsibility to lead New York City Public Schools' response to this mental health epidemic at its root. If we are to do right by our kids, we cannot just address the symptoms of this crisis. The solution lies in community interdependence. We've seen glimpses of this kind of symbiosis at work in places like California, which like New York City, is offering free online mental health counseling, or Chicago, where local nonprofits are supporting afterschool programs and other services at high-poverty campuses. We must continue to scale this work. In our schools, we must teach our kids how to use technology responsibly and appropriately. Devices can be used to enrich and support classroom instruction, offering real-time support in math class or opportunities to explore the world without leaving the neighborhood. We must also learn to take care of ourselves so that we can be better and stronger for our kids. We are role models, leaders, and safe, trusted grown-ups. Our students must be able to turn to us without judgement in times of need. But this goes beyond us. For this to work, I call upon our business owners to be more than just bystanders. When you welcome our kids by name when they enter your store, it shows that there are adults who care and who they can turn to when they need to feel seen, heard, and protected. Related I call upon our faith leaders to be active partners with the schools in their communities. If they see a child who is struggling, reach out so we can get them help before it's too late. Robust in-school mental health supports are essential, but they can't stand alone. We need community mental health partners to amplify their impact. Local universities, we need you to bolster the mental health worker pipeline and place young professionals-in-training in schools to build out capacity. We're asking our community-based organizations and leaders with social capital in our neighborhoods to keep their ears to the ground — aware of brewing tensions, conflicts, and signs of distress — so we can act before violence erupts. The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments noted that 'developing and sustaining comprehensive mental health systems should be a shared endeavor between schools and community partners.' We all bear a collective responsibility in ensuring that every child gets the bright and bold future they deserve, and it is up to us to work together to identify at-risk youth and intervene early. As New York City mourns the loss of one of our own, I remain committed to honoring that life by protecting others. Our young people are crying out for help, and we must answer. It will take all of us. Let's get to work. All of us — community members, business leaders, faith leaders, and families — need to rally together to make sure our students have a safe adult in their lives they can turn to in times of crisis. Let's get to work.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Yahoo
Virginia High School Admissions Policy Target of Trump Civil Rights Probe
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat. The federal departments of Education and Justice are investigating whether changes to the admissions policy at a prestigious Virginia high school violated the civil rights of Asian American students, even though the U.S. Supreme Court already let the updated admissions policy stand. The investigation comes after the Virginia Attorney General's Office said its own investigation found 'reasonable cause' to believe bias against Asian American students motivated the changes at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, and referred the case to federal authorities. Under President Donald Trump, the Education Department has warned school districts that even race-neutral policies that aim to diversify magnet schools and honors programs could amount to illegal discrimination, despite court rulings that have repeatedly upheld such policies. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Many school systems with selective high schools are in the midst of ongoing debate about how students should qualify for those schools. This is the first civil rights investigation during the second Trump administration to look specifically at high school admissions. Other cases have targeted mentorship programs for students of color and antiracist teacher training that federal officials say invoked racial stereotypes as the Trump administration tries to root out common practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fairfax County Public Schools changed the admissions criteria for the school, commonly known as TJ, in 2020 with the goal of creating a more diverse student body. The 1,800-student school draws from five area school districts and often sends students on to elite colleges and successful careers. In the years before the change, the student body typically was more than two-thirds Asian American. Most students came from just a few middle schools. Very few Black and Latino students attended the school. The district dropped the use of standardized test scores, incorporated 'experience factors' into the admissions process, and reserved seats for students from each middle school in the area. Parents, many of whom were Asian American, organized as the Coalition for TJ and sued the district over the changes, but the Supreme Court declined to take the case in early 2024. That seemed to be the end of the matter. But this week Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, said a two-year investigation had found evidence that anti-Asian American bias had motivated the policy change. Miyares said school board members in private communications described the policies as having 'an anti asian feel' and that the changes would 'kick out Asians.' After the policy change, Asian American students went from 73% of admitted students to 54%, the attorney general's office said. The share of white, Black, and Latino students all increased. The study body is currently about 60% Asian American, 20% white, 7% Latino, and 5.5% Black. The attorney general's office did not release a full report that would provide more context for board member comments and told Chalkbeat to obtain it from the school district. The school district said it would consider the request but did not immediately share the report. Coalition for TJ also alleged in its lawsuit that the school district was biased against Asian American students, but the court did not find that the policy change violated equal protection requirements. Miyares referred the case to the federal Justice and Education departments, which announced they would open Title VI investigations into the district. Title VI protects students from discrimination on the basis of race or shared ancestry. 'Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County has long had a reputation for producing some of our nation's brightest minds, due in no small part to its rigorous admissions process,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement announcing the investigation. 'The Fairfax County School Board's alleged decision to weigh race in TJ's admissions decisions appears to be both contrary to the law and to the fundamental principle that students should be evaluated on their merit, not the color of their skin.' A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools said the district was reviewing documents related to the investigation and would have a more detailed response in a few days. 'This matter has already been fully litigated,' the district said. 'A federal appellate court determined there was no merit to arguments that the admissions policy for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology discriminates against any group of students.' Yuyan Chou, a member of Coalition for TJ, told local TV station WUSA9 that the federal investigation gives parents new hope. 'The Supreme Court decided basically not to hear our case and at that point, I thought the American dream died,' she said. 'There's no path forward, there's nothing going to happen again until today. I believe there is a chance we can revive that dream.' Chris Kieser, a senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Coalition for TJ and regularly brings lawsuits opposing affirmative action, said he was pleased to see the federal government take another look at the case. 'We certainly think there are grounds to investigate,' he said. Just because the Supreme Court didn't take up the case 'doesn't mean there were no issues.' Kieser said the Pacific Legal Foundation continues to hope that the Supreme Court will take up a high school admissions case. Policies that aim to diversify selective high schools often end up discriminating against Asian American students, Kieser said, and the fact that those student continue to gain admittance at high rates under revised policies doesn't mean they don't discriminate against individual students. Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said civil rights investigations can apply a different standard in seeking to protect students than the Supreme Court did in declining to hear the case. But the Education Department's interpretation of the law appears to be in direct violation of court rulings. 'They have no legal authority to enforce Title VI in a way that is inconsistent with the law,' he said. 'If TJ is willing to stand up for itself, it will have to challenge the administration in court. And this is what has been going on all over the country.' Civil rights investigations often result in negotiated settlements in which school districts agree to make certain changes. The federal government also has the power to withhold federal funds to penalize school districts. Historically that hasn't happened. But under Trump, the federal government has used its civil rights enforcement powers more aggressively in an effort to get states and school districts to comply with its interpretations of the law. Black said the department appears to be applying disparate impact theory — a type of legal analysis that looks at whether certain policies affect certain groups in disproportionate ways — to a high school admissions policy just weeks after Trump signed an executive order barring the use of disparate impact theory. The administration would need a 'smoking gun' that showed bias against Asian American students to conclude that the district violated those students' civil rights, Black said. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
NYC Schools Fail to Protect Students with Disabilities From Lengthy Suspensions
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat. After trading taunts with a classmate one morning in March 2023, Tristan threw a punch that busted the other student's lip. A teacher who intervened wound up with a bloody nose and swollen lip in the ensuing scuffle. Then a ninth grader at Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Tristan later took responsibility for starting the fight. 'I hit him first — that's where I was wrong,' said the teen, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy reasons. School officials suspended Tristan for more than three weeks, among the longest punishments typically allowed under city guidelines. But while the case seemed open and shut, an impartial hearing officer later ruled that the lengthy suspension violated the teen's rights. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Tristan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, received special education services to address impulse control and anger management. But the school failed to provide numerous counseling sessions that were supposed to help him learn to regulate his emotions, the hearing officer found. During a legally required meeting to assess whether Tristan's disability played a role in the fight, school staff did not consider his special education records, behavioral plan, or history of similar outbursts. 'There is no evidence that the [school's review team] discussed any relevant documents,' wrote hearing officer Patricia Le Goff, who noted the school did not follow the required step-by-step process and Tristan's mother was not allowed to offer her perspective. The hearing officer found that Tristan's behavior stemmed from his disability and the school's failure to provide counseling sessions. Le Goff concluded that Tristan should not have received a lengthy punishment. But it was too late. Tristan had served his suspension. New York City's public schools routinely flout federal rules designed to prevent schools from removing children from class for long periods due to behavior related to their disabilities, a Chalkbeat investigation has found. To examine the discipline process, Chalkbeat obtained hundreds of pages of special education records and rulings from impartial hearing officers who reviewed appeals from families whose children with disabilities received lengthy punishments. Those records — as well as interviews with more than a dozen parents, advocates, and school officials — reveal a pattern of schools failing to properly consider a student's disability during the suspension process. As a result, some students are serving longer punishments than legally allowed, a problem that disproportionately affects Black students. The removals can compound academic struggles among students who are often far behind their peers. The problem stretches back years. Independent monitors who looked at nearly 1,400 suspensions between 2015 and 2018 found systemic flaws with the review process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of findings that have not previously been made public. 'There are students who are being suspended weeks and weeks more than they should be,' said Andrew Gerst, an attorney who handled Tristan's appeal while working at Mobilization for Justice, an organization that represents low-income families. 'They should not be kept out of school one minute longer than they have to be.' Students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended compared with their nondisabled peers. As a group, they were removed from class 14,000 times last school year, about 39% of all removals and suspensions, despite representing 22% of the student body. For long-term suspensions, which are less common and typically issued for significant misconduct, federal law requires an extra level of review. Schools must consider whether the behavior in question was related to a student's disability or a failure to provide special education services guaranteed in their learning plan. Trisha Clayton, Tristan's mother, said the suspension review process left her feeling like the school wasn't interested in supporting her son, and the lengthy punishment knocked him further off track. A different hearing officer later ordered the Education Department to pay for 900 hours of one-on-one tutoring in addition to other therapies to make up for inadequate special education support. 'He missed out on a lot of instructional hours,' Clayton said. 'If you have a child with a learning disability or anger issues, they just don't want to deal with those kinds of kids.' Education Department officials said they could not comment on specific student cases, and the principal at Medgar Evers did not respond to questions. School staffers on other campuses who have participated in suspension reviews said there are often good reasons to issue longer punishments, as they can help maintain a safe learning environment for other students and possibly deter future misconduct. 'Holding your teacher against the wall, or punching someone in the face, that's not necessarily a manifestation of their disability most of the time,' said Anna Nelson, a former Bronx assistant principal who has participated in suspension reviews. 'If a kid's never been suspended before, it's a message that really sticks with them.' But advocates and parents say that schools often reflexively dismiss the possibility that a student's disability played a role in their misconduct. City education officials acknowledged in an interview with Chalkbeat that implementation of the suspension reviews can be uneven. Over 600 Education Department staffers have been trained to make the reviews more collaborative, according to a department spokesperson, and officials have revised letters sent to families to better explain the process. Stephanie Jemilo, a special projects director at the Education Department who oversees the training, said her team works with specific schools when they receive complaints from families. The goal is to make the meetings feel less punitive. 'It really is the process to say, 'Hey, something's not working here, and let's all come together and figure out what's not working,' ' she said. All public schools are required to educate students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible, a cornerstone of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The law is designed to prevent schools from using the discipline process to exclude those students. When a student is suspended for more than 10 days, or if there's a pattern of short-term removals, school staff must determine if the behavior in question was 'caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship' to the student's disability or the school's failure to provide mandated services. If the answer to either is yes, the student is supposed to return to class immediately, and the school is required to conduct a behavior assessment. (There are some exceptions for extreme violence, drugs, or weapons possession.) To make that decision, school officials must hold a meeting called a 'manifestation determination review' within 10 days of the student's removal from class. Schools must include parents and at least one staff member who knows the student, including a school psychologist or guidance counselor. Families are entitled to request others to join, such as a teacher who works with their child, and they can bring an advocate. In theory, the process should be collaborative. But the final decision rests with the student's school, an arrangement that families and advocates say is far from objective. 'It's like somebody gets arrested and you go to the police station and ask them to have a hearing about whether they think that they were right to arrest the person,' Gerst said. 'They have every incentive to stand by their decision.' Problems with the city's discipline process aren't new, according to a Chalkbeat review of legal records and city data that has not previously been made public. A 2002 class action lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children claimed schools routinely used discipline to exclude students without properly considering their disability. After a protracted legal battle, the city settled the case in 2015 and agreed to some reforms. They beefed up training and created a mandatory checklist that spells out each step of the process schools must follow. The city was also required to check whether schools were following the rules, sending independent monitors into nearly 1,400 suspension review meetings, a sample of the meetings held between 2015 and 2018. The monitors found glaring and systemic problems, according to reports obtained by Gerst through a public records request and shared with Chalkbeat. For example, only 44% of suspension review meetings included 'effective' discussion of the incident that led to the suspension and whether it was connected to disability-related behaviors, the monitors found during the 2017-18 school year. In 20% of cases that year, there was limited or no discussion of a student's special education learning plan, raising questions about how the review team determined whether a student's behavior was related to a lack of services. Nicole Tuchinda, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law who has written about the suspension review process, called those figures 'disturbing' because they reveal schools frequently did not comply with key components of the law. 'It just shows it's a sham,' Tuchinda said. Failing to protect students with disabilities from longer punishments could further set back a group that is already disproportionately removed from their classrooms, are far behind their peers academically, and less likely to graduate on time. One study focusing on New York City found suspensions led to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating. Other research also generally suggests that suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Students who are suspended for more than five days are typically sent to alternate learning centers away from their school, an environment students say is often dull or chaotic. Problems with the suspension review process are also more likely to affect students of color, mirroring broader trends in school discipline. Between September 2021 and December 2022, more than half of the 1,825 suspension reviews involved Black students, even though only a quarter of students with disabilities are Black, city data show. Schools were more likely to find that white students' behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, according to figures obtained by Gerst. Education Department officials declined to provide more recent figures and there is no federal data on the suspension review process. The responsibility for ensuring the city is complying with federal special education laws falls to the state's Education Department. State officials found some problems with the city's suspension review process in 2023 that required 'corrective action,' according to spokesperson JP O'Hare. He did not specify the nature of the problem or what specific action was required. The state Education Department has 'not received any specific ongoing concerns' about the process, O'Hare added. It is difficult to know how widespread problems with the review process are today: The Education Department stopped sending independent monitors to the meetings after they were no longer legally required. Melinda Andra, a longtime advocate at the Legal Aid Society who has represented families in the suspension process, said there were some signs of improvement when the monitors were in place. Now, she said, 'Things have kind of backtracked.' Danet Ferguson's son, Malachi, faced a monthlong suspension for fighting another student in January, striking two teachers who tried to break them up. She was confident the school would conclude the 13-year-old's ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder contributed to the incident. The school found such a link in a previous suspension this school year. In the aftermath of the fight, Malachi was removed from class at I.S. 181 in the Bronx. Ferguson, who runs a day care, was forced to drive him to a suspension center more than an hour away. 'I'm stressed out and frustrated,' Ferguson said at the time. 'His grades have dropped. … I'm missing work.' A little over a week after Malachi was removed from class, his school held a suspension review meeting to assess if his disability played a role in the fight. Ferguson and Michaela Shuchman, her legal advocate, pointed to Malachi's history of aggression and impulsivity, which are well documented in his special education records. But school staff countered that Malachi's behavior was premeditated. They said they could not let the incident slide without significant punishment, according to Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services. 'Everybody was just on the attack,' said Ferguson. 'There was no one trying to listen.' The school ruled Malachi's disability wasn't a major factor, allowing his suspension to continue. With Shuchman's help, Ferguson appealed the case. A hearing officer found several procedural flaws with the school's suspension review process. Ferguson wanted Malachi's counselor and one-on-one paraprofessional to attend the meeting, two people who could have helped interpret his behavior that day. But the school dismissed the request, arguing it came too late to ensure the staff could be there and wasn't worth postponing the meeting, according to the hearing officer's ruling. Hearing officer Tanya White blasted the school for that decision, noting that Ferguson 'had a right to designate attendees.' She added: 'The two people that [Ferguson] requested would have provided a unique insight into the ultimate determination.' It was also unclear whether the school was following Malachi's special education learning plan, an issue that was not sufficiently discussed during the suspension review process, according to White's ruling. Malachi is supposed to have a full-time behavioral support aide, who had helped keep his behavior in check in the past, the hearing officer wrote. School staff claimed there was a different aide with Malachi at the time of the incident, though the hearing officer noted the aide's presence was not included in the official incident report, nor did that person offer a witness statement or attend the suspension review meeting. 'The only two people who placed the covering paraprofessional at the scene are DOE staff members with a vested interest in the answer as to whether the Student's [learning plan] was being implemented,' White wrote. White was also troubled that the school had removed references to physical outbursts in Malachi's behavior plan. Altering the behavior plan 'undermines the DOE's assertion that it arrived at the correct conclusion,' she wrote. The principal of I.S. 181 did not respond to a request for comment. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on specific student cases and did not answer a question about whether the school's staff have received training on the suspension process. White ruled in Malachi's favor, ordering the Education Department to pay for about 126 hours of one-on-one tutoring to make up for the disruption to his education. Malachi still served the monthlong suspension, which would have been nearly three weeks shorter if the school had found the fight was related to his disability at the initial review meeting. Shuchman said overturning a suspension on appeal after the student has already served it is common, as that process often takes around 40 days to play out and most suspensions are capped at 20 days. 'It's really justice delayed,' she said. Over the past year, advocates have pushed the Education Department to reform the discipline process but have struggled to gain traction. A group of attorneys lobbied the Education Department to directly connect families to advocates before the suspension review meetings, as parents often don't know their rights or how the process works. A handful of public interest legal groups offered to supply pro-bono advocates. 'Just having somebody in the room, just having your back … is really important to families,' said Gerst, one of the lawyers who supported the effort. 'When we do advocate, we often find so many other special education issues.' Some advocates and parents also suggested that school staff don't review their own school's suspension decision. The idea has some precedent: At charter schools, the suspension reviews are typically overseen by Education Department staff who don't work for the school. So far, the city has rejected the proposal to provide legal representation for families during the process, a decision Education Department officials declined to explain. But they expressed some openness to taking the process out of the hands of the school that disciplined the student. 'It's something that we are talking about,' said Jemilo, the Education Department official, 'and exploring what an alternative could be.' If the city made that change 'that could be big,' Shuchman said, because the current process creates 'a real conflict of interest.' It is unclear how seriously city officials are considering it, however. An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about who would conduct the reviews or a timeline for making that change. In the meantime, advocates said the process is still stacked against families. For Clayton, Tristan's mother, the process was so overwhelming that she pulled him out of the city's school system. Even though Tristan won hundreds of hours of one-on-one tutoring, Clayton struggled to coax him to attend. The teen's experience at school had reached a breaking point, and Tristan wound up getting suspended again, she said. That was the final straw. 'I was like, 'I'm going to spend half the time at a suspension hearing,'' Clayton said. So last September, Tristan moved in with his aunt upstate. His mother said he's doing better in school, landed a job at a local bakery, and plans to go to trade school for plumbing. The guidance counselor from Tristan's old school recently called to ask after the teen. Clayton was thrilled to offer an update. 'He's really thriving,' she said. 'I'm in disbelief.' This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at
