SNOW HILL — Worcester County Public Schools (WCPS) will be studying the pros and cons of new state-based student discipline regulations this summer. While there have been grumblings in other counties and here in Worcester about the possible impact of the regulations, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jerry Wilson said that they could address some major flaws that schools have been dealing with statewide.
“If I were to characterize the purpose of these regulations, they are intended to keep more kids in school,” said Wilson at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting. “They’re a departure from some of our earlier practices regarding zero tolerance policies with the idea being that too frequently some of these policies have promoted in some places a pipeline to prison type approach starting in the school with school discipline, leading to kids either incarcerated or dropping out.”
The new regulations would prompt a general restructuring of how student discipline is handled at all grade levels. In general, the new guidelines would seek to minimize the time students spend in out-of-school suspension with alternative disciplinary responses such as mediation or in-school-suspension. In cases where out-of-school suspension is deemed unavoidable, schools will be tasked to provide material and education to those students to keep them from falling behind their peers.
The changes to school discipline have been approved at the state level and all counties in Maryland will be expected to come onboard next year. There is some controversy behind the new disciplinary philosophy, with dozens of comments publically submitted to the State Board of Education’s website from state educators who worry that they will take away too much authority from teachers and administrators.
In Worcester, County Commissioner Virgil Shockley, who is also a bus contractor, has been vocal is his fear that the discipline changes will remove necessary correction tools from educators and has stated that he would like to see the county consider applying for a waiver to opt-out of the reform. However, implementation of the student discipline changes falls under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education and Wilson sees a lot of potential to reduce drop-out rates.
“We will be looking very closely at those regulations, putting together a team to do so,” said Wilson. “I think that this will be an important consideration for the Board of Education sometime this summer when we have those regulations to put into policy.”