Cover illustrated by Olivia Hom
This school year, M-A has seen a historic low in suspension rates. A year after distance learning, newer students seem to be settling into M-A.
Suspension rates are an important reflection of a school’s students and its staff’s ability to manage issues among students. Suspensions mean that students are missing valuable class time, which can make it difficult for them to stay on track. Many factors explain why M-A’s suspension and referral rates have seen historic lows this year.
The SUHSD Dashboard reports suspension rates as the percentage of students suspended at least once, which does not account for students that get suspended more than once in a year, and updates once at the end of every school year.
It also includes data on the number of suspensions assigned, which is as follows:
While data is only available for the first semester of the 2022-23 school year, there were 39 suspensions, predicting a full school year with 78 suspensions if all else remains constant. This is the lowest suspension rate seen in the past decade. In the 2020-21 school year, because of distance learning, there were no suspensions.
While the data on suspension rates are concrete, the reasons behind this change are not.
Staff tend to use other measures before suspensions. Principal Karl Losekoot said, “There are some things that you can’t suspend on a first offense and there are a number of offenses where we want to take a variety of interventions before we get to suspension.”
Losekoot said, “This year, we have seen a historical drop in referral and suspension data at the school. I bring up referral data because we’ve had a decline in suspension data for several years, even pre-pandemic, but our referral data, which is referrals out of the classroom, was not declining. So one theory is there’s still the same amount of disruption in the classroom, but we’re maybe doing something different with it in the office.”
Rachel Richards, Biology and Chemistry teacher, said “I’ve had a really good year with great classes. I know talking to my colleagues that it varies widely, but in my classroom things are peaceful and calm. When students know the rules and it’s very structured there’s not a culture to go to the point of where you would need a suspension.”
Another change this year has been an increase of interventions before suspensions. Loosekoot said, “My first step as an administrator is to understand the context of what happened by trying to listen to the students or staff involved in terms of what happened, and then figuring out how to end up in an improved situation. Sometimes that is counseling, conflict mediation, or one-on-one check-ins.”
He added, “We have also invested heavily into conflict resolution. We have a dedicated staff member working as a conflict mediator, and we’ve invested in a community-based organization called Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center. So one possible reason could be that more people are using those resources to resolve conflict rather than having just disruptive behavior and to iron out whatever caused that disruptive behavior.”
In addition to conflict mediation, there are other resources to help students, like the Zen Den. Losekoot said, “A place like the Zen Den may contribute to this drop as it’s a place where kids can go as opposed to acting out in class.”
Richards found that “fighting is probably the most classic cause of suspension”, she said, “Last year, I think people weren’t used to interacting with so many groups of people and so there were a lot of fights. But that has calmed down which I could see decreasing the amount of suspensions.”
Losekoot sees detracking as something that could impact students’ actions, resulting in fewer suspensions. He said, “When you have a multicultural literature and voice class or an ethnic studies class where the majority of our students are in these classes, do more students feel valued in these classes? The theory is that if you separate students, it creates a sense that certain people are more valued than the people in a different class, which could make them be less engaged.”
Another possibility, he said, is that this year M-A has a lower enrollment. However, he said, “I don’t think that explains the dramatic decline but if you put all these reasons together we start to see this change.”
It’s also important to help students catch up after a suspension. Richards said, “If I’m not involved in the situation, I treat suspensions as an absence and I help students get back on track with their work when they are back.”
Losekoot concluded, “Our hope as a school in whatever we do is a long-term improvement. So while this may be a good year, we want to see this trend over multiple years. I hope that it does because we are building structures and routines that allow us to show improvement and maintain improvement over time.”
