Jefferson City School Board approves changes to discipline policy
The Jefferson City School District board approved three alterations to the district’s policy on how it disciplines students in certain situations.
In its meeting Monday night, the board voted 5-1, with one board member absent, to grant administrators more discretion in how they punish students involved in the sale or transfer of drugs or alcohol.
“They loosen up, they give us a little more flexibility, a little more freedom.,” said JC Schools Chief of Learning Brian Shindorf. “When we’re dealing with kids, they give us the professional latitude to make decisions around the consequences that we’re using with our kids, what that looks like based on individual students, because every situation is different when it comes to discipline.”
The changes also created a new classification of offense within the board’s policy labeled “physical contact/aggression,” which includes any unwanted physical contact that is not classified as an assault or fight.
Board members also approved the use of “alternative consequences” when deemed necessary by a principal.
Drugs or alcohol transfer
Prior to the changes made Monday, the board policy dictated that any instance of drug or alcohol sale, transfer or distribution would be met with an automatic expulsion from the school.
The new policy gives administrators the discretion to assign a student an in-school or out-of-school suspension for up to six months on the first offense.
On the second offense, the administrator can assign an out-of-school suspension of up to six months.
On any offense, the policy still allows the administrator to expel the offending student.
Physical contact or aggression
The JC Schools board adopted a new policy section that outlines the punishments for “physical contact/aggression.”
The new policy defines the offense as, “unwanted physical contact with or without aggression that does
not rise to the level of assault.”
On a first offense, the policy empowers administrators to hold a parent conference and assign an in-school suspension or an out-of-school suspension of up to 10 days. On a second offense, administrators can assign an in-school suspension or an out of school suspension of up to six months.
Alternative consequences
A new sentence positioned at the end of the JC Schools discipline policy document was adopted Monday night.
“In addition to the above consequences, building administration may, when deemed necessary, utilize alternative consequences, with supervisor approval.”
“There were a lot of times that elementary principals used the term ‘loss of privilege,'” said Shindorf. “Nowhere in policy does it say that we would use ‘loss of privilege’ as a consequence.”
According to Shindorf, Missouri School Boards Association attorneys advised the district to add the addendum to the discipline policy to account for the commonly used punishment.
The section doesn’t specify any definition of the term “alternative consequences.”
The full, updated JC Schools discipline policy can be viewed by following this link. The changes adopted Monday are highlighted in yellow.
