The following is an excerpt from an article about school suspensions in Chicago:
Nearly 45,000 of Chicago Public School’s more than 410,000 students were suspended at least once last year, according to district data.
Though that number is down from the 2007-2008 school year, it is still high, activists said at a South Side community meeting at the end of January. More than that, one Chicago pastor said, it is an issue the next Chicago mayor will have to reckon with.
Suspensions can be a pipeline – leading from dropped-out straight to prison, said the Rev. Robert Biekman, of Southlawn United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Avalon Park neighborhood.
“There are some children that probably need to be suspended,” said Biekman, de facto spokesman for High HOPES – Healing Over the Punishment of Expulsions and Suspensions. “It is a tool, but not the only tool.”
The campaign is part of a larger network of advocacy groups within the Community Renewal Society, a faith-based social justice organization with headquarters in the Loop.
At the meeting, the group called on Chicago mayoral candidates to support its campaign to reduce suspensions and expulsions 40 percent by trying alternatives.
Here is what the mayoral candidates who addressed student discipline said they would do:
Gery Chico: “Will evaluate and assess student behavior to identify problems early before they endanger teachers and other students.”
Rahm Emanuel: “Will replace the assistant principal role with a director of family and community engagement. This person would manage all extended time programming and would be charged with parent organizing, training and enlisting assets of parents in the school.”
Carol Moseley Braun: “Will follow the model created by the Baltimore Public Schools for reducing dropouts and absenteeism by creating a graduated system of consequences and interventions from student misconduct and only suspending students for dangerous behavior.”
Studies have shown that students who are suspended even once are more likely to drop out of school.
With no high school diploma, college isn’t an option and job prospects are bleak. CPS has historically had a high dropout rate.
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