Education leaders respond to ACLU of Montana report about discipline in public schools

School district administrators from around the state met with officials from the Montana Office of Public Instruction and the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana through a teleconference last week to discuss a report released by the ACLU of Montana in December 2019 concerning discipline rates in Montana's public schools. 

The report by the ACLU of Montana, using data from the Office of Civil Rights, found that minority students were being disciplined at a disproportionate rate compared to their white peers. In fact, it found that Indigenous students lost nearly six times the rate of instruction and were arrested more than six times as often as their white peers. 

More:ACLU report highlights disproportionate discipline rates among minority students

The Advocacy and Policy Director for the ACLU of Montana, SK Rossi, explained to those involved in the meeting that the report was meant to identify issues within school environments across the state that could lead to future criminalization and incarceration of students, particularly students of color. 

"One of the issues that the ACLU tried to work on is how to reduce incarceration generally," explained Rossi. "One of the things we were seeing is that depending on how school districts operated and depending on how their discipline looked a lot of the time the folks were exiting that school system, either via expulsion or dropout or graduation were ending up more frequently in the criminal justice system if they had been subjected to exclusionary discipline and pushed out of schools ... because they did not feel safe or comfortable or support in their school district." 

There was a common agreement between those involved in the meeting that the rate of discipline among minority students in Montana's public schools is a problem that requires more attention than it's getting now. 

Some districts, like Great Falls Public Schools and Missoula County Public Schools, indicated that they are already working to implement the recommendations proposed by the ACLU of Montana to combat issues of discipline. 

"We've bulleted or outlined those recommendations at the administrative level that we're going to go back at action planning and strategic planning around that we have gathered information that supports making some changes based on those recommendations," said GFPS Superintendent Tom Moore during the meeting. 

In the report, the ACLU of Montana offers recommendations to combat the issues of discipline in schools for state law makers, school boards, administrators and educators, law enforcement, as well as students and their parent or guardians. These recommendations range from banning zero tolerance discipline policies at the state level to arranging classroom desks in a circle, rather than rows. 

Moore also mentioned that he recently met with the district's Indian Education team after they did an in-depth analysis of the report by the ACLU of Montana. The team came to Moore with a six page report including recommendations for professional development and what they feel needs to happen to address the issues highlighted in the report. 

Rossi expressed that the ACLU of Montana would be available as a resource for the district moving forward. 

"There's an open invitation for you to come in and work with us," said Moore. 

But the report was also met with criticism from district officials, calling into question what data was used as well as the accuracy of that data. 

During the meeting, Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Mark Flatau asked clarifying questions regarding the data the ACLU of Montana requested from his district. KPS, like GFPS, received a records request from the ACLU this past summer, but according to Flatau his district "immediately responded" with requested information. Flatau wondered how the requested data from his district was used in the report.

Rossi was not immediately able to provide an answer as they were not directly involved with the data analysis and collection for the report, but told Flatau that they would circle back with more information following the meeting. 

Flatau also pointed out potential issues with using one school year's worth of data to characterize an entire district. 

According to Flatau, Flathead High School reported an elevated number of arrests during the 2015-2016 school year after a senior prank "went bad." The prank ultimately resulted in 21 students facing two criminal charges each. Flatau said that this incident was reported as "42 arrests." Despite the criminal charges each student faced, the district wanted to ensure that they would go on to graduate. 

"Even though they faced certainly consequences more serious than others for breaking the law, they all graduated, we had a plan for them to be able to do that," said Flatau. 

He went on the outline his district's recent history of moving to more restorative justice practices and partnerships with the Center for Restorative Youth Justice. 

"Sometimes data just being reported on paper doesn't tell the whole story," said Flatau.

Both GFPS and KPS had similar issues with the number of arrests that were reported by schools within each district. The superintendents from the districts say that the number of "arrests" more accurately reflects the number of citations issued during the school year. 

It is unclear why the numbers may have been reported incorrectly, but the Chief Data Officer with the OPI Michael Sweeney believes that there is confusion among district administrators with the definitions used by the Office of Civil Rights data collection. The OPI does not play a role in data collection by the Office of Civil Rights. 

"I've heard that the reporting mechanisms do lend themselves to misunderstanding or misreporting especially when it comes to the meaning of some of these terms," said Sweeney. 

"Districts across the state might be interpreting those definitions differently and so that's maybe something we could look at the state level as either clarifying that ourselves or having OCR clarify their definitions so that there's a more consistent definition that schools are using for reporting," added OPI Director of Communications Dylan Klapmeier. 

District superintendents also noted the section of the report by the ACLU of Montana regarding support staff in public schools. Superintendents agreed that an increased presence of support staff in schools would be great, however funding those positions is a different story.

In the report, the ACLU of Montana states that many schools in Montana do not meet recommended ratios for support staff. Thirteen percent of Montana schools reported having no support staff at all, according to the report. 

Missoula County Public Schools Superintendent Rob Watson explained that there are only state accreditation standards in place for counseling staff, there are presently no standards for social workers, nurses or school psychologists.

"And because of that with our budget, like most other large districts, goes to meet accreditation standards first and then anything leftover is discretionary money unfortunately," said Watson. "For example, I would love to have a school nurse in every school because I think that's like a minimum, but we can't afford to do that and there's no accreditation standard for school nurses."

Watson suggested using this meeting as an opportunity to update accreditation standards for support staff in schools with the Board of Public Education. Officials with the OPI expressed that they want to do their part to ensure that accreditation standards are up-to-date for the modern classroom and school.