Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Teachers can boot unruly students

CARSON CITY -- When the school year resumes in September, it will be the teacher, not the principal, who will decide when a disruptive student is kicked out of class.

One of the final bills passed by the Nevada Legislature last week and signed by Gov. Kenny Guinn Wednesday was Assembly Bill 521, which puts the teacher in the driver's seat to remove troublemakers who bother other students.

"That was our signature bill," Elaine Lancaster, president of the Nevada State Education Association, the union that represents 90 percent of the teachers in the state, said. "A pre-session poll showed 70 percent felt disruptive students was the No. 1 issue."

She said that in the past, troublesome students would be sent to the principal's office, only to return shortly to class.

"This law allows the classroom teacher to decide when the behavior is no longer acceptable," she said.

In the past, the teacher could paddle the student who misbehaved. But those days have passed. This Legislature, however, gave a clear signal it wants parents to spank their children who are out of line. It approved a measure shielding parents from being arrested or from lawsuits if they apply reasonable measures of discipline.

In the classroom discipline bill, the principal is still involved, but to a lesser degree. The law, effective July 1, requires principals, after consulting with teachers and parents, to establish a plan for progressive punishment for unruly students.

"This isn't something where a kid mouths off once," Lancaster said. There must be a series of incidents before the teacher can order the child out of the class temporarily and into an alternative placement program with other disruptive students.

This bill, she said, does not apply to special education children.

Doug Byington, lobbyist for the Nevada Association of School Administrators, said principals opposed the bill.

"They want us (principals) to have all the responsibility but none of the authority," Byington said. "Teachers wanted the ability to kick a kid out if he looked cross-eyed at them."

Byington said he and representatives of the teachers union and the Clark County School District were able to negotiate a compromise that the teacher had to follow progressive discipline rules drafted by principals.

"We were able to get some of the things out of the bill that were quite distasteful," Byington said.

This bill will be quite expensive, Byington said. Schools will have to find a classroom and another teacher to supervise and instruct these youngsters. "You can't put them in the library nor set them in the principal's office. There must be a special segregated space. And you have got to have someone to watch and teach them," he said. Compounding the problem is the fact that schools are short of space.

The student is automatically disqualified from extracurricular activities when he is outside his regular class.

Principals must notify both the student and the parents of the reasons. A conference can be held to discuss the case. If the parent wants to appeal, a committee consisting of the principal and two teachers is established, to review discipline.

This committee decides whether the student should be returned to the original classroom; assigned to another classroom; placed permanently in the alternative setting or expelled.

The Legislature set aside $500,000 in each of the coming two fiscal years to set up pilot projects in eight schools for alternative classes for students with behavior problems. There will be an emphasis on self-discipline and counseling. Instruction must be in language, mathematics, science and history at the appropriate grade level of the student.

The money must be distributed to two elementary, two middle and two high schools in either Las Vegas or Reno and one elementary and one high school in rural Nevada.

This new law dovetails with the existing one that calls for suspension or expulsion of a student for assaulting a teacher, possessing firearms on campus or sale or distribution of drugs.

Lancaster, a teacher for 30 years, says this new program will work well in the primary grades to curb such things as the student talking all the time, throwing erasers, wandering around the classroom, bothering other students and talking back to the teacher.

"The older they get the worse they get," she said. "Get them in the early grades and you break the habit."

While this bill deals with some problem children, the Legislature wants to take a look at a larger problem. It created the 11-member Commission on School Safety and Juvenile Violence, as a response to the shooting of students at school in Colorado.

During the next 18 months, this commission must come up with recommendations to reduce gangs and violence on school grounds and limit the access of firearms to juveniles. It must also develop an emergency plan to respond to the incidents of violence on campus.

Guinn also Wednesday signed that bill, AB686.

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