Senate Bill 81, which is currently pending state House action, would require the suspension of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who assault or attempt to assault school employees or volunteers.
Previous law has limited mandatory suspensions to students in sixth grade or higher.
Taken to extreme, a school could suspend a 9-year-old who raises her fist in anger — attempted assault.
“These third-graders today are not the third-graders of yesteryear,” state Sen. Ron Sharp, the bill’s author, told The Oklahoman earlier this year. “They’re big and strong, and they are attacking teachers and other students. It’s a problem today in our public schools.”
Not to be too cynical, but why are we drawing the line at third grade? Why shouldn’t kindergarten teachers have protection against the big strong students in their classes? Today’s second-graders aren’t the second-graders of yesteryear.
People are also reading…
Everyone wants teachers and school volunteers to have safe working environments, but schools already have the option of suspending any student in any grade who poses a real danger, and they do. The problem with this proposal is the one-size-fits-all mandate that presumes all students in the category should be suspended.
In some circumstances suspensions are the appropriate response, but in others counseling or other approaches are the right move. What we need here is careful consideration of the child and the incident, which is the job of the school, not the Legislature.
Schools already have the ability to protect teachers. We don’t need the Legislature mandating discipline policies that are best left to people who understand individual circumstances.
If the Legislature really is bent on doing something for public schools, it could consider adequately funding them.
