Ebony Johnson wants students to leave her office feeling like they’ve pushed the Control-Alt-Delete keys on their education.
Just as rebooting a computer offers a fresh start, Johnson’s new approach to students whose serious discipline issues resulted in long-term suspensions is to reintegrate them in a totally new way.
“The whole purpose of this meeting is so we can figure out a way that you’re successful. Period,” Johnson, senior director of student engagement at Tulsa Public Schools, told 16-year-old Alyssa Crafton this week.
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Crafton is among 88 students in TPS whose first day of 2016-17 will be their first day back in school after long-term suspensions. Every one of them is in the process of getting a one-on-one meeting and individual student success plan with academic, social and behavioral supports.
The serious infractions that qualify students for banishment between 30 days to an entire semester range from assault and battery on school personnel, to death threats, robbery, inciting to riot and weapons possession.
Crafton said her latest in a long history of infractions was arranging to fight a fellow student off campus.
Once the punishment for even the most serious infractions is served, public schools have no choice but to accept these students back. Previously, that meant kids simply returning to where they started and the results have been predictably poor.
“Our goal is to reduce recidivism,” Johnson said. “Our new department is attempting to restore these kids. We want to communicate our expectation for them to behave, but we want them to know they have support.”
This new “Connecting and Collaborating Suspension Re-entry” program is part of Tulsa Public Schools’ larger effort to reduce its overall number of out-of-school student suspensions and to shorten the length of suspensions when they are given.
Johnson said the district wants to avoid the circumstances Oklahoma City Public Schools found itself in after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found dramatic disparities in its suspension rates for black students. Earlier this year, that school district entered into a prescriptive resolution agreement with federal education officials to decrease its number of suspensions.
TPS saw its number of individual students suspended drop 8 percent from 8,838 in 2014-15 to 8,113 in 2015-16, officials said, and the number of missed instructional days fell 17 percent from 58,449 to 48,464.
TPS’ goal for 2016-17 is to reduce its number of suspended students by another 5 percent.
Long-term suspensions are the most rare, but their number is still significant in TPS.
In 2014-2015, for example, 273 Tulsa students were suspended for periods of more than 30 days.
Johnson’s approach is to first look for some bright spot on a kid’s record so she can use it as an opportunity to praise them and in doing so, disarm them. For Crafton, a 16-year-old so far behind in credits that she’s still in junior high, that was test results showing her reading level has already surpassed a 12th grade level.
“You have a very high reading level,” Johnson said to Crafton, as a huge smile flashed across the face of the girl’s mother, Tammy Carr. “That tells me academic struggles are not the main issue.”
“Well, I’ve been reading her books since I was like 10,” Crafton said, looking to her mother. “None of my classes has even been a struggle – except math.”
That exchange cleared the way for a frank discussion of the student’s struggles, namely drama with teachers and classmates, plus a poor attendance track record.
The Connecting and Collaborating Suspension Re-entry program also seeks to identify the best possible academic placement for students. So instead of assuming that Crafton could simply return to Hale Junior High and expect things to be different, Johnson asked her and her mother what they felt would be best.
Crafton was down on the idea of public schools in general, but Carr pointed out that she had a good experience at TRAICE, an alternative education school.
“The teachers cried when she left,” Carr said.
Johnson said a placement at TRAICE could be considered once Crafton is ready to return from Margaret Hudson, a school for pregnant teens.
Last came the counseling, or as Johnson put it to Crafton, “I know I’m all up in your Kool-Aid, all up in your business.”
She talked to Crafton about the possibilities of conflicts with future classmates and teachers and about her attendance issues. And she promised that she would be checking her progress and would get in the car and come to her at school if Crafton needed.
“Do you pay the light bill? The rent? Do you pay for food?” Johnson asked her.
“No, I owe her a lot,” Crafton said.
“You do owe her. Pay your debt. You owe her to stay at school when she drops you off,” Johnson replied. “I want you to be extremely laser-like focused on making the best grades you can. Things are going to come up in life, but you figure out a plan and keep moving — just like you have a plan to finish high school and be a good mom. You’re picking up the pieces.”
Both Crafton and her mother left the meeting beaming.
“I like her,” quipped Carr, Crafton’s mother. “You’re the first person who has broke it down like that.”
