School board updates restorative discipline plan

After input on school disciplinary practices, the Carson City School Board has adopted its restorative discipline plan for the 2023-24 school year.

Tasha Fuson, associate superintendent of educational services, reviewed plan updates and provisions that define how students are expected to conduct themselves during the school board meeting Sept. 26.

The plan Implementing restorative practices in school encourages mediation, intervention and support instead of punitive disciplinary approaches.

Fuson said the district is required to collect feedback from educators and local stakeholders, including parents and students, for its plan to improve upon its strategy before submitting it to the state.

“(The teams) get together, they take a look at their site-based data for discipline — how many students have they suspended, how many students have they expelled,” Fuson said. “In the case of elementary schools, because they were not permitted to suspend or expel students, they look more deeply at how many students were put in an alternative learning environment.”

Fuson said teams examine data for criteria closely for discrepancies or disparities, such as gender inequities, in student placements in alternative learning environments, as an example, where students might be placed outside a vice principal’s learning office when they’re struggling or experiencing a disciplinary issue in a classroom.

“It’s eye-opening to be able to say what are our trends and then look at the district’s plan to provide us feedback to say this is what we would like to see changed,” Fuson said.

Fuson discussed a recommended restorative discipline matrix included in the board packet that outlines specific interventions for disciplinary issues. The matrix defines the resulting actions a school can take according to level of severity, such as sending a parent notification up to expulsion or restorative plan of action, depending on the disciplinary event, such as cyberbullying or arson.

Fuson said the revised document also describes a plan for placement in the event a student has to be taken out of a school and placed into a new school.

“State law says if you’re going to take a student out of school A and put them in school B, the schools have to meet and there has to be a service that school B can offer that school A cannot,” Fuson said.

The plan also addresses truancy. Fuson, noting the most recent chronic absenteeism rates, said Carson City has not been “super successful” in changing student behaviors through its Student Attendance Review Board. Fuson said district staff members are exploring supports and wraparound services to help students who might need check-ins or adult role models to produce better results in their academics and attendance.

“We’re trying to be more preventive than reactive,” Fuson told board members.

Trustee Richard Varner asked whether students had ever been issued citations that were entered into juvenile court as a result of their disciplinary action. Fuson said while the district does work with community partners, such as law enforcement, to revoke a student’s driver’s license in a serious offense, it is not done often.

“I think the feeling of our community is we need to get stronger about our intervention and support services within the school system before any action is willing to be taken by our community partners,” Fuson said.

The board adopted the restorative practices plan in a 7-0 vote.