The Austin Board of Education expelled its first two students of the school year Thursday, a much slower start than the 11 expelled at the same point in 1998.

Friday, November 05, 1999

The Austin Board of Education expelled its first two students of the school year Thursday, a much slower start than the 11 expelled at the same point in 1998.

Last October, misuse or sale of Ritalin and/or Prozac was the cause. Thursday’s expulsions came because the students were "involved in an altercation on a school campus." According to Superintendent James Hess, the two students were expelled after extensive investigation because the altercation involved a weapon.

"They were in violation of our safe schools policy and will be expelled for up to one year," Hess said. "We do have the authority to mitigate that expulsion and we will certainly look at that." Expelled students are often eligible to apply for readmission under a behavioral contract after a certain period of time, provided both the student and his or her parents sign the contract.

The state requires the school district to provide alternative instruction and the pair will not go without. Hess said the students – who had been suspended from school since Oct. 18 – would receive a minimum of two contact hours per day with a tutor at the district administration building.

He then expressed a little frustration with the current system.

"You always want to give kids choices and options, but when you expel it’s like slamming a door," the superintendent said. "That’s why we’re proposing that we review the local policy. Some things – like dangerous weapons or firearms policies – are passed down by the state and federal government and we can’t change those, but we can certainly look at our local policy."

Currently the district operates on a "zero tolerance" policy – basically any student caught at school with drugs or weapons is expelled unless there are extremely extenuating circumstances. Hess and director of educational services Candace Raskin took a proposal to the board in late September outlining an intermediate step between being enrolled and being expelled.

Rather than expelling a student under current procedures and then re-enrolling him or her after the required time, Hess and Raskin proposed a voluntary enrollment in one of the district’s alternative education programs. The student would still be excluded from the mainstream, but not go through the expulsion procedure.

The switch would be more immediate, "not giving the student time to get into the habit of not attending school," according to Hess, and less of an emotional trial for everyone involved because it would be voluntary and not as extreme. It would also not leave an expulsion on the student’s record.

"The board asked at that meeting that we come back with some specific numbers on expulsions," Hess said. "We can now trace the expulsion rates over the past 10 years. Those figures show that we’re getting more and more expulsions."

Hess said he thought the district staff would be able to make a recommendation to the board within the next two months.

The September proposal included the following conditions:

– Students 15 and older caught with drugs – not with the intent to sell – on or around school grounds or with a weapon – not with the intent to use – would have the option of voluntarily attending the full-time alternative learning center program (ALC) at Riverland Community College for the remainder of the school year.

– Students under 15 in the same circumstances, could attend an alternative education program for four hours a day housed at an alternative site.

In both cases, the student and parents would have to participate voluntarily. Under the proposal, if the parents or the student were unwilling , normal expulsion procedures would be followed.

Board member Brian McAlister – who will relinquish his seat in January – said at the September meeting that the district needs to look at how, why and what it’s trying to do under the current system of zero tolerance before setting any alternative exclusion policy.

"Right now we treat a third grader with a butter knife in his backpack the same as a 12th grader threatening someone in the hall with a hunting knife," he said. "They’re not the same thing, except maybe politically for zero tolerance. In real life, we know it’s not the same thing."