SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - In 2013, the South Bend school district created a department to tackle the chronic problem of black students being disciplined at higher rates than others.
Seven years later - after the district has spent more than $1 million on the African American Student and Parent Services department - a greater percentage of black students are suspended and expelled than before the department was created.
Black students, who today make up 37% of the district’s enrollment, are still nearly five times as likely to be expelled and nearly four times as likely to be suspended out of school as their white classmates, state data show.
Out-of-school suspensions totaled 61% of the black student population in 2018, compared to 39% in 2013. That amounted to 4,131 out-of-school suspensions among the district’s 6,754 black students in 2018. (Some individual students may account for more than one suspension.)
The rate of black students being expelled also has continued to increase. In 2018, 114 black students - 1.69% of the population - were expelled, compared to 0.68% in 2013.
One of the goals of the African American Student and Parent Services department was to decrease the racial discipline gap. But the needle has moved in the opposite direction.
South Bend Superintendent Todd Cummings, along with some school board members, say they’re dismayed, though not surprised, by the numbers.
“That data has been going downhill for years,” Cummings said. “We know it’s bad. And we still need to improve it.”
School officials blame the department’s lack of progress on a variety of factors, including too little money for programming and teacher and staff training. In the seven years since the department began, the district has spent about $1 million on salaries for directors. Cummings said more money is needed, but when pressed, he didn’t specify a number.
Others, including a sitting school board member, say African American Student and Parent Services was created with no clear vision and only to appease those demanding the district do something to address the lopsided discipline of black students.
School board member Oletha Jones, formerly the education chairwoman for the local NAACP, was one of the advocates who pushed the district beginning in 2012 to create a department to serve black students.
Last week, she expressed frustration at hearing suspension and expulsion rates are up - not down - for African Americans.
“We did not want this to be something symbolic,” she said about the new department. “It needed to be something with teeth in it that was going to make a difference and (bring about) real change. We needed to bring focus to a demographic that has been underserved since the corporation’s existence.”
In recent weeks, the department’s second director, Nathan Boyd, has moved to a principal position, leaving the job open.
The call to create the African American Student and Parent Services department came at a time when community advocates questioned school officials about why black students were kicked out of school, labeled as special education and issued citations by school resource officers at rates disproportionate to other students.
The way to combat those issues, Jones said, was, in part, for the new department to head up culturally sensitive professional development for teachers and staff members, as well as to educate black families on ways to help children in school.
David Moss, then a vice president of student affairs at the University of Notre Dame, was hired in 2013 as the first director of African American Student and Parent Services.
His salary started at $77,477 and rose to $114,964 by 2016, making him one of the highest-paid employees in the school district at the time.
When Moss was hired, former Superintendent Carole Schmidt said his primary responsibilities were to design and implement academic, social and parent programs focused on black students.
But Moss, interviewed recently, said his concentration was on students.
He created a group known as the Hodari Scholars, made up of high-achieving black students. He also planned a series of field trips for third-graders to area colleges in spring 2015 but limited the invite list to black children. That sparked criticism after several parents claimed the program was discriminatory.
“The programs that I created were designed based on job description - working with African American kids. And when that began to happen, there was pushback,” Moss said. “When you provide equity for a group, others feel left out in the process. Some weren’t ready for that kind of focus.”
Moss, who is now the education chairman for the South Bend NAACP, said the department struggled because “there wasn’t an adequate budget to get things done,” superintendents were shifting and he didn’t have a staff. It was a one-man department, Moss said.
“If you want to move the needle of change,” he said, “that takes resources, and those weren’t available.”
By June 2017, Moss was let go after the school board decided not to renew his contract.
Regina Williams-Preston, a cognitive intervention specialist at South Bend’s Jackson Middle School and a former city councilwoman, said the department’s focus was skewed.
“What seemed to manifest was basically, ‘let’s take kids on field trips,’ and those were outward displays that made it seem like something’s happening,” Williams-Preston said. “It’s not that it’s not beneficial and that children don’t need to go to campuses and walk around and see colleges. They do. But, doing all of that, it’s not really getting to the root of the problem.”
Boyd, now principal at Navarre Middle School, took on the role as African American Student and Parent Services director in 2017. He was appointed by former Superintendent Kenneth Spells and received an annual salary of $105,000.
In his second month on the job, he outlined detailed goals for how he planned to boost academic achievement and reduce discipline rates for African American students. Those included reducing out-of-school suspensions for black students by 15%, increasing enrollment by 15% in the 21st Century Scholars program and doubling the number of families registered for Parents University, a program that helps parents navigate the school system.
“Nathan started important work in a number of areas,” said School Board President John Anella. “When the office was created, resources and people weren’t truly committed to it. That started to change.”
Then, when Cummings took over as superintendent last year, Boyd was appointed as the district’s chief equity and multicultural officer. It was a new position created by Cummings as part of his “central office restructuring” plan.
The job, which earned Boyd an annual salary of $119,000, was created to transform “academic outcomes for the district’s often marginalized populations through the promotion of equity,” Cummings said at the time.
“When I looked at the data and the actions that have been taken by previous superintendents, I knew I had inherited a department that needed support,” Cummings said. “When I made that position, it had the autonomy and accountability of an assistant superintendent.”
Tessa Sutton, who had worked in Elkhart schools, succeeded Boyd as director of African American Student and Parent Services. In that position, she earned $106,000. Today, she currently has a salary of $119,000.
Boyd and Sutton worked together and created a “30-60-90” day plan last semester that focused on “systemic culture and climate change.” They wanted to ensure principals were trained in the district’s code of conduct so student discipline could be meted out fairly, and to start using restorative justice practices that are supposed to reduce out-of-school suspensions.
During a work session with the school board in September, the two introduced a pilot program that would incorporate special rooms within elementary school buildings. The spaces, known as “recovery and rally” rooms, would offer students social and emotional learning and interventions.
“I do not believe being in the hallway or office is good for students,” Boyd told the board. “Implementation of rally room space is a way to keep students in the building who would have been suspended and out of school.”
At the meeting, Sutton told the school board, “We have an office of four people trying to do the job of many, many more.”
Currently, 10 employees work under Sutton in the department, according to the district. The average employee’s annual salary is about $43,000. Taylor Williams, family and community engagement specialist, earns the highest salary at $70,000.
Despite what they say was a small working budget - the district did not immediately provide numbers when asked - Boyd and Sutton were also expanding the department’s staff. The school board recently approved the creation of a mentor coordinator, who will earn $30,000 to $35,000 annually.
Now, just six months after Boyd was appointed as chief equity and multicultural officer, he has moved to principal at Navarre. Sutton has since stepped into his role in an interim basis, leaving the African American Student and Parent Services director position empty.
The move stunned school board member Jones.
“It felt like just when there is a hint of progress, something changes,” Jones said. “If anything were to interrupt that position further, that would be a serious slap in the face to the black community.”
Boyd told The Tribune recently he trusts the leadership of Sutton and Cummings and will “still be supporting and making sure that there’s a smooth baton handoff, so that nothing falls through the cracks.”
But he declined to talk further about suspension and expulsion rates for black students. Sutton also declined to comment.
Cummings said finding the right candidate is his top priority. He said he is working with Sutton to conduct an audit of the department, which will help outline what will be needed of its new director.
Cummings promised a national search, but it’s unclear how soon that will happen.
“I look for it to be fairly soon,” Cummings said. “We have to get this right and I am committed to getting it right for all our students because it impacts academics, graduation rates, students going to college, the military or workforce.”
While South Bend schools’ suspension and expulsion rates for all students, including the disproportionate rates for black students, have continued to increase, neighboring districts School City of Mishawaka and Penn-Harris-Madison have seen the opposite happen. And that has happened without special departments for black students.
Both Mishawaka and P-H-M, the data show, have eliminated racial disparity in expulsions. Also, while both districts have significantly fewer black students than South Bend, they have eliminated more than a third of their suspension disparity since 2013.
Jerome Calderone, Mishawaka’s director of human resources and student services, pointed to several systems that help keep discipline rates down and students in school, including teacher training.
Calderone said district officials are looking to update the code of conduct for next school year to “bring everyone even closer to being on the same page” for working with students across different grade levels who struggle in school.
“It will focus more on early identification of problems, early intervention and articulating expectations of students and staff,” Calderone said.
South Bend school leaders have recently talked about favoring in-school vs. out-of-school suspensions. But state data show in-school suspensions for black students have plummeted in the seven years since the African American Student and Parent Services department was created.
For example, in 2012, in-school suspensions totaled 35% of the black student population. In 2018, that number declined to 18%.
Williams-Preston, who helped revise South Bend schools’ code of conduct, said expectations for staff members need to be articulated more clearly. When the code was updated six years ago - the first time since the 1970s - Williams-Preston said, it included sections that detailed ways in which teachers should respond to inappropriate behavior.
Shortly after the school board approved the code of conduct in 2014, staff members participated in optional training on the new expectations. Since then, the book has “sat on the shelf,” Williams-Preston said, and training hasn’t continued.
“There’s no consistency,” she said.
Cummings acknowledged a lack of training for principals on discipline and inconsistent practices among schools for students of all races.
“What do we suspend for and what do we not?” Cummings said. “You have so many leaders and so many changes in leadership that, we’ve done the training once, we’re going to have to do it again.
“We’ve got to make sure, let’s just say of out-of-school suspensions, that one infraction in school X is treated the same way as school Y,” the superintendent said.
School Board member Ruth Warren said, along with more training for teachers, staff members need to build relationships with students.
“We need to move away from discipline equals punishment,” said Warren, a former Eggleston School and Clay High School principal, adding that the focus should be on keeping more students in school and treating them fairly.
Change will start to happen when everyone - the district’s 19 departments, the superintendent, the board and community members - work together, said school board member Stuart Greene. Tackling school culture, Greene said, should “never have been the responsibility of just one person or one department.”
“We all need to come together and say, ‘This is a systemic issue.’ Where will we put our energy? What is priority? How do we focus this enough if we want equity?’” Greene said. “It’s time to translate what we are seeing as a problem into action.”
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Source: South Bend Tribune
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