May 12—The number of student suspensions in grades K-12 in West Virginia's public schools last year, as detailed in a school discipline report conducted by the state Department of Education, is alarming. More than 28,000 students were suspended with a jaw-dropping 178,000 days of instruction lost.

Let's not forget that this is happening in a state where educational attainment — by myriad measures — lags most of the nation.

More troubling, Black students and low-income students are being dealt with more harshly than their white classmates, Blacks being suspended twice as often as their white peers not just in the last year but over the last two decades. That is called systemic racism — and it needs to be addressed immediately.

And most concerning? The West Virginia Legislature this past session made noise about making it easier to kick kids out of class and out of school for disciplinary reasons. They were looking for the easy answer — stiff and unrelenting discipline, incorrectly thinking that such measures would correct student behavior. That mindset couldn't be more obsolete and removed from what cold hard facts and research say. Choose that road and you can expect to see continued decreases in academic performance, increased truancy, continued behavioral incidents — all with an outsized impact on families.

Let's start with this premise: Students need to be in school, in a learning environment, if they are going to absorb, understand and put to use necessary and important lessons that will lead to success in their post-secondary school life — including lessons on behavior and being a part of something bigger than themselves.

Drew McClanahan, director of Leadership Support & Development with the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE), who spoke at the State Board of Education meeting on Wednesday when the data was released, gets it.

"Our task is to make sure children can read and can learn and if we have kids that are outside of school, we cannot get to that point."

That is exactly right. But, unfortunately, too many lawmakers are uninformed on these matters, relying on gut instinct rather than educational experts.

A bill that passed out of the House overwhelmingly this past session would have prohibited students, accused of disruptive behavior, from returning to the classroom for the remainder of the day and count as an in-school suspension. And, if the student was removed from class three times in a one-month period, well, the kid gets an out-of-school suspension.

That may seem to address the immediate problem, but it ignores the specific behavior. And, again, valuable time in the classroom is lost.

Such a strategy also loses sight of the socio-economic reality that, as Del. David Elliott Pritt said in House debate, "We live in an impoverished state with huge problems. We should pump the brakes before we put a kid out of school."

Pritt, a teacher, proposed a change to the bill that would have required teachers and other school support staff to meet and come up with a plan to help address a student's conduct before that student received an out-of-school suspension.

It was voted down.

Let's not lose sight of the findings, too, that said about one out of every five Black students — 20 percent — was suspended at least one time last school year, compared to 10 percent of white students, and that about 14 percent of low-socioeconomic-status students were suspended compared to 7 percent of students who come from families with higher incomes. There were 24 percent of foster care students who were suspended compared to 10 percent of students who are not in foster care. And among homeless students, about 17 percent were suspended versus 11 percent for housed students. Suspension was handed down to 15 percent of disabled students compared to 10 percent for those who don't have a disability.

That is a prejudiced system.

As we have learned, there are no easy fixes — sorry, lawmakers — to paving a road out of the deep ditches where education in West Virginia has been driven by the hands of neglect. Make no mistake, the information shared this week was no big surprise to those keeping track. These numbers just did not manifest themselves overnight. Last summer, the Legislature was handed a similar report with similar statistics. And what became of that?

Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

The report on Wednesday, if there are slivers of light and hope, came with a six-slide plan to fix what ails the system in these critical matters. It calls for increased training, creation of a public dashboard with school discipline data and a recommendation that the board revise its discipline policy.

We would add that schools need to have greater racial diversity among their administrators and teachers, giving all students role models who look like them.

Board President Paul Hardesty made it clear, "We've got to do something different."

Agreed. And there is no time like the present — with all hands on deck.