After more than a decade of major decline, school discipline in Ventura County has uptick

School discipline looks a lot different in Ventura County than it did about a decade ago.

During the 2011-12 school year, the county's K-12 public schools suspended students more than 14,592 times and expelled 217 students. Last school year, those totals plummeted to 6,909 suspensions and 144 expulsions.

The changes are part of a larger trend across California, where legislation and shifting practices have transformed the school disciplinary systems. State data released at the end of December shows that the state, similar to Ventura County, has seen suspension and expulsion rates chopped in half over a decade.

Lawmakers banned "willful defiance" suspensions for first through third graders in 2013 and five years later expanded the provision to middle schools. In October, lawmakers capped the rollout by blocking the suspensions in high schools.

The law means K-12 schools are no longer allowed to suspend or recommend expulsion for students for "willful defiance," a broad category of acts that includes everything from shouting obscenities at school officials to wearing a hat in class. Schools are still allowed to suspend students, though, for more serious behaviors like sexual harassment, violent acts and drug use.

The changes are meant to align K-12 disciplinary practices with research that shows that students of color and students with disabilities are suspended and expelled at disproportionate rates.

Other studies have shown that so-called "exclusionary discipline" can be more harmful than good, driving students toward increased school avoidance, drop-out rates and involvement with the juvenile justice system.

"We want to be get to the point where suspensions are truly a measure of last resort," said Daniel Losen, a researcher with the UCLA Civil Rights Project that tracks trends in national suspension and expulsion data.

Losen said there's still work to do: The state's decade-long decrease in suspensions has stalled, and he worries that the trend could reverse as pandemic-related funds dry up and school resources get stretched.

The researcher said there are no studies that indicate that suspensions and expulsions are effective methods to address misconduct. On the contrary, he said, sending students home is an effective way of cutting them off from supports their schools might offer, like counseling, meals and assistance for disabilities.

"How in any universe is that going to be a healthy response?" Losen said.

Schools are changing how they handle misconduct

Schools in Ventura County have almost entirely stopped suspending students for defiance alone. While schools suspend about the same number of students each year for violent incidents and drug use, "defiance only" suspensions are down by over 96% since 2012.

It is unlikely that legislation alone is responsible for the change. Suspensions for defiance began to drop in Ventura County during the 2012-13 school year, before state lawmakers passed the first ban on defiance suspensions in lower elementary grades.

Similarly, high school "defiance only" suspensions dropped by 96% between the 2011 and 2022 school years — the same rate as all grades combined — even though the law didn't cover grades nine to 12 until the current school year.

Oxnard Union High School District, home to more than a third of the county's high schoolers, is one of the chief drivers of that trend locally. Last year, the district only suspended 112 students for defiance, down 96% from a 2011 total of 2,544.

Superintendent Tom McCoy said the 17,500-student district started changing its suspension policy when it saw the state roll out legislation for lower grades.

McCoy said Oxnard Union, like many other districts, is working to replace suspensions and expulsions with preventative measures, like expanded mental health and wellness programming, and "restorative" in-school responses like individual counseling.

"Our job is always to try and be restorative and do prevention before something happens," McCoy said. "What do we need to do to make things more positive?"

Letitia T. Bradley, the director of student support services for Santa Paula Unified School District, said schools have tried to be "more creative" in the ways they deal with unruly students.

"Sometimes it's about a kid's inability to respond to their environment," she said. "Sometimes it's about our inability to respond to them."

More 'violent' incidents

Despite the changes over the decade, the overall number of suspensions in the county ticked up last year to 6,909. The last time the county had more suspensions was the 2015 school year.

Most of that increase came in the form of what the state's data system tags as "violent incidents" along with a bump in "illicit drug related" suspensions.

Greg Bayless, Ventura Unified School District's assistant superintendent of educational services, said in an emailed statement that the state data reflects, in part, "student behavioral challenges" associated with returning to in-person classes after long school closures.

But the numbers could be inflated in other ways.

McCoy said Oxnard Union has logged more incidents in recent years partly because the district added a tip line that allows students and community members to anonymously report incidents by phone or online.

"We're finding more things than we did before," he said.

It is also possible that the way the state collects disciplinary data could alter the numbers. Almost half of the county's suspensions last year were filed for "violent incidents" that did not include an injury.

But the state's definition of a violent incident doesn't require a fight or an attempted assault. The tag can be applied to incidents where a student threatened injury or used profanity.

Losen, the UCLA researcher, said he worries that schools could use the broadly defined category to replace willful defiance suspensions in situations where students use curse words or vulgarity, a shift he called a potential "whack-a-mole" problem.

"If we fail to monitor (this data)," he said, "that progress will reverse."

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura County's school suspensions, expulsions up after decade drop