Lawmakers question fairness of discipline for minority students

Arizona's top education official says lawmakers should butt out of questions of whether some students receive harsher school discipline than others because of their race or ethnicity.

State School Superintendent Tom Horne said Monday a proposal to create such a panel by Rep. Cloves Campbell Jr., D-Phoenix, is both inappropriate and unnecessary. Instead, he said lawmakers - and parents - should be supporting the decisions made by teachers and, ultimately, school boards when they suspend or expel students.

Campbell said the problem with that is that minority students are more likely to face harsher punishment by teachers for incidents than others. And he said school boards have been unresponsive to parental complaints, which is why there needs to be another level of appeals. Two of Yuma's three lawmakers have shown their support for Campbell.

The legislator told Capitol Media Services Monday that he has only anecdotal evidence and has not researched each of the complaints he has received. And Horne acknowledged there is no database at the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to track discipline by the type of incident, the student's race or ethnicity, or the punishment meted out.

Campbell and 15 other Democratic state representatives signed a letter to Horne urging him to create a task force to examine the problem. Yuma Reps. Lynne Pancrazi and Theresa Ulmer of District 24 both signed the letter.

"Basically, there seems to be a trend in more extensive disciplinary actions possibly against children of color," Ulmer said. "We want to find out if there 's a valid complaint or not."

Ulmer said they did not yet have any specific data. That is what they want the ADE to examine. She said she had not seen anything specific to Yuma that suggested black or Hispanic children were being singled out here.

"What we have right now is from our own experience as parents, school board members, teachers. What we 've witnessed, what we 've heard and just through conversations with other people, we 're concerned there might be problem," she said.

Brenna Paulin, president of the Crane Elementary School District governing board, said the board handles all of its own disciplinary hearings. She said she hasn't seen anything to suggest racial discrimination is a problem in Yuma County.

Crane, like all the county school districts, has a Hispanic majority.

"I don 't know what they 're basing that on but, as far as I know from my perspective ... I don 't have any sense that minority students are disciplined more severely," Paulin said. "I've never seen or been involved in anything that would cause me concern ... It sounds to me like something that might create more problems than it solves."

But Campbell said the kind of state disciplinary appeals board he wants would do that kind of tracking and prove his point.

Horne said the ADE will investigate any complaints of racial discrimination in student discipline. But he conceded his agency has no power to actually do anything if it finds a parent's charges to be true, other than suggest court action.

Campbell said it should not be necessary for parents to go to court to ensure their children are not unfairly suspended or expelled from school.

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Sun staff writer Sarah Reynolds contributed to this report. She can be reached at sreynolds@yumasun.com or 539-6847.