Board of Education Passes New Disciplinary Referral Policy

A nine-member committee of school system stakeholders recommended a new discipline referral policy earlier this year that was formally adopted last Wednesday by the Anne Arundel County Board of Education on a vote of 7 to 1.

Under the new policy, two copies of each disciplinary referral will be given to teachers and disciplinary referral guidelines will be reviewed for consistency at all area schools.

The new policy was formulated because of a state law passed last year that required Anne Arundel County Public Schools to develop a policy and guidelines for administering office discipline referrals in county schools.

A similar bill was introduced in 2009 that would have affected all school jurisdictions in the state. That bill failed and the 2010 bill focused only on the referral policy in Anne Arundel County.  

Both the state bill and the county bill were opposed by Anne Arundel County Public Schools. The Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County (TAAAC) supported the legislation.

A disciplinary referral is the name of the document issued to students who have violated the AACPS Code of Student Conduct. For example, referrals can be issued for excessive tardiness, fighting, insubordination and any number of other code infractions.

Currently the school system does not keep track of the number of referrals issued and enforced, either by numbering the issued documents, or by tracking them in total in the school system database.

According to Ray Leone, president of the Anne Arundel County Council of PTAs who sat on the advisory panel, the teacher’s union and parents groups were concerned that administrators were downplaying the number of referrals issued by teachers.

Leone said that he felt the opposition to changing the disciplinary policy was rooted in the perception that the issuance of a disciplinary referral was the beginning of a problem with a student, while teachers may view the issuance more as the end of a behavioral management problem that couldn’t be resolved through other means.

“Part of the problem is the divergent ways of dealing with referrals in the school system. Some schools are using PBIS to manage things before going to a referral, some teachers use guidance counselors. This policy is geared toward getting all of the schools to go about it in the same way,” Leone said.

PBIS, or Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support, is a process that teachers use to intercept inappropriate student behaviors before they escalate to serious and chronic Code of Student Conduct violations. Leone said that the committee determined that anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of schools were using PBIS.

Leone said that the teacher’s union pushed for the change in referral policy, but he didn’t feel that the group was necessarily interested in seeing a high number of referrals because that could show that teachers may or may not be using appropriate classroom management techniques.

E-mails and telephone calls to TAAAC were not returned by close of business on Friday.

Bob Mosier, spokesman for county school said there were 50,771 referrals in the 2008-2009 school year. As of Feb. 22 of last school year (2009-2010), there were 25,644.

According to Leone, the committee got “stuck” for a time on the issue of tracking the number of referrals issued. This went unresolved because the student database doesn't keep track of the number of total referrals submitted, let alone the number of referrals that resulted in a disciplinary sanction.

Leone said that returning the fourth copy of the referral to teachers should help because it is a way to match issued referrals with a conclusion to the process.

Leone added that sometimes teachers may not want to see a referral permanently filed against a student—for example if a teacher wrote it in haste, or frustration or anger, then had a change of heart later about the severity of the situation.

Leone said that the committee ended with the recommendation to the Board of Education that everyone generally agreed on.

“The schools don’t want to show negative numbers," Leone said. "And the teachers want to be heard,” he said.

The lone dissenting vote in the adoption of the new policy was Dist. 33 Board of Education member Victor Bernson.