Schools

School policies vary by district

Mandatory punishments are more likely in the larger districts.

By Times Wires
Published October 26, 2007

GAINESVILLE - The size of the school district often determines whether students are punished under zero-tolerance policies and whether they're given another chance for an education, a new University of Florida study finds.

In Florida, larger school districts are more likely than smaller ones to have mandatory expulsion policies for students who bring guns to schools and to impose mandatory suspension for the possession of knives and drugs, as well as bullying, said Brian Schoonover, who completed the research for his doctoral dissertation in education at UF.

Perhaps the biggest disparity between the different sized districts is that more than half of the state's small districts, 53 percent, have no alternative educational setting for students who are expelled, compared with only 3 percent of large districts, Schoonover said.

A mandatory 365-day expulsion is required under zero-tolerance policies that became effective with the 1994 passage of the federal Gun-Free Schools Act, Schoonover said. Because Florida school districts respect each other's expulsions, expelled students have no classroom to attend unless their parents can afford to send them to a private school that will take them, he said.

Schoonover analyzed student conduct codes from Florida's 67 county public school districts, classifying the 33 districts with more than 15,000 students as large and the 34 with fewer than 15,000 students as small.

He found that all of Florida's large districts had mandatory expulsion policies for possession of a gun, compared with 85 percent of small districts. Differences were more pronounced for knives, with 88 percent of large districts having mandatory suspension policies, compared with 47 percent of small districts.

Next to guns, policies citing drugs were the most common, with 88 percent of large districts and 74 percent of small districts having mandatory suspension. Bullying was far less common, with only 27 percent of large districts and 15 percent of small districts requiring suspension for students who bully others, he said.

[Last modified October 26, 2007, 00:20:43]