NYC Public Schools Ease Discipline Code For Smoking, Cursing, Cutting Class

CBS New York – Students may be catching a break if they misbehave in school. The rules surrounding suspensions in New York City schools are changing.

The changes to the discipline code should result in far fewer suspensions, CBS 2’s Vanessa Murdock reported Wednesday.

“Our goal is to make sure the schools are providing a safe environment for our students, but also we just don’t push students out of the classroom where they’re not learning as well,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said.

What will be different? Well, for starters Walcott said cutting class and cursing will no longer be grounds for suspension.

Neither will smoking, something that left a few parents bewildered.

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NYC Public Schools Change ‘Discipline Code’ To Ease Penalties For Smoking, Cursing, Other Infractions « CBS New York

hey, that's one way to keep suspensions down

it makes sense to keep disruptive kids in school---so they can cut

yesterday gallup reported that by a very telling plurality americans find public school the WORST place to try to educate a kid

homeschooling was exactly 260% more popular than the locals and ps's

obama has been stumping while his opponents convene (the tastefulness of which even politico questions), and his singular focus before half empty university crowds has been education, which, to him, means nothing more than student loans and stimulus

ie, no reform, only more of the same

83% of americans, according to gallup, are trapped in the public school system they don't approve of, and obama calls only for more "investment"

investment, that is, in teachers' unions

chris christie in tampa---we believe in teachers, they believe in teachers unions

christie got teacher tenure reform thru trenton

paul ryan---put the kids first, not the bosses

if you think you built your company you're forgetting the excellent teachers (whom you pay thru your taxes) who set you up (simply by doing their jobs), and you might want to remember a little gratitude for dear old mrs woodhouse and eccentric mr edwards

and now you can go cuss them out

I can see the problem their trying to fix, but I don't see how this is a solution. I don't see how allowing even more disruption in the classroom is going to improve the attitude toward learning that the children formerly getting suspended have. There isn't an easy solution to the problem these schools are facing, but I don't think this policy is going to improve things.

Anagram said:

I can see the problem their trying to fix, but I don't see how this is a solution. I don't see how allowing even more disruption in the classroom is going to improve the attitude toward learning that the children formerly getting suspended have. There isn't an easy solution to the problem these schools are facing, but I don't think this policy is going to improve things.

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This is what we did in the Detroit Public Schools and it was a dismal failure and led to a deterirration of the schools and education. And the union fought it tooth and nail but was powerless to stop it.


My first few years in the early 1970's were spent in a very hardcore junior high school. If a kid used the magic word that begins with the letter F out loud in class,m you simply wrote a referral to a counsellor and under the REMARKS area you wrote "the word". The kid then got suspended and every other kid in the class knew NOT to do the same.

Then they got rid of that because of administration pressure to keep kids in school. Pretty soon the F word was a daily occurence punishable only by the classroom teacher with severe limitations as to how to do that.

Lowering behavior standards for buttwipes only tempts good kids to act occassionally as buttwipes.

By "suspension" I assume they mean OSS (Out of School Suspension). I'd support a revised plan that moved disruptive or truant kids to an ISS (In School Suspension) program, where they're corralled in smaller classrooms with more individual focus so that their disruptive and destructive behavior can be addressed.

Smoking, so long as it isn't done inside the school itself, shouldn't be punishable by the school officials. Let the parents/authorities handle it (assuming it's under age smoking).

tessaesque said:

By "suspension" I assume they mean OSS (Out of School Suspension). I'd support a revised plan that moved disruptive or truant kids to an ISS (In School Suspension) program, where they're corralled in smaller classrooms with more individual focus so that their disruptive and destructive behavior can be addressed.

Smoking, so long as it isn't done inside the school itself, shouldn't be punishable by the school officials. Let the parents/authorities handle it (assuming it's under age smoking).

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School budgets have been cut. Staffing has been cut. Teacher responsibilities have been increased.

What you propose is simply not part of the austerity plan.

haymarket said:

School budgets have been cut. Staffing has been cut. Teacher responsibilities have been increased.

What you propose is simply not part of the austerity plan.

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I hear excuses. ISS already exists at many schools in Texas. They place a teacher in a classroom with a stack of magazines and let the students sit around doing a crap load of nothing. It would cost almost nothing to change that system so something interactive.

tessaesque said:

I hear excuses. ISS already exists at many schools in Texas. They place a teacher in a classroom with a stack of magazines and let the students sit around doing a crap load of nothing. It would cost almost nothing to change that system so something interactive.

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You are not hearing reality.

Support programs cost money. Experts who can intervene and provide help cost money.

The right can go and continue to attack public education and continue to cut budgets and continue to put more on the backs of teachers and then come back in a year and bitch about the results.

Its called a self fulfilling prophecy of your own design.

haymarket said:

You are not hearing reality.

Support programs cost money. Experts who can intervene and provide help cost money.

The right can go and continue to attack public education and continue to cut budgets and continue to put more on the backs of teachers and then come back in a year and bitch about the results.

Its called a self fulfilling prophecy of your own design.

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Okay, then re-evaluate the standard for alternative schools, pull a trained professional out of the district's alternative program and put them on rotation in schools with defiant students.

See, I'm proposing options for solving the problem using existing resources.

You're doing what, exactly? Because your posts are nothing but partisan whining and finger pointing. I think students deserve educators who rise above hackery and work their asses off to educate them. I guess we disagree there.

tessaesque said:

Okay, then re-evaluate the standard for alternative schools, pull a trained professional out of the district's alternative program and put them on rotation in schools with defiant students.

See, I'm proposing options for solving the problem using existing resources.

You're doing what, exactly? Because your posts are nothing but partisan whining and finger pointing. I think students deserve educators who rise above hackery and work their asses off to educate them. I guess we disagree there.

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You guys NEVER want to pony up do you? Don't you get it that the type of intervention and one on one help you want for these kids is big time expensive and involves lots of professionals that schools simply DO NOT HAVE today to place with the large number of kids who need them?

This is NOT a matter of shuffling the cards. We need a whole lot more damn cards and they cost a whole lot more than $30k a year.

The only thing we are different about is that I spent 33 years in the public schools educating kids and fighting for reform and imporvements.

And you did not.

In other words, I played the damn game every week for decades while you only read about it in Sports Illustrated.

haymarket said:

You guys NEVER want to pony upo do you?

the only thing we are different about is that I spent 33 years in the public schools educating kids.

And you did not.

In other words, I played the damn game every week for decades while you only read about it in Sports Illustrated.

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We spend more per student than almost every single country that ranks ahead of us in results.

You want more money? Prove it's worth the investment first.

Money to education has increased exponentially over the last several decades and results have declined.

You want "us" to pony up? Show something worth ponying up FOR; that is, show results that don't show us losing ground to most other industrialized countries to justify the added expense.

The penalty for not attending class is not being able to attend class. How does that make even a lick of sense, and how does that policy prevent class room disruption? Seriously... what kind of booze-addled whorehopping polyploid came up with that nonsense?

Students should only be removed from the classroom for behaviors that interfere with other students' learning. Cutting class and smoking (unless they're smoking in class) don't qualify.

tessaesque said:

We spend more per student than almost every single country that ranks ahead of us in results.

You want more money? Prove it's worth the investment first.

Money to education has increased exponentially over the last several decades and results have declined.

You want "us" to pony up? Show something worth ponying up FOR; that is, show results that don't show us losing ground to most other industrialized countries to justify the added expense.

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The kind of programs that YOU proposed are not now offered in the schools. If you want them - you have to pay for them.

Losing ground????? In what exactly? By what measure?

Why do you on the right profess to believe in capitalism but yet when it comes to results in education money is not a factor?

Please present the data that results have declined.

haymarket said:

The kind of programs that YOU proposed are not now offered in the schools. If you want them - you have to pay for them.

Losing ground????? In what exactly? By what measure?

Why do you on the right profess to believe in capitalism but yet when it comes to results in education money is not a factor?

Please present the data that results have declined.

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Haymarket, you know darned well money isn't the problem. Teachers continually move the target.

It's the parents! It's the parents! It's the parents! It's not our fault! Pay us more money, and we'll teach better! Pay us more money and it won't be the parents' fault any more! We promise!!

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I've pulled stats so many times, my lil' fingers are tired. MONEY is NOT the answer!!!

MaggieD said:

Haymarket, you know darned well money isn't the problem. Teachers continually move the target.



I've pulled stats so many times, my lil' fingers are tired. MONEY is NOT the answer!!!

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Money indeed is part of the problem. Always has been when you talk about hiring new professionals to handle special needs kids but the budget does not allow for it.

I agree that MONEY is not THE sole answer. But is is indeed part of the answer if used wisely or denied capriciously and unwisely simply for the sake of cutting to lower expenses.

haymarket said:

Money indeed is part of the problem. Always has been when you talk about hiring new professionals to handle special needs kids but the budget does not allow for it.

I agree that MONEY is not THE sole answer. But is is indeed part of the answer if used wisely or denied capriciously and unwisely simply for the sake of cutting to lower expenses.

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Let me get this straight. Now the latest excuse for needing more money is to handle special needs kids. Always an answer. So let me just put this in context: The biggest reason that only 57% of students in Chicago Public Schools graduate is that there's not enough money for special needs kids. *Shakes Head*

Haymarket, please. You and I both know that is not true.

Edit for link: John Kass: CPS teachers — work a few more minutes - Chicago Tribune

I especially like this quote from the article, by the way:

...treating children as political cash cows has got to stop.

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MaggieD said:

Let me get this straight. Now the latest excuse for needing more money is to handle special needs kids. Always an answer. So let me just put this in context: The biggest reason that only 57% of students in Chicago Public Schools graduate is that there's not enough money for special needs kids. *Shakes Head*

Haymarket, please. You and I both know that is not true.

Edit for link: John Kass: CPS teachers — work a few more minutes - Chicago Tribune

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So do we both know is true Maggie?