NHPS data
First marking period discipline data over the last three academic years.
Expulsions, suspensions, and in-school fighting are all on the rise as the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district sees a significant increase in discipline so far this school year.
That’s according to a discipline report that was presented by NHPS Director of Research, Assessment and Evaluation Michele Sherban to the Board of Education at the ed board’s latest regular bimonthly Zoom meeting on Monday. (Click here to view the discipline report.)
Acording to Sherban’s presentation, during the first 45-day marking period of the school year that started in August, NHPS has seen seven student expulsions, 529 out-of-school suspensions, and 93 in-school suspensions.
That compares to four expulsions, 283 out-of-school suspensions, and 28 in-school suspensions at this time last year and 0 expulsions, 367 out-of-school suspensions, and 161 in-school suspensions at this time two years ago.
The leading type of incidents causing out-of-school suspensions this year is labeled by NHPS as “Fighting/Altercation/Physical Aggression.” So far, the district has seen 128 fighting incidents lead to such suspensions.
The district’s discipline report was presented alongside a report on NHPS chronic absenteeism rates for K‑12 students for the first 45 school days of the year. Click here to read more about the district’s first marking period attendance numbers and the board’s reaction.
Sherban presented on Monday on how many in-school and out-of-school suspensions and expulsions have been meted out during the first marking period of the year.
Sherban also compared that data to the number of disciplinary sanctions that took place during the first marking period in the 2019 – 2020 school year and the 2021 – 2022 school year.
This year’s numbers are up from last year for all types of suspensions and expulsions.
Click here to read a story about last school year’s discipline numbers at the five-month mark.
Incident types for out of school suspensions.
The data presented by Sherban on Monday was gathered from daily discipline numbers entered into the PowerSchool program across 41 different city public schools..
“There are more expulsions coming,” NHPS Supt. Iline Tracey said at Monday’s board meeting, “just that they have not been addressed yet through the hearing officers.”
The Monday presentation reported numbers by each incident rather than by each student and did not count one-off incidents.
“All of the possible incidents that students were suspended for are not represented there, only the ones that had four or more incidents,” Sherban said.
The incidents that have caused seven expulsions so far have been identified as physical altercations, battery/assault, fighting, and/or physical aggression. One student was expelled for the incident type labeled “weapon.” Sherban defined expulsions as a student receiving discipline that sends them out of school for more than 10 days.
Sherban cautioned that the report’s numbers for suspension incident types was taken from the school’s PowerSchool numbers. She said that local educators could be coding similar incidents differently.
The Board of Education requested on Monday that school-specific data be presented for future reports.
Board of Education member Darnell Goldson asked if all schools have the resources to issue in-school suspensions. If not, have those schools instead resorted to issuing more out-of-school suspensions? Sherban said she is not sure if that’s the case.
“Some of those out-school-suspensions would probably be lower if we had in-school suspension resources in some of those schools,” Goldson said.
Board of Education member OrLando Yarborough suggested that the district look at methods to cut down on handing down out-of-school suspensions and to try to get “as many students as possible who might be suspended, that we get them in an in-school suspension, because they still turn in classwork during that time.”
Sherban said specifically during fights, schools can’t always put those students in the same in-school suspension room due to “safety issue[s].”
“Schools work very hard to minimize the number of days that students are out of school and away from learning,” Sherban added.
Watch the full meeting above.