The Madison School Board is still dithering around on whether to reinstate out-of-school suspensions of disruptive students. The district suspended the practice in 2021. Now kids who are acting up or worse are kept in school, but sometimes with a monitor who stays with the kid the whole day. This ties up sparse resources that might otherwise go to good kids who just want to learn.
What’s more the debate on this question gets to the heart of what’s wrong with this school board: with one or two exceptions they are focussed like a laser beam on the trouble makers. Here’s what board member, and the recent board president, Ali Muldrow had to say about this at a meeting earlier this week: “My hope is that the solution promotes student wellness and mental health, that our interventions are developmentally appropriate and that they are de-stigmatized and not used to criminalize young people.”