The Chicago school board on Wednesday voted to expel three students for the maximum two-year term, the same punishment that initially triggered a firestorm in Downstate Decatur.
But while the Decatur expulsions were handed to students for their part in a weaponless brawl at a football game, Chicago reserved the harshest punishment for some of the severest circumstances: One student was charged with attempted murder with a gun off campus; another was charged with aggravated battery off campus; and the third allegedly threatened to cut a student’s throat in school with a pair of scissors.
In all, the board on Wednesday expelled 78 students for varying periods and for a variety of infractions in a punishment ritual that plays out at every monthly meeting but rarely attracts the kind of attention being focused on Decatur by Rev. Jesse Jackson. An average of 74 students a month were expelled in Chicago last academic year, officials said.
Chicago officials said they strive to tailor the punishment to the offense. For example, fighting rarely results in expulsion unless it involves weapons, gang activity or severe injuries, officials said.
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Other offenses, such as gross disobedience, gang activity, intimidation, theft, and burglary, warrant expulsions of a semester or a year. Two-year expulsions are reserved for such crimes as kidnapping, murder, sex violations, drug trafficking and bomb threats, according to the Chicago board’s discipline policy.
Many Chicago students facing expulsion are given a second chance if they successfully complete a Saturday detention program with their parents for up to 10 consecutive weekends. The program involves counseling from ministers and scared-straight talk from reformed ex-convicts, officials said.
Informed of the Chicago expulsions, Jackson said Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas generally has taken care not to be capricious in such decisions.
“When you expel, you offer alternative education before you expel so you don’t just throw them away,” Jackson said in Decatur. “Paul tends to follow that process.”
Jackson said that although he did not know the degree of violence involved in the Chicago cases, in Decatur, “There was no gunshots, no blood, no injuries.”
In Decatur, “Alternative education was never offered to them, except by the governor two months later,” he said. Jackson said he would take the Decatur students to alternative school programs on Thursday.
One of the students, Gregory Howe, thanked Jackson Wednesday evening during what has become a nightly rally at the Church of the Living God.
“He didn’t have to do this, so we really appreciate it,” Howe said.
Since July in Chicago, 42 percent of expulsions have been related to knife or gun possession, 23 percent to aggravated battery, 26 percent to possession of illegal drugs, 6 percent to robbery, and the others to arson, sex violations and attempted murder, officials said.
Last school year, the board expelled 668 students–most of them for a year–but 530 more students participated in the Saturday detention program, and 90 percent of them avoided expulsion by completing the program, officials said. The other 10 percent were eventually expelled, officials said.
Vallas said that Chicago’s 28-page uniform discipline code is comprehensive and specific. The policy lists what punishment fits what offense, and it is communicated throughout the system, Vallas said.
Also, students facing expulsion are given a hearing before an independent officer.
“I don’t like to comment on what other districts are doing, and I’m sure I would be offended if other districts commented on what we are doing,” Vallas said.
In Decatur, the battle over the students who were expelled for brawling hit the courts Wednesday, with both sides suing each other.
The school district sought a temporary restraining order barring Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition from coming within 50 feet of school property. Citing a court precedent in abortion clinic cases, district officials argued that free-speech rights do not preclude protecting students from disruptive protests.
“The constant racket of press surrounding this scene, the speeches made by supporters, the crush of police protection and the flurry of activities around arrests for trespass all combine to make concentration difficult within the schools for both staff and students,” the board said in its complaint, to be argued before a judge Thursday.
Jackson’s attorneys sued school officials for allegedly violating state law by releasing information about the students’ attendance and other records.”
The privacy suit alleges that school officials–including Supt. Kenneth Arndt and board President Jackie Goetter–violated the Illinois School Records Act “for the sole purpose of libeling, defaming, slandering and discrediting the six named students.” A seventh student voluntarily left school during expulsion proceedings.
The school officials have stated that three of the students are third-year freshmen because of poor attendance. Jackson has said that two other students involved in the fight are close to graduating.