BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — The Buffalo Public School system has been responding to sharp criticism over student suspensions. Many have called out the district's use of suspensions and said that just this month the school has used suspensions as a punitive measure more than 200 times.
Many parents joined the Better Schools Better Neighborhoods Program and the New York Civil Liberties Union for a town hall meeting to express concerns and learn about what rights they have when it comes to these in-school and out-of-school suspensions.
"I mean to have over 200 suspensions in, well let's see, it's been a month in a half since school has been in session," said Adrienne Romanowicz, mom of a Buffalo Public School student. "I mean, that's crazy and my daughter is one of them."
NYCLU Lawyers were at the Our Children Have Rights town hall meeting to help parents through the "Guide to School Discipline in Buffalo Public Schools." It outlined several legal protections for their children. However, the document left some parents wondering why they never knew about this information before.
"This stuff should be out there," said Romanowicz. "It should be out there for all the school and they need to do this advocacy. We can only do so much."
BPS sent out a statement just a few hours after the town hall meeting. It stated that there have been 282 suspensions to date this year when there were 353 suspensions in the same time last year. That's down 21% year to year.
The district attributed the drop to schools putting a greater focus on solving behavioral issues through methods like trauma-informed care.
Johanna Miller, NYCLU Director of Education Policy Center, said she's concerned that the official data may be a dramatic undercount.
"So one of the things that we want to find out is are people experiencing a suspension where they're just told to take their child home from school but they're not necessarily given the paper work that would indicate that's being counted properly. So, that's something we want to learn more about and make sure that the data is correct."
BPS at-large board member Larry Scott told me unofficial suspensions should not be taking place.
"All suspensions should be formal and should follow the reporting process of including parents and notifications which are required by state regulation," said Larry Scott.
Scott also said that students should still be receiving academic instruction no matter what.
"So there should be opportunity to make up work or be doing work while they're in the suspensions type of setting," said Scott.
However, some parents said that's not always the case.
"Literally, I mean they are listening, watching Netflix," said Romanowicz. "I mean, they're figuring out ways to have a good time in in-school suspension and that is major problem."
Samuel Radford, Director and CEO of Better Schools Better Neighborhoods said 80% of BPS students do not graduate college or career ready. He said that is why he said finding ways to keep students on class is so important.
"At the end of the day, we have a responsibility to educate all our students and if there are challenges we've got to confront those challenges deal with them and we have to have every child apart of that process," said Radford. "We can't just simply put kids outside of the classroom without addressing the underline issue."
Scott told 7 News if any parents have experienced some break down in suspensions notification, they should reach out to building leadership, district leadership or to board members. He also said people should know this is an issue seen at all schools not just the BPS.
The Better Schools Better Neighborhoods Program and NYCLU said they are putting together resources to make sure every school's code of conduct is implemented fully.
