School expulsions under review School expulsions under review (February 13, 2004)

Procedure to remove students may be modified

By Julie O'Shea

Following a rash of expulsion hearings earlier this school year, Mountain View-Whisman trustees sat down last week to review the proper procedure for legally removing students from schools.

The school board received nine recommendations from school principals for expulsions during the 2002-2003 school year. Of that number, only one student was actually expelled for a semester.

Since the district doesn't do a final count of expulsions until June, numbers for this year were not available by press time. There are currently no expulsion hearings set for the coming weeks.

School board President Rose Filicetti acknowledges there have been a lot of expulsion hearings this year.

"More than any is too many from a trustee's prospective," Filicetti said. "We don't take those lightly."

Filicetti blames students' bad behavior on a lack of supervision at the two middle schools, where there has been more recommendations for expulsions, historically, than at the seven elementary campuses.

Last year, the school board approved a round of faculty layoffs, and Graham Middle School has one less assistant principal. Filicetti said that means there are fewer people available for making sure misbehaving pre-teens stay out of trouble.

"I feel our middle school administrators have been very proactive in heading off some potentially dangerous situations," Associate Superintendent Eleanor Yick said.

Still, Filicetti added, most times an expulsion hearing is the result of students simply doing something "stupid."

Yick said that most students who receive expulsion recommendations are cited for disrupting school activities. And most of the times, those getting reprimanded are boys.

At a study session held Feb. 5, attorney Dick Noack explained to the school board that there are five reasons that call for mandatory expulsion -- possessing, selling or using a firearm, brandishing a knife, unlawful sale of a controlled substance, committing or attempting to commit a sexual assault or possession of explosives.

However, Yick said most of the cases the trustees preside over are considered "discretionary," or cases that involve a student who has damaged or stolen school property, was caught in possession of drug paraphernalia, committed an obscene or vulgar act or was in possession of an imitation firearm.

"A hearing does not always lead to an expulsion," Yick wrote in an e-mail to the Voice on Monday. "It's important to remember that a recommendation is just that -- a recommendation. The board makes the final decision if the circumstances meet all the criteria and warrant that consequence."

The school board, acting as a panel of judges, listens to all the facts of the case and then hands down a decision. For example, trustees must decide if a student caught brandishing a knife had the intent to use it in a threatening manner.

The intent has to be there in order for the student to be expelled, said Noack.

"You still need to have a foundation for which your action is taken," he told the board last week. "In general terms, I think you are going to need witnesses."

Witnesses may include other students, teachers and school site staff members, who can provide an account of the incident under investigation. But Noack warned trustees that other students' versions of the incidents are simply hearsay and that the child in question has the right to tell his or her side of the story.

"We don't have to look at this as a criminal proceeding because it's not," Noack said. "You must show that all other avenues have been taken and expulsion is necessary. ... (Students) still have the right to an education."

In most cases, students return to the school they are enrolled in, Filicetti said. If the situation warrants it, sometimes a student is transferred to a different school within the district, she added. And in extreme cases, expelled students are placed in a county-run school.

Trustees have 30 days from the time they receive an expulsion recommendation to expel the student. The investigative process of a potential expulsion generally takes three weeks. Students are normally kept in class, pending an expulsion hearing, unless they present a threat to themselves or others, administrators said.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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