Sept. 7, 2016

The following was addressed to the Forum by CMS Board of Education At-Large member Ericka Ellis-Stewart:

“Last year, I started calling for a moratorium on suspensions for students in PreK – 2nd grade in CMS.  In looking at the data for the last three years, CMS has had between 900-1,100 students suspended in these grade levels each year.  These are children between the ages of four years old – eight years old.

“It is my belief that we as adults can find a better way to deal with student behavior for these young students outside of the punitive measure of suspensions.

“It also points to the need to deal with the mental health challenges that many students have within the school house.

“For the last few meetings the CMS Policy Committee has been reviewing suspension data for these grades (data is attached for your review).  We have looked at it by school, by race, by gender, and by reason for the suspension.  We will continue the discussion at tomorrow’s Policy Committee meeting which will take place Sept. 8th from 10:30 am – 12:30 at the Char-Meck Gov’t Center on the 5th floor.

“I hope that you will review this data and decide to support this effort to push back against the school-to-prison-pipeline.”

The data attached to Ellis-Stewart’s message is on these pages:

School-by-school for grades PK-2, 2013-14 through 2015-16.

Summary data on PK-2 out-of-school suspensions

Grade PK-12 districtwide summary for CMS, comparing 2013-14 and 2014-15.

The 2015-16 Graduation Cohort Impact of out-of-school suspensions over time.