FORUM SEEKS TO MAKE PEARLS OF TROUBLED YOUTH

If there was a single lesson veteran educator Elsie Leak wanted to
impart to participants in a forum on school suspensions and
expulsions held on June 2, it's the one taught by a humble bivalve.

"Pearls come because a piece of sand comes in and irritates that
oyster," said Leak, the associate superintendent of curriculum and
school reform services of the NC Department of Public Instruction.
"Children who are at risk often become an irritant to teachers. What
we need to do is cover them with something kind and precious so they
won't irritate us anymore."

For the past two years, students in nine North Carolina counties who
have irritated school officials enough to earn long-term suspensions
have had the opportunity to participate in a pilot program
emphasizing service learning. The Community Service Project addresses
problems associated with long-term suspensions, including lack of
structure and supervision. Students banned from school often get
involved in criminal activities in the community and are at higher
risk of dropping out.

Minority students, especially males, get suspended and expelled at
disproportionate rates, according to data provided by the NC
Department of Public Instruction. Assigning students to community
service instead of simply kicking them out of school can halt the
cascade of consequences from suspension and successfully prepare
students to reenter the classroom, according to evaluations of the
program.

Marguerite Peebles, the section chief for school safety and climate
for the NC Department of Public Instruction, asked those in the
audience of 200 to raise their hands if they'd ever been suspended.

"The people who raised their hands don't have horns sticking up out
of their heads," she said. "They look like you and me. So do the kids
who are making poor decisions."

Participants met on the campus of NC A&T University to discuss model
practices for a community service project in the morning and to
transform lessons from the programs into strategies for reducing
suspensions.

The project emerged two years ago out of the Safe and Drug Free
Schools and Community Act, a federal law that provided funds and
parameters for the county programs. Local educational agencies in
Beaufort, Caldwell, Carteret, Cumberland, Guilford, McDowell,
Rutherford, Wake and Winston Salem-Forsyth County Schools partnered
with historically minority colleges and universities to implement
programs unique to each county.

Students were placed at work sites in non-profit agencies doing
educational and youth development, poverty and economic development
and health and human services. In addition to work, the students
journaled their progress in a workbook designed by the NC Department
of Public Instruction.

The federal grant money stipulated that the service learning could
not contain an academic component, Leak said. Studies have shown that
suspended students respond better to nonacademic community service,
she added. Part of the goal is to convince the students, who have
often suffered failures in the classroom, that they do have something
positive to contribute to the community.

Although the program succeeded in returning students back to their
home classrooms (97 percent of program participants returned compared
to 31 percent of nonparticipants), forum organizers sought ways to
extend its lessons to prevention.

"This program provides skills and training geared toward addressing
the characteristics of chronic disciplinary problems," said Brenda
Hall, an education professor at A&T.

Leak described the school as the second safety net. The family serves
as the first and the community is the third.

In that spirit, the work group dedicated to brainstorming ideas on
how to lower long-term suspension rates developed a number of ideas
for how schools can better meet the needs of at-risk kids. The
members of the workgroup gathered in three groups to brainstorm ideas
onto butcher paper. In other rooms, similar workgroups tackled the
subjects of school safety and dropout prevention.

The suspension group suggested abolishing "zero tolerance" policies
that can cause first time offenders to lose a semester or more of
classes. In addition, the group recommended mandatory poverty
awareness training for teachers, the establishment of paid student
advocates and more interaction with families.

At the end of the program, all three work groups gathered to present
their ideas for what one participant described as "revamping the
school system as we know it."

"If oysters thought 'I don't want to waste my substance on this
irritant' we would never have any pearls," Leak said. "That oyster
instead would just be irritated."