School suspensions have increased across Bloomington-Normal junior highs for the past several years. Going into the new school year, both districts said they are looking to decrease disciplinary actions like suspensions and move to more “restorative” measures of intervention.
In the 2022-2023 school year, suspensions were the highest they've been in seven years at Evans, Kingsley, and Parkside junior highs. At Chiddix and Bloomington Junior High, suspensions decreased.
Additional factors include each junior high's student population, which varies by year. Suspension totals also do not equate to the number of students who were suspended, as a single student may have been suspended multiple times in one academic year.
Evans saw a small increase of roughly 80 suspensions from the 2021-2022 school year. Whereas at Kingsley in Normal, the total in and out-of-school suspensions went from 448 to 760, and at Parkside in Normal, suspensions rose from 276 to 454.
Bloomington saw a small decrease of just over 10 suspensions, while Chiddix decreased by more than 150.
Both districts said the primary reason for suspensions was physical altercations. They added that the schools are analyzing suspension data and developing strategies to bring the 2023-2024 suspensions down. Classes started last week for all junior highs.
Unit 5
Unit 5 Director of Teaching and Learning Darrin Cooper said moving away from punitive measures is going to be a priority across the district for the year.
“As opposed to just consequences, what are interventions we can put in place looking at those students?” he said. “What are those students’ needs? You know, how do we be more proactive with this and keep incidents from happening? As opposed to being reactive and issuing consequences when incidents happen.”
Cooper said data-collection methods have improved, which helps the district analyze these numbers. But he said tracking was only a “small piece of the puzzle.”
“I also don't think we can deny that those incidents and suspensions have gone up, so those are things we continue to look at and work on,” he said.
This issue has been a focus for years, he added.
Unit 5 Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Kristal Shelvin said they have also been working to figure out what leads to high numbers.
She added that increasing discipline is not only a reflection of student behavior but also the district’s reaction to students.
“We are working very hard to identify and address root causes, which really are not so much pointed at the student — what the student is doing — but focused on why that behavior is happening and how we can create an environment where that behavior is no longer useful,” she said.
Educators will use the restorative model to teach students how to adjust behaviors from the outset, rather than "punish away a behavior" after it has already happened.
Mental health is also a factor in student learning and environment, she said, adding that she considers all social and emotional learning to be contributors. The restorative process, she said, is about teaching the children and educators how to de-escalate and how to develop healthy coping skills to decrease infractions.
“Sometimes folks will say, ‘Well … does that mean that you just let students do whatever they want to do?’” Shelvin said. “No, that’s not it. What we're working on is trying to build a restorative community, so that when harm happens, it is repaired and we have harm happen much less often.”
She added that suspensions — and even the rare expulsion — will still be incorporated into disciplining when needed.
Shelvin said interventions like mental health first aid training will help bring these numbers down. The district’s family coordinators also received this training leading up to this school year. Cooper said administrators and staff had additional training related to restorative practices before school started as well.
District 87 — Bloomington Junior High School
District 87 Superintendent David Mouser said a major focus for them will be conflict resolution.
“That involves restorative circles and teaching kids how to talk through conflicts that they may have made with peers or with teachers, and so forth,” he said. “Our goal is to try to equip teachers and students with what they need to be able to de-escalate issues in the classroom so that they don't, you know, spill over into lost learning time.”
Social media, Mouser said, has become an increasingly concerning issue for youth, but the plan is to try to keep students off their phones and make the classroom more engaging.
Like Shelvin, Mouser said he believes being proactive and learning the reason why students might be, for example, skipping class, will help decrease discipline.
Helping students learn soft skills for healthy conflict resolution dialogue will help with this, Mouser said, but so will training teachers on properly addressing student behaviors.
“What does skipping class look like? What does being non-compliant look like? How can we keep kids from being disruptive? And what is a true disruption in class that really requires an office referral?” Mouser said are all questions educators and administrators should be asking themselves before disciplining.
Mouser said District 87 also has many people aimed at keeping an eye on students. There are psychologists and counselors, and in recent years, he said they’ve brought in family coordinators. A newer addition is student hall monitors that can intervene when they see a student who might be in crisis.
By the end of this school year, he said he hopes to see improvement in discipline statistics.
“It's all hands on deck, and it requires a community — so staff, our community in a general sense, and then our students — to, you know, to make the changes necessary to elevate our expectations,” he said.
