Greenwood and Clark-Pleasant school officials meet with State Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, Thursday at the Clark-Pleasant Administration Building. Davis met with the school stakeholders to gather information for the summer study committee on student discipline.
Jayden Kennett | Daily Journal
Administrators from Clark-Pleasant and Greenwood schools joined State Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland to discuss the pitfalls and solutions regarding school discipline and education.
Davis is the vice president of the Indiana General Assembly’s summer study committee that is tasked with understanding why schools are seeing increased disciplinary issues. Principals, assistant principals, and deans from Clark-Pleasant and Greenwood districts joined Davis to provide input on school discipline in a meeting the Daily Journal was invited to attend last week.
With the session over for the year, the summer study committee is less about passing legislation and more about conversations, Davis said. However, the conversations could lead to future legislation.
Truancy enforcement
School officials said they feel a lack of support when it comes to truancy.
Westwood Elementary Principal David Ennis asked how they can get teeth behind cracking down on truancy. One student, he said, has already missed 11 days out of the 24 that school has been in session. Johnson County’s partnership with the Department of Child Services Family Resource Program has helped some, but not enough to fix the problem. Ennis asked how to teach student routines and discipline when there is a lack of support at other levels, such as the prosecutor’s office or legislation.
Ennis asked what teeth the legislator could have where parents have “some sort of punitive penalty” if their kids are routinely missing school.
Clark-Pleasant Superintendent Tim Edsell agreed that schools have procedures and communications in place, but a lack of follow-through outside of schools can be frustrating, he said.
“We’re doing our part — not to point fingers — but how can there be that partnership that’s better?” Edsell said. “We appreciate what we have with Family Resources through the probation office, but ‘what more could we discuss?’ is where we would like to see some conversation and just what they can do. It’s a family issue. We can’t control parents. We can control what we can control. So at some point, there’s got to be that consequence or assistance, not everything has to be negative, but to help that family. We do as much as what we can.”
At some point, schools are exhausting all of their resources to the point where they are weighing whether or not to expel a student for poor attendance, Edsell said. Though that doesn’t exactly make any sense, schools don’t have a lot of options and these students’ poor attendance hurts the school’s academic rating, he said.
Davis said she has talked with the prosecutor’s office, but they lack time and resources to put toward things like truancy, she said.
Other administrators suggested looping in legal experts on the conversation to see what they can do as well.
Most schools have a referral process to alternative education for students who miss five to 10 days of school. Students who do withdraw for an alternative program like Connections Academy or online homeschool end up coming back and the process restarts all over again, one administrator said.
Michael Gasaway, principal at Greenwood High School, said oftentimes families are not following through, leaving the schools with their hands tied.
“I feel like our schools do everything they have to do, everything for a kid to be successful. What doesn’t happen, though, is the families, if they are not hitting certain benchmarks or doing certain things, I would love them to have to go into a mandatory program that gives the resources,” Gasaway.
Other administrators agree that having the parents’ and guardians’ support and trust that teachers are doing their best to try and help students would be a huge help.
Behavior impacts students, staff
The severity of student behavior has also gotten worse, presenting another challenge for teachers and administrators, administrators said. The group suggested looking into supporting more alternative programs and schools.
However, funding can be an issue when it comes to those alternative programs. Schools only have a limited number of spots available for students to attend alternative programs like RISE Indy and Simon Youth Academy. Even then, the school only gets reimbursed for half of the tuition costs, Edsell said. And only certain students can qualify for those programs. If a student is not on an individualized education plan, they would not qualify for the program.
Both Clark-Pleasant and Greenwood have filled their spots at RISE Indy this year, they said.
Sometimes student behavior is so bad that it interferes with the whole class’s education, Ennis said. Davis agreed, saying a few parents have approached her in the grocery store to talk about issues in the classroom.
The intensity of behavior at the elementary level is growing, said Beth Henry, principal at Break-O-Day Elementary. This is a reason why it is hard to retain teachers, she said.
“They’re burnt out. They didn’t come to work to get beat up and that’s kind of happening at times,” Henry said.
Things like burnout and lack of compensation are worsening the teacher shortage, according to 2023 data from the Indiana State Teachers Association. Across the state, more than 1400 teacher or school leadership positions need filled, according to the Indiana Department of Education job portal. There are more than 62 open teaching and school leadership positions in Johnson County.
Most of the time, those severe behaviors have a mental health component to them, said Natalie Black, principal at Ray Crow Elementary. Teachers can do what they can to provide special education and support to students, but “you can’t special ed a student out of a mental health crisis,” she said.
School counselors are also stretched thin, according to American School Counselor Association data. Counselors in Indiana are nearly double the recommended counselor-to-student ratio of 250-to-1.
Much of the mental health support that schools provide is based on free and reduced lunch programs. So students who don’t receive that assistance cannot get mental health support through school. On top of that, only a couple of places in the state will accept the school’s private insurance, leaving it up to the parents to find mental health help for their kids.
Schools need support
For some students, the root of behavior issues may be trauma or mental health-related. Schools need to be able to address behaviors and mental health problems early before they become a larger problem, said Katie Sinzinger, dean of students at Whiteland Community High School. “Band-Aided” problems grow worse down the road, she said.
“Sometimes the behavior is just they’re behind and they don’t know how to communicate it and they’re embarrassed,” Sinzinger said. “So it’s easier to throw a desk than fail a test. So some of these students, they’ve been band-aided so long, then they get to these upper levels when now we have some students who are being prosecuted in the judicial system because they made a threat at school, but they’ve just been Band-Aided for too long. We’re not addressing the root of the issue.”
Penny Inskeep, principal at Pleasant Crossing Elementary, said schools are “pouring every piece” that they have into discipline, but it may fall short sometimes because of staff and resources. Which in turn may lead to the behavior progressing at secondary levels.
Teachers and administrators have been “shouting it from the rooftops” that they need support, but there is still a fiscal piece that is lacking, Inskeep said. Schools see the needs, but lack the support to address them early so they don’t progress, she said.
“Just looking deeper at where we start and how we’re making sure that we’re starting successfully to begin our school careers as a child and as a staff. I feel like elementary sites often say ‘yes’ and we just figure it out. We don’t often say ‘Yes and how are you going to help us do that?’” Inskeep said.
Clark-Pleasant has a preschool program, but they only get half the tuition dollars for special education students, Edsell said.
Mia Lehmkuhl contributed to this reporting.
