School Board discusses behavioral trends at workshop

BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During a lengthy workshop on April 10, the School Board of Alachua County heard a presentation on behavioral trends in the district.
Chief of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement Anntwanique Edwards told the Board that nationally, black students are three times more likely to be cited for disciplinary infractions as white students and more than three times as likely to be suspended. She said that in our district, African American students are about one-third of the population but account for “more than 50%” of disciplinary incidents, “so we know that we have the disproportionality, and we are working with schools to address that.” She said that 51% of K-12 students account for 68% of the students who are referred to law enforcement. She added that black girls are “nearly two times more likely to receive one or more in-school suspensions. There’s a growing and alarming rate across the country of the disproportionality, especially of females, black females in particular.”
Edwards presented arrest data for the past five years, clarifying that youth are not technically arrested but are taken into custody based on a probable cause and charged with a law violation.

In terms of subgroups, Edwards said, “Our black youth are way higher than other subgroups.” The chart below illustrates the number of unique discipline events by ethnicity/race:
- American Indian/Alaska: 3
- Asian: 51
- Black/African American: 4,417
- Hispanic or Latino: 574
- Multi-Racial: 566
- Pacific Islander: 12
- White: 990

The chart below illustrates the number of days suspended by race/ethnicity and by quarter; the list below provides the total numbers of suspension days to date and the number of students in that category in the district:
- American Indian/Alaska: 1 (39 students)
- Asian: 22 (1,466 students)
- Black/African American: 4481 (8,863 students)
- Hispanic/Latino: 494 (4,006 students)
- Multi-Racial: 11 (1,973 students)
- Pacific Islander: 11 (26 students)
- White: 809 (10,271 students)

Edwards said there were increases across the board from quarter to quarter, but “African American children are alarmingly high in comparison to other groups.” She added that elementary schools “are really struggling with addressing eloping – for people who don’t know, those may be your kids who get up and they just run and they might just keep on running and running, and they’re not in class.”

Member Kay Abbitt referred to a chart (above) showing that the number of days students were suspended increased each quarter: “Would you expect if you had a behavior plan in place that was being implemented with fidelity… Would you expect those days to decrease?”
Edwards responded, “It depends. They decrease in some ways because there’s different factors that play into it.”
Rod Warner from Student Attendance said he was “super positive about everything.” He said the overall number of incidents and number of overall suspension days for the district were down over the last couple of years for secondary schools, but they’ve increased in elementary schools. It said it might be “because we’ve stressed different things.” He said there has been a “stigma” that it doesn’t look good if you “document too much,” but he wants to see everything documented, so he believes the increase is mainly in reporting. He said there are “a lot of challenges” right now with kindergarteners and first-graders, but there are also decreases with secondary students.
“The real A. Quinn Jones”
Alberta “Bonnie” Bing, Principal of A. Quinn Jones (a district alternative school), said the students at the school are there for reasons ranging from disrupting classrooms to weapons possession and that it’s a “major challenge” to separate students who’ve had weapons charges but are all placed at A. Quinn Jones. She said the number of students at her school changes almost daily because students are sent to her after court hearings. She said she’d originally been “upset” to be assigned to A. Quinn Jones, but now she is amazed by her faculty and staff. Bing said they have to teach the students how to behave at school before they can teach them to read.
Bing said A. Quinn Jones is a school of last resort that not only takes Alachua County students who need an alternative placement but also takes students who may not be from Alachua County but maybe just left a residential facility and came to live with a relative here. If students “don’t make it” at SIATech, AMI Kids, or North Central Florida Charter School, for example, “Guess where they come? They come to A. Quinn.”
She continued, “We get students from all of the high schools, all of the middle schools. And so if there’s a major fight in the neighborhood, then they all come to A. Quinn Jones; it’s hard to separate them when you have – and I’m going to call it – east side/west side. My question to them is: which one of you own property? You’re fighting over something you don’t own. And so we talk about that.”
She said many of the students are smart, but teachers haven’t been able to tell because of their behavior. She concluded, “So I just wanted to introduce A. Quinn Jones, the real A. Quinn Jones. It is not the school for bad kids; it is not the school for bad teachers; it is not the school for bad parents; it is not the school for bad Assistant Principals; neither is it the school for a bad Principal.” She said that donations from businesses have allowed the school to have prizes that students can earn, and the school works to help students get jobs.
96 students have been charged with firearm offenses this year, but most were not on school properties
Chair Diyonne McGraw said she was concerned about the “mixture of kids” and said she believed more training was needed to deal with potential behavior problems. She said last year’s presentation had 37 firearms cases, but this year they’re up to 96 firearms cases, and “I am truly concerned that we wake up one day and something drastic happens.” She said she was concerned about retaliation for shootings that are “now beginning to affect our schools” and students “selling drugs and things in our schools… You know, you’re not trying to scare people. It’s a reality.”
Member Tina Certain clarified that not all of the 96 firearms cases were on school properties; that’s the total for the community. McGraw agreed that was true but said, “What I want to be clear on and I’m gonna continue to say: these are kids who are in our system.”
Executive Director of Exceptional Student Education Kathy Black said, “There are 96 cases of Alachua County Public School students who have been in the juvenile courts with either a felony or misdemeanor charge related to a firearm; some of those events could have happened after hours on our campus. We would not know about them if they’re charged with a misdemeanor because we don’t get notification… But they’re not on-campus events; they are events with our students.”
McGraw said, “We can sit here and try to play this stuff down, but people are leaving. And you’re gonna lose more people, because teachers should come to school able to teach. You only get 50 minutes. If I got a lot of disruptions, how am I making sure kids are being taught?” McGraw asked Bing again about the challenges of having “a mixture of certain students all together” at one school.
Bing said that when students from different schools get into a fight at a football game, for example, “they may all end up at the same school – that’s a concern… We do have some that’s gang-related.” She said that since taking the job she had learned a lot, “just the verbiage that they have, the hidden symbols that’s on their shirts that I didn’t know anything about.”
Budget limits options for alternative schools
Member Sarah Rockwell said that any discussion about more funding for alternative schools would need to be balanced with all the other proposals that have been made, along with the “ESSER fiscal cliff” that is coming up soon.
McGraw said she wanted to see options “with the resources that we already have… by next month.”
Certain said she was concerned about moving black students to an alternative school “if they’re not charged with a criminal felony… I just get the heebie-jeebies. I watched the movie Push Out where black students are pushed out of school for various reasons, and I’m not going to be privy to that.” She said she wanted to figure out what the options are for the “challenging behaviors that we’re seeing in our community from school-aged children.”
Edwards said that felony placements are usually not optional, but if a student is charged with a misdemeanor, which can include some firearms charges, “we can’t just take kids and put them somewhere else because it is comfortable for us.” She said her staff have been talking to Principals about “creative” solutions like alternative spaces on campuses.
Concerns about gangs: “those kids have the right to be in school”
Edwards said the concern about gangs “is a very difficult one, because we have to remember that we’re a public school entity, so those kids have the right to be in school. But also, at the same time, we have to prioritize safety. And it becomes difficult when they’re on the same campus.” She said the problem can’t be solved just by the school district because it’s “really about how are we supporting families; some of those things happen with trauma because it is occurring first in the family system. And we have to be able to work with our entire system to provide those supports, we can’t do it all from the school district… It has to be everyone working together.”
McGraw said there may be options at other school sites without opening an entire new school building. She said the district is not “intervening enough, to me, when a kid ends up with 50 or 100 referrals.”
Since this was a workshop, no motions were made, and no votes were taken.
What is so hard to understand that slaps on the wrist don’t work. Punishment is needed. No consequence behavior just encourages more.
Don’t do the crime if ya don’t want to do the time….
Our pop culture got rid of professional clowns and replaced them with black (often male) amateur and famous clown substitutes. Going mainstream by news media excusing Rodney King, and with pop media’s clownish music videos. We laugh and reward them for acting clownish. No matter how disruptive and dangerous, sometimes homicidal.
When high society lawyers and judges repeatedly excuse it, of course it’ll only worsen, as we see now.
You know what’s missing from the school board presentation? Commentary from classroom teachers that tolerate this insufferable behavior. Unless you are a teacher or substitute you have no idea how egrigeous student behavior has become.
We also continue to await data on the hours of instructional time lost by the disruptions.
And maybe the equity coordinator can also provide that data by race, since race, not instruction seems to be the most important thing for ACPS related to this topic. The minority parents I know are sick ‘up to here’ with the disciplinary environment at the schools.
We don’t need a DEI person on the payroll. We need to employ a truant officer and have the local pastors preach marriage & the family to their flock! “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Hats off to people over at A.Quinn Jones. With the infestation of gangs and cliques in some neighborhoods their position as the last chance before prison is hard and dangerous.
My thought too.
Principal Bing made some insightful comments and she seems very dedicated. Godspeed
Agreed! I just heard that the district doesn’t even compensate the people that work there for working with the most dangerous population in the county.
Not sure why race matters at all in this context. Students who refuse to conform to norms of the school enough to be disrupting class should be in an alternative setting before they ruin classes for those who want to learn. Who cares what group they belong to? These behaviors involve violence, destruction of property, repeated profanity, and blatant, continual disrespect towards staff and fellow students. Giving repeated chances has not been shown to improve behavior, as far as I know.
Great comments here. A fine example of what some middle school students do on their off time is the recent arrest of a 13 year old who broke into a home and stole a gun. Once kids get to middle school, they have a lot of autonomy. The world is influencing them. They should know how to behave in society and especially in class. For the benefit of the other students, they need to be removed from the class if they are disruptive.
But what shouldn’t happen is the mixing of kids who are disruptive in the classroom with kids with charges/records. Bad mix and influence
So, whats the solution? Just like the City and County Commissioners these board members acted surprised. When confronted with problems known to exist. Nothing will be done because they do not wish to hurt someone’s feelings. Probably the solution will be sign saying “No Guns Allowed”. A couple quick thoughts metal dectors (wand).
DCF pushed to investigate parents. No one answer or solution every situation different but these are not throw away kids. They need help. Suggest all board members take pay cuts to hire more counselors or they donate entire pay if they really care about these young ones.
Why, Ms. Edwards, do you suppose that is?
Well, I am not a Preacher, but, I do know this, the answer to all of our problems, is in the SWORD OF GOD. Pray for our country and its Leaders to turn back to the principles that made us the greatest country in the World.
69% of all black children are born to never married mothers. Yet, we’re still baffled why black children do horrible in school.
DC very well know the answer but not acceptable to them
b/c they helped cause that stat you mention and will not be changed by them at the federal level so state and local entities have to pick up the grant funding crumbs to address it, that we pay for in theory (lol).
“In 1965, when the Great Society began in earnest following the massive electoral landslide reelection of LBJ, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among the black community was 21 percent. By 2017, this figure had risen to a whopping 77 percent. In some cities, this rate is as high as 80 percent, with most of the unwed mothers being teenagers.”
”
There is no better predictor of male criminality than being raised in a fatherless home. 70 percent of all juvenile offenders in state reform institutions were raised in fatherless homes.”
https://libertarianinstitute.org/economics/lbj-great-society-war-on-poverty-welfare-state-helped-ruin-black-communities/
All of these issues ultimately stem from poor parenting and a lack of parental involvement. Both of which are unfortunately falling on the backs of tired teachers.HOWEVER, BEHAVIOR INTERVENTIONS MUST START IN ALL ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
I don’t care what anyone says, the “positive behavior initiatives” at the elementary schools in many cases reinforce poor student behaviors. Trust me, I have seen it firsthand. Students today have absolutely no self regulation skills, lack accountability, and are extremely manipulative because they have learned how to work the system. Students with behavioral issues essentially run many elementary classrooms, and are often seemingly incentivized through countless “breaks” throughout the day, special treats, and more attention to minimize their behavior. It sends the WRONG message to other students and undermines the teacher’s authority. There is also a ridiculous amount of underreporting that goes on in some of our local elementary schools.
We coddle them, and pass them on every year despite knowing they don’t have the skills to be successful in the next grade. By the time they get to middle school, what do you expect? They have developed a sense of LEARNED HELPLESSNESS and don’t have the skills. We need to stop TALKING about the numbers and start implementing logical and CONSISTENT consequences for poor student behavior.
I wish I had read about actual activities that were utilized to address the issues. I do not believe schools can address the root causes as many come from home environments. If you believe the issue is in the reporting of the statistics, question the person who reports. It seems to me these are actual instances. Regardless of how much you try, you cannot create equitable outcomes.
If students are charged with any issue they should not be in any school.
If adults break the law, there are consequences to be paid.
Students breaking laws and rules in school or out and those being charged should
go to juvenile detention so they can be taught correctly how to live with good values, morals, ethics.
Am I reading this data right?
Primarily all black male youth.
Set up a few more Raiford cells.
Seems pretty clear who the problem is, tighten up the reins a little and give them some real consequences.
As a public school parent in Alachua County, I’ve seen how tied the hands are of school administrators. Before a child gets removed from a mainstream school, they have been in trouble many times. The district discourages schools from removing via suspension or expulsion because it is “unfair to the child” who deserves to be in school and learn, even though what’s happening is that the child is just interfering with other children being able to learn.
My kid (white) was being bullied by another kid (black) for a good six months – multiple documented incidents – in middle school and the bully wasn’t threatened by the school with any discipline until I told the school I was going to file charges against the kid for bullying if something wasn’t done. So the school finally threatened suspension and it stopped. My son had four classes with his bully and it made for an awful year for him, his classmates, his teachers and for our family.
In this case, the bully had both parents who DID care about him and his behavior but it didn’t matter.
My point: the way the school board is handling discipline issues isn’t working for the kids (the ones who misbehave and the ones who don’t), the parents (the ones who care and the ones who don’t) or the teachers.
whine now a bit more,