Data offers insight into code of conduct rollout in schools

By MEGANN HORSTEAD mhorstead@shawmedia.com

DeKALB – The impact of having a new code of conduct in place for the start of the 2022-23 school year may have prompted students in DeKalb schools to see fewer out-of-school suspensions but more in-school suspensions, data shows.

The school board at a recent meeting took a close look at data to help gauge the district’s progress related to student discipline.

In comparing the months of August through the first week of December for the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years, data shows that DeKalb schools likely have made some gains this school year by reducing out-of-school suspensions. The 2020 calendar year was largely remote because of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kyle Gerdes, DeKalb School District 428’s director of student services, pointed to what he called the administration’s collaboration and training as keys to the changes in suspension numbers for the district. He said it’s important to district leaders that students remain in school.

At DeKalb High School and the two middle schools, there is Crows Landing, which is the staffed in-school sus- pension room that students can access.

At the district’s elementary schools, however there is no in-school suspension location.

“It’s not set up in the same way,” Gerdes said. “They get creative when they have to. Sometimes that looks like maybe the administrator’s office or another area of the school where a student can be supervised but also not sent home and excluded in that way.”

Across the district in the 2018-19 school year, there were 183 out-ofschool suspensions cited, data obtained by the Daily Chronicle shows. The following full school year

– which ended remotely as the pandemic hit in March 2020 – the district logged 173 suspensions out of school.

In the 2022-23 school year, there were 123 out-of-school suspensions cited.

That same data, however, indicates that in-school suspensions have increased in the time that out-ofschool suspensions have decreased.

In the 2018-19 school year, there were 152 students in full day in-school suspensions. The following full school year, this figure amounted to 123, data shows.

In the 2022-23 school year so far, there have been 233 students in full day in-school suspensions.

During a recent school board discussion, board member Jeromy Olson questioned the assessment that the district’s schools are faring better with student discipline in reviewing the data.

“To me, I could easily say well looking at this data, all you did was shift your out-of-schools to in-schools,” Olson said. “Now, you have kids that probably should be out of school that are in school and going back to the classroom and being disruptive just 10 minutes after they were kicked out of

See CODE OF CONDUCT, page 19