More than 100 New Hampshire kindergartners were suspended from school last year. What could the 5- and 6-year-olds have done?
Lawmakers want to know. The Republican-led Senate passed a bill that creates a committee to study why students in kindergarten through third grade are suspended, and sometimes expelled, from public schools across the state.
“We have to find out where most of this is happening and why it’s happening, because it needs to stop,” said bill sponsor Rep. Mary Stuart Gile, a Concord Democrat. “There’s no reason for a child to be suspended from kindergarten.”
Almost 850 students in kindergarten through the third grade were suspended during the 2014-15 school year, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education.
Nearly two-thirds of those students – or about 523 – faced out-of-school suspensions, meaning they weren’t allowed on school grounds temporarily. That’s up from the 2013-14 school year, when roughly 450 students faced out-of-school suspensions.
Some education experts suggested the suspensions may stem from increasingly prevalent mental health issues among the state’s youngest students.
But it’s hard to tell for sure. The Department of Education collects school level data, but doesn’t publish all of it on its website. The department doesn’t break down the reasons for suspensions by grade level, nor does it list which school districts took such disciplinary action. The Monitor has requested a break down of the data.
The proposed study committee, made up of six lawmakers, would try to answer those questions and come up with legislative solutions.
“Research shows that children who are told not to come to school for whatever reason – in kindergarten, first, second, or third grade – that sets them on a trajectory for school failure, and eventual dropout,” Gile said. “It’s a bad beginning.”
The bill has already passed the Republican-led House.
Overall, far more students are suspended each year, than are permanently expelled from school. Students in New Hampshire are far less likely to be expelled from school than those in other states, according to a recent study from the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. No students in kindergarten through third grade were expelled during the last school year.
New Hampshire tracks closer to the national average when it comes to out-of-school suspensions, the study found. Nationwide, 10 percent of secondary students faced an out-of-school suspension in 2011-12, compared to 9 percent in New Hampshire. Suspensions can range in time, from one day to several days.
State data shows that 79 kindergarteners, out of 11,570 total, were suspended out of school during the 2014-15 school year. Another 22 faced in-school suspensions. The data doesn’t specify the length of each suspension.
The percentage of students in kindergarten and first, second and third grades being suspended from school has increased slightly over the last two years, a Monitor analysis shows. For example, 2 percent of third graders in the 2013-14 school year were suspended, versus 2.25 percent in the 2014-15 school year.
Mental health issues may play into the suspensions, said Carl Ladd, associate executive director at the New Hampshire School Administrators Association.
“There’s a perception out there that schools are just running amok with rules and suspending students willy-nilly, and that’s not the case at all,” Ladd said. “We’re starting to see younger children coming in with severe behavioral issues that we have not seen in the past.”
At younger ages, students are presenting with significant behavioral health problems like severe emotional and anger issues, even suicidal thoughts, Ladd said.
In the classroom, that can mean a student throws chairs or desks, or hits other students or the teacher. One third-grade student in the North Country was so distraught by events at home earlier this year he attempted to throw himself in front of a moving car, Ladd said.
Public schools aren’t equipped to address those issues, he said.
“These are things we have not typically seen in the past,” said Ladd, who was unable to attribute the changes to any one specific cause. “This is becoming more and more of an issue that we’re looking at, and it’s something that has us very concerned.”
But Gile said most of the suspensions from that age group are not logged as assaults or violent behavior, but rather as “other,” a category that offers few specifics.
It’s difficult to tell from the Department of Education data.
The department collects discipline data annually, but catalogues it in two separate places making it difficult to determine why 101 kindergarteners were suspended. One data set shows how many students were suspended in each grade of every school district. The other data set includes the reasons for such suspensions, but does not break them down by grade, according to department officials.
For example, the Abbot-Downing School profile shows that nine students were suspended during the 2013-14 school year for “other” reasons. The Concord elementary school houses students from kindergarten to grade five, but the disciplinary data does not reveal the suspended students’ ages or grade levels.
(This article has been updated to clarify the difference between expulsion and suspension. Allie Morris can be reached at 369-3307, amorris@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @amorrisNH.)