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West Virginia education officials working on racial disparity issues

CHARLESTON — Six months after first receiving a report showing racial disparities when it comes to discipline in West Virginia public schools, the state Department of Education is working on plans to address the disparities.

State Superintendent of Schools David Roach told members of the West Virginia Board of Education that the department would expand the scope and depth of a report released in July on West Virginia school discipline.

“The disciplinary disparities report provided to the West Virginia Board of Education in July 2022 was the first step in advancing and understanding and responding to significant issues facing children in West Virginia public schools,” Roach said. “Since the release of the report, the West Virginia Department of Education has provided the data to county and school-level leadership to help them better understand the trends and the issues that exist.”

Senate Bill 723, passed by the West Virginia Legislature in 2020, required the Department of Education to look at statewide data on school disciplinary actions and develop a plan to reduce the number of disciplinary actions. The department is required to submit a report to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability every two years.

The department released its first report in July, looking at five years of data beginning with the 2017-2018 school year. According to the report’s data, black students made up 4% of the student population in the 2021-2022 school year but made up 10% of all disciplinary referrals. That percentage has stayed mostly steady over the last five school years.

Broken down by severity levels with level 1 being least severe and level 4 being most severe, 10.9% of level 1 referrals were black students and 7.8% of level 4 referrals were black students. According to the report, 9.4% of all in-school suspensions in 2021-2022 were black students, while 9.8% of all out-of-school suspensions were black students.

Out of 170,188 actions and interventions in 2021-2022, there were 52,355 actions involving detention, 32,613 incidents resulted in in-school suspensions, 30,011 results in out-of-school suspension, 386 resulted in alternative education placement, 157 resulted in expulsion, and 54,666 were listed as “other interventions.”

“We had seen an increase in other interventions as well with black students,” said Drew McClanahan, director of government relations for the Department of Education, during a July presentation of the disciplinary report to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability. “It’s up 2% (from 2017-2018) to 12.6% (in 2021-2022).”

But the July report did not please some on the state Board of Education. Board member Debra Sullivan complained that the July report was not very clear as to the number of disciplinary referrals at specific schools and provided little in the way of context.

“I was rather disappointed in the first report,” Sullivan said Wednesday. “It gave a bird’s eye view of what was going on in the state, but there was really nothing there you could get your hands on to deal with.”

Roach said the Board of Education has directed the department to expand the scope and depth of the July report and develop a comprehensive plan to address the disparities.

“Educators, students, families, community partners and other stakeholders will be involved as part of a comprehensive response,” Roach said. “A detailed analysis and potential action steps will be developed and presented to the Board of Education to ensure that all students have equitable access to safe and high-quality learning opportunities in West Virginia classrooms.”

“It appears we’ll be looking at the school-level at individuals,” Sullivan said. “By getting down to the school-level, our counties and our schools can deal with whatever issues are confronting their schools. I know you’ll be looking at all the demographic factors. Not just race, but sex and gender, and special education populations … there is such a wealth of information the schools could use as they’re analyzing their programs.”

Speaking earlier Wednesday during the delegations portion of the Board of Education meeting, Charleston Rev. Matthew Watts, representing a group of interfaith organizations called the Tuesday Morning Group, urged the board to not delay actions for addressing racial disparities in discipline.

“If you do the same thing over and over again and you know you’re doing the same thing over and over again, then that’s not insanity. That’s just foolishness,” Watts said. “We’ve got thousands of kids that have been suspended and they’re so far behind, they will never get caught up. We’re going to have to deal with them when they graduate from high school.”

Watts encouraged the board to create a real-time suspension tracking system to show exactly where most of the disciplinary actions were taking place.

“The public needs to know what’s happening in terms of that,” Watts said. “Let’s look at how many kids have been suspended this school year. This is a crisis.”

The Rev. Franklin Hairston with the Harrison County NAACP told board members that some of the racial disparities in school discipline can be linked to bullying of black students and blatant racists incidents involving white students, with black students receiving worse punishments than white students.

“It is my attempt … to appeal to you as a concerned and proud parent and citizen of the State of West Virginia,” Hairston said. “We are asking you as the state board to communicate care, unity, and support for African-American students who are hurting and angry over the underlying societal problems of racism in America. We’re asking you to create venues to tell students of color we see you, we hear you, and we will stand with you to confront injustices as they live day-to-day in American society.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com

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