PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 19, 2021
SROs,
Continued from page A1
that the district would not be renewing
its contract with school resource officers,
also referred to as SROs. With schools in
the district continuing hybrid learning
at the end of last year, the data released
Tuesday was the first look at incidents
in schools in the return to in-person
learning.
“There is a narrative that says, ‘Oh well
we’re not holding students accountable.’
You can see by those numbers that there’s
thousands of incidents from where we’ve
held students accountable so that’s not
necessarily the issue,” said Co-Assistant
Superintendent Iton Udosenata. “What
we do want to do is make sure that we are
building relationships with the students
and using restorative practices to hold
the students accountable.”
The data, presented by Udosenata to
the board, compared disciplinary num-
bers from Sept. 1 to Nov. 5 of this year
with numbers during the same dates in
2019. Data from the 2020 school year
was not used due to it being impacted by
remote and hybrid learning.
In the fall of 2019, 45 students in the
district committed 57 expulsion viola-
tions. So far in 2021, six students have
committed a total of six violations.
Udosenata explained that an expulsion
doesn’t necessarily mean a student was
kicked out of school for good, but that
their behavior warranted them being
removed from their “current education
setting.” He said that expulsions usually
last for a year.
“There are some incidents where it is
our legal obligation to expel. So I know
that some people may say, ‘Well that’s
because we aren’t expelling for certain
offenses.’ Some of the egregious offenses
that you may have heard about in the
school community are probably the ones
that came to those six,” said Udosenata.
“But the thing to point out is that number
is significantly lower.”
As far as in-school and out-of-school
suspensions go, there have been a total
of 1,006 this year compared to 2,232 in
2019. The 2,786 insubordinate violations
this year is also a massive reduction from
the 6,231 in 2019.
A continued concern among dis-
trict leadership and the board was the
overrepresentation of Hispanic and
Black student suspensions compared to
populations.
In total, Hispanic students accounted
for 55% of all suspensions despite being
45% of the student body. Black students
accounted for 2.4% of suspensions while
being 1% of the student population.
“The overrepresentation of our
Hispanic and Latino population, it’s
important for us to drill down and under-
stand what’s happening there. We’ve
already started to work on bringing the
community into that conversation,” said
Udosenata. “We hope to turn the dial and
the next time we give this presentation
that number is low.”
There have been a total of 386 fights
this year compared to 272 in the fall of
2019 — a number that district leader-
ship say they anticipated. Udonsenata
said the emotional impact of the past 18
months may have led to an increase in
these incidents.
Board Director Satya Chandragiri
felt there was a disconnect between the
board’s presentation and sentiment
expressed by parents.
“I don’t want to overlook the fact that
we are in the news now, perhaps the
national news. A serious incident that
gets sent to the media. Parents are really
scared and asking, ‘Are our children safe,
is the safety going to be there, who is
keeping an eye?’” said Chandragiri.
Chandragiri didn’t directly mention
what incident he was referencing, how-
ever, on Nov. 15 a student at Stephens
Middle School was arrested for having a
gun in his backpack.
“As you can tell with the data that was
just shared, schools are very relatively
safe unfortunately for a few incidents that
have spilled from the community into the
schools,” said Board Chair Osvaldo Avila.
“As a parent of two children in middle
school and high school, I am not scared
of them being inside a school building in
any one of our schools.”
What we do want to do
is make sure that we are
building relationships
with the students and
using restorative
practices to hold the
students accountable.
— ITON UDOSENATA
Co- Assistant Superintendent, Secondary,
SALEM-KEIZER PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Matt Rawlings / KEIZERTIMES
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