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The "Office of Student Engagement"? You've gotta be kidding me! I think the MPS officials outdid themselves this time. What the **** do you need an Office of Student Engagement for? I have an idea: stop throwing money at district bureaucrats, and start spending money recruiting stellar teachers (you know, the ones with knowledge of the subject they're teaching), and make sure that your schools have enough science supplies and textbooks, and then you'll have student engagement, because you will have created a learning environment, not a happy-talk kingdom like you have now!

PATHETIC PROGRESS PATROL -- Minneapolis Public School administrators are crowing about a reduction in the suspension rate during last school year (2001-02). The total suspensions in all Minneapolis Public Schools fell from 21,584 in 2000-01 to 20,954 in 2001-02, which means they issued 630 fewer suspensions last year than the year before, a drop of 2.9%. Birch Jones, executive director of the districts' Office of Student Engagement, credits "classroom-management techniques" for the reductions, and claims that the new discipline guidelines that the district is currently drafting will set the stage for a possible 5% reduction in suspensions next year. The district downplays the fact that they failed to meet their own "ambitious" goal of decreasing suspensions by 5% last school year, and are probably on track to miss this years' goal as well.

Suspensions for Dubious Reasons

One reason for the district's high suspension rate is that in addition to suspending violent students, Minneapolis administrators also suspended 7,200 students last year for such subjective, and often arbitrary offenses like "defiance," "disrespect" and "persistent lack of cooperation." That means 34.36% of suspensions in 2001-02 were for nonviolent offenses. In fact, the four original co-founders of SouthHighSucks.com were among those 7,200 questionable suspensions. Back on March 19, 2002, because this site apparently made her "uncomfortable," South High Principal Linda Nelson suspended the four of us, and later threw me out of the school permanently for not removing this site from the internet. (You can read more about our suspensions by clicking here.) After our suspensions recieved some media coverage, I recieved several emails from people who were also suspended for dubious reasons, and while I respect their privacy and will not go into the details of those people's suspensions, please believe me when I tell you that I know a thing or two about the large quantity of bogus suspensions at Minneapolis schools.

Racial Disparities

MPLS Suspensions, 2001-02
Ethnicity	Overall percentage of students suspended	Percentage of 8th Grade students suspended
American Indian	22%	49%
African American	28%	52%
Asian American	7%	17%
Latino	12%	30%
White	8%	18%

Another statistic that ought to be analyzed is race. As you can see in the table at left, minority students are suspended at far higher rates than whites, and this is a matter of concern for many leaders in the African-American community, including Emmett Carson, president of the Minneapolis Foundation. Carson believes (correctly, I might add), that the district should better define gray-area offenses and ensure that school policies are applied equally. Carson also theorizes that "a teacher is far more comfortable with some behavior on the part of one ethnic group than they are with another," which he believes is part of why minorities are suspended so frequently.

A Glut of 8th Grade Suspensions

Another interesting fact is that eighth-graders are suspended in much higher numbers than other students--in fact, over half of all African-American eighth graders were suspended at least once last year. But the situation has improved somewhat at Folwell Middle School, where nearly half of the entire student body was suspended during the 2000-01 school year, as suspensions declined to "just" 33% of the student body during 2001-02.

Should Suspensions be Eliminated?

Of course, some people believe suspensions in general are bad policy...and their number is growing. Many experts and educators say that removing a student from school for a couple of days not only does little or nothing to change bad behaviors, but it leaves them outside to possibly break the law, and puts them further behind in their studies. And while few people would protest the suspension of students who engage in fistfights, this high rate of suspensions definately helps to explain why Minneapolis' graduation rate hovers just below 50%. It's my position that at the very least, Minneapolis should eliminate the 7,200 annual suspensions (that's 200 a week; 40 per day...) of "nonviolent offenders." I bet that would help them finally push their graduation rate above that 50% mark.--Dr. Vinny, South High Sucks.com Founder & Publisher

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