Is the disciplinary policy too tough in Fairfax?
Saturday - 2/12/2011, 5:52pm ET
WASHINGTON - A group of parents is attacking Fairfax County Public School disciplinary policies charging that they are simply too tough.
"We've gone way over the line," John Farrell of the Fairfax Zero Tolerance Reform Group says. "We want our schools safe, but we don't need 3,000 kids being suspended every year."
Farrell says Superintendent Jack Dale has effectively called the mothers of two students who committed suicide this year liars, by denying that a zero tolerance policy exists. The teens took their lives during the disciplinary process. Dale said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors this week that any link between the deaths and discipline is a "falsehood."
The letter was in response to the board adopting a motion to pursue more collaborative efforts with the school system following the recent deaths.
Farrell though says the connection is clear.
"Circumstantial evidence gets people the death penalty," he says. "These boys committed suicide while they were in the middle of being put through the grinder that is the Fairfax County Public Schools discipline process."
Farrell says the 60 pages of discipline policies are too broad, and that too many kids are getting suspended, including many "for things that have nothing to do with drugs or guns. As a result, too many students are not finishing their high school education."
In his letter to the Board of Supervisors, Dale says he believes the community's focus should be on combating depression, not on school procedures.
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