A Trump executive order on school discipline was condemned last week by Connecticut Senate Democrats, who said the order would result in more students expelled from classrooms and the worsening of long standing racial disparities.
President Donald Trump signed the order Wednesday, calling on his administration to replace existing federal guidance, which had advised schools to adjust their disciplinary policies if students of color were found to be suspended or expelled from school at a disproportionate rate.
Before Trump reversed it, the guidance had been designed to keep more students in classrooms and address wide disciplinary disparities in the rates at which students of color are suspended or expelled from schools when compared to the rest of the student population.
Sen. Doug McCrory, a Hartford Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Education Committee, said data from schools around the country illustrate the need for the policy.
“Black and Brown kids are being kicked out of schools far more often and far longer than their white counterparts who engage in the same behavior,” McCrory said. “That was before this destructive new executive order. We must do better than this for the sake of an entire generation of young people.”
In a joint statement, Senate President Martin Looney, Majority Leader Bob Duff called Trump’s executive order “troubling,” given the existing disparities.
“Reversing those policies doesn’t make anyone safer; it simply reinforces the injustices we should be working to end,” Looney and Duff said. “It’s yet another cruel and regressive directive from an administration intent on undermining the futures of those who aren’t wealthy and white. Our kids deserve better.”
Opposition to Trump’s executive order was not limited to Connecticut. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the order failed to create a safe and welcoming environment in classrooms.
“It simply ignores a history where Black and Brown students were disproportionately suspended or expelled from school rather than provided the opportunity to thrive,” Weingarten said, according to the Post.
Disparities in the application of school discipline are longstanding and exist in states across the country, including Connecticut. In 2015, the General Assembly took action to address the issue in an effort to ensure more students stay in school. Connecticut law, with certain exceptions, prohibits local school boards from imposing out-of-school suspension on students in grades pre-K through two.
