If the Buffalo Public Schools' suspensions debate interests you, I suggest you check out Mary Pasciak's blog on the Buffalo News' website. She compared the number of suspensions at each school to the number of students suspended at the school. What she found shouldn't be a surprise to anybody...
In some schools, the average student who got suspended was suspended about three times: North Park Middle led the pack, followed by Riverside High School, Southside Elementary, Waterfront Elementary, Buffalo Elementary School of Technology and Harriett Ross Tubman.
At the other end of the spectrum, at some schools, most students who were suspended were suspended only once: Early Childhood Center 82, Olmsted 64, D'Youville Porter, Hutch Tech and Middle Early College.
They need to take the students who behave at the lower performing schools and have them separated from the students who choose to misbehave. In other words, have the worst of the worst students go to alternative schools. There is no reason to force well behaved students to sit next to consistently disruptive students. Here is a comment from underneath Pasciak's post. Although the language is rather blunt, I do tend to agree with his opinion...
No news here. Tough schools like Burgard, South Park and Riverside have higher recidivism rates as they have since the magnet school system came to town. The more serious students get siphoned off to Hutch, Da Vinci and Honors and the thugs and slugs get dumped in with good kids who dont have great grades in the so called academic schools. The more thugs and slugs in your building the more suspensions and repeat offenders. Pardon the offensive language but spend a few minutes in the hallways and listen to the filth and disrespect spewed by some of these "students" and you will wonder why we cant just expel some of these 18 year olds with 5 more arrests than they have high school credits. If school is a joke to you then the punchline should be "you're out." Suspension is the only temporary reprieve some kids and teachers get from the criminals and idiots in a building who couldn't care less about an education.
Very true. By the way, North Park Middle School leads the pack with 3.1 (the average # of suspensions per student suspended). Most of the students there are not from North Buffalo. This comes as no surprise to me, as it is the worst school I've seen (behavior wise) in my three years of subbing. To see how your son/daughter's schools stacked up, please go to:
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For some students in the school where I work, it is a revolving door. Many in and out on 2 to 5 day suspensions, over and over, for various infractions and it is no big deal to them. There is little shame, regret, or responsibility shown by some kids - no lesson learned. Even in the case of formal suspensions, students are nearly always returned to the same school and for some, the pattern continues. It's very sad in some of my classes, to see these kids lumped in with those willing and wanting to learn. They can cause so much distraction and disruption; it is very frustrating. Interesting to see that North Park has the highest as I believe it is a feeder school for my HS. It's old hat for them by the time they get to HS, why change then?
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