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West Virginia House Education Committee reviews Senate version of elementary discipline bill

(Capitol Notes - Graphic Illustration/MetroCreative)

CHARLESTON — The House Education Committee is considering a state Senate bill that includes much of the language the House of Delegates agreed to in an earlier House bill addressing student discipline in elementary school classrooms.

The House Education Committee held a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a strike-and-insert amendment being considered for Senate Bill 199, relating to elementary behavior intervention and safety. The bill’s next step is the committee’s markup and discussion phase.

SB 199 requires a student whose behavior is deemed violent, threatening, or intimidating be referred to a school counselor, school social worker, or school psychologist to conduct a functional behavioral assessment to determine the causes of the behavior and establish a two-week behavioral plan for the student. The student would be re-evaluated after the two-week period.

The bill would allow for the creation of alternative learning centers in counties or expansion of existing centers, subject to funding, to address the behaviors of chronically disruptive students. The bill allows multiple counties to share use of an alternative learning center.

For counties without alternative learning centers, the bill mandates specific disciplinary steps when a teacher determines a student’s behavior crosses over into violent or dangerous actions, including immediate removal from the classroom away from other students for the remainder of the day, parental notification, and a three-day suspension.

A student removed from a classroom three times in a month would receive an in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, or placement in an alternative learning center. The bill also permits for the expulsion of a student, but only if repeated behavior occurs. The bill allows for a teacher or principal to come to the expulsion hearing and allows both to appeal to the county superintendent over any disagreement.

The House passed its version of the elementary discipline bill, House Bill 2515, in a 93-4 vote the first week of March. Much of what was in HB 2515 was incorporated into SB 199. But the Senate bill – unlike the House bill – would allow schools to partner with a licensed behavior health agency as an option to correct student behaviors, meeting regularly with the school’s social worker. The Senate bill also removes a provision in the House bill that would allow classroom aides to provide behavior support.

The strike-and-insert amendment that the House Education Committee was briefed on Tuesday would add in behavior specialists, board-certified behavior analysts, school psychologists, and other qualified employees with expertise in the behavioral issues to conduct the required functional behavioral assessment. A staff attorney said the amendment was requested by the state Board of Education.

“Right now, some of the language only references school social workers and some schools do not have a school social worker on site,” explained a staff attorney for the committee.

The committee strike-and-insert amendment would also add in a pre-Kindergarten teachers at a publicly funded pre-K facility to the sections that are specifically dealing with kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. House Education Committee Chairman Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, said the strike-and-insert amendment had the blessing of his colleagues in the state Senate.

“The amendments that the gentleman was just alluding to were requested by our Senate colleagues, sponsors of the bill,” Ellington said.

Dale Lee, president of the West Education Association, said the bill addresses much of the concerns raised by teachers over the last several years about violence and outbursts by some of the youngest students in their classrooms. But he also urged lawmakers to continue to look at the root causes of these outbursts.

“I applaud you for taking efforts to remove this problem from the classroom and addressing that, but I would ask you to continue to look at what’s causing these mental and emotional outbursts and look at ways that we can fix that,” Lee said. “If we don’t fix the problem in the elementary level, if we don’t work on the social and behavior and mental issues of these kids at the elementary level, then we’re going to lose them in the middle school and the high school.”

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