ETPC youths helped form public school's suspension guidelines
MAISHAH ENGLISH World Staff Writer
02/05/2003
Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page ETZ4 of Community

Members of the East Tulsa Prevention Coalition -- with help from East Central High School students -- played a role in recommendations to improve Tulsa Public Schools' student suspension program.

Many of those students were members of ETPC's youth committee.

School board member Bobbie Gray appointed ETPC volunteer Gary Percefull and Darrell "Bud" Rubert to the task force.

The Tulsa Public School Suspension Task Force was convened as a result of a 2001 finding that one in six students had been suspended during the 2000-2001 school year.

A task force report indicated that during the 2000-2001 school year, 6,195 students were suspended, accounting for 97,130 missed instructional days. For the financially struggling school system, this translated into a loss of $304,988 in state funding at a rate of $3.14 per pupil per day.

The task force in April made recommendations to the school district on early intervention to curb Tulsa Public Schools' suspension rate.

The recommendations included increasing partnerships with community organizations to promote better behavior, as well as a suggestion to provide students with a standard appeals and due-process measure to increase accountability of administrators, and communicate the rights of students and their parents or guardians. The committee also made recommendations to develop uniform guidelines across the school system

Rubert said it was not the task force's charge to reduce the number of suspensions.

"Our aim was to focus on behaviors which may increase a student's likelihood of being suspended," Rubert said.

Some of the recommendations were the result of a presentation by a delegation of East Central High School students and ETPC Youth Committee members who made their suggestions to the task force.

Judy Nguyen, Bin Pham and Raj Patel made a number of recommendations regarding in-house suspension that included replacing out-of school suspension with in-school suspension when possible, assigning mandatory school-based community service to students with repeated suspensions and coordinating education programs for students in in-house suspension.

"They were very outspoken and offered a valuable youth/student perspective to our discussion, particularly those pertaining to youth monitoring, peer mediation and diversity training programs," Percefull said.