Monday, Sep. 24, 2007

Second Chances

Amid complaints that policies were subjective, overly strict, new focus put on intervention

Mariah Gullatt might be Modesto City Schools' most notorious 17-year-old girl.

The Modesto High School senior has hopped from school to school since her sophomore year. She's been suspended and nearly expelled after being accused of poking a campus supervisor during a confrontation.

That expulsion, for assault, was thrown out. But not before Mariah missed more than two weeks of school.

Modesto High teachers, many of whom never had Mariah in class, stormed a board meeting in protest, unhappy with the decision and saying they needed tougher discipline to do their jobs. West Modesto activists and parents countered that administrators had overstepped the bounds of the conduct code in disciplining Mariah.

Faced with criticism that student discipline rules were too harsh and often subject to interpretation by administrators, district officials have lightened penalties for studentS who violate the district's student conduct code.

The lighter penalties are for the more minor infractions, such as swearing, eating in class and disobeying a teacher.

"They want the Peter and Priscilla Perfects, but if you're going to work at this school, you're going to have to deal with the harder kids," said Mariah's mother, Jai Gullatt. "When a kid has a troubled history, we need to find where the trouble starts from before we suspend them."

So how did Mariah's trouble start?

She was her junior high class's vice president and earned "The Panther Award" from her freshman year math teacher for being an outstanding student. The Panther is the Modesto High mascot.

But Mariah said she had a nasty temper, which erupted two years ago in front of administrators after she said a classmate harassed her for months, daring her to fight, throwing a soda on her and calling her "a white devil" for being half-white, half-black.

"It was overwhelming," Mariah said. "I thought, 'Nobody's doing anything.' I just lost it and took it out on everybody."

Mariah said that was the first mark on her record, for defiance of authority and using bad language.

Administrators say they can't speak about Mariah's case because of confidentiality, but they say changes to the conduct code this year include more intervention and second chances for troubled students.

Making a deal to improve

Among the tools being used are probation contracts, which allow students to sidestep suspension if they improve their grades and behavior or attend counseling for anger management.

The old version of the code resulted in more missed days of school for minor offenses, such as dress code violations. Some rules, such as giving home suspensions to students who are habitually tardy, violated state law.

"Our goal is to keep kids on campus and in class if they're not hurting anyone and not being disruptive," said Marlin Sumpter, director of child welfare and attendance.

Two other things moved the district to change the code: an American Civil Liberties Union report and years of outcry from community activists who claimed Modesto schools punished black and Latino students more frequently and harshly than their white peers. Some rules, such as defiance and disobedience, were so nebulous it was easy for administrators to apply them differently, parents said.

The ACLU, in a letter to then-Superintendent Jim Enochs earlier this year, claimed records showed the district expelled and suspended students of color at higher rates than white students.

"There is compelling evidence of significant and persistent racial inequalities in discipline," read a letter from the ACLU. "This is not a new problem in the district."