NEWS

Arlington High dilemma: When is school discipline too harsh?

Robert King
robert.king@indystar.com
Marcus Robinson, the chancellor and CEO of Tindley Accelerated Schools, says the tough disciplinary approach taken by educators at Arlington High School is necessary to help students learn.

When Arlington High School was taken over by a charter school company two years ago, the new educators immediately began bringing order to the hallways.

On its first day, the takeover company brought in extra security and several dozen off-duty and retired police officers to patrol the halls and campus. By year's end, more student suspensions were handed out — 568 — than there were kids enrolled in the school: 518. Those disciplinary actions, which included multiple suspensions for some students, were more than any other school in the city.

Questions about the nature of discipline at Arlington have been revived this week, after an unidentified student claimed his nose was broken after an encounter last month with a school security officer.

William Benjamin, shown addressing students in 2009 while he was with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, has been placed on leave by the Marion County Sheriff's Office while he is under investigation after an incident with a student at Arlington High School, where he helped provide security as a reserve deputy.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office is conducting an internal investigation since the officer in question, William Benjamin, is a reserve sheriff's deputy. He has been placed on administrative leave by the department. He remains employed, but inactive, with the school. No criminal charges have been filed.

Benjamin, a former pro football player with an imposing physical presence, in some ways embodied the no-nonsense approach that's been at work since Arlington was taken over by the charter school company, now known at Tindley Accelerated Schools. But he may also symbolize the question from community members that the school: In its efforts to keep order, does the school sometimes goes too far?

The school's use of suspensions — not just for violence or drugs but, also, for offenses like disrespecting teachers and too much tardiness — has some convinced that Arlington is too quick to remove students.

"When you put them out of school, you send them on a track to drop out of school. You send them on a track for the school-to-prison pipeline," said Carol Craig, education spokesperson for the Greater Indianapolis NAACP Branch. "What do children do when they are out of school? That's a chance for misbehavior with the criminal justice system."

Craig and others have been trying for more than two years to convince Arlington and its parent charter-school organization, Tindley Accelerated Schools, to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. They've also gone to the mayor's office, which oversees the city's charter schools, and the state board of education seeking help.

All to no avail, they say. While saying that they support strong discipline, Arlington's critics point to research that indicates that school suspensions are not the best way to help a troubled student. They suggest that detention, Saturday schools and other methods are a better fit.

"I think that, at this point, there seems to be an overzealous amount of discipline from administrators and teachers of our children, especially there at Arlington," said Elizabeth Gore, education chairperson with the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, made up primarily of clergy from predominantly black churches.

Arlington's student body is 99 percent black. And the concern about excessive school discipline — especially for black males — isn't a new phenomenon, or just a local concern.

The American Association of School Psychologists has noted that black male students are disproportionately referred to special education programs and inordinately suspended and expelled. The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights says black students are suspended and expelled at rates three times higher than white students.

The issue was noted this fall in "Your Life Matters," a report commissioned by Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, where recommendations included minimizing out-of-school suspensions and looking for alternatives to punishments that remove kids from school. That same report documented that Arlington had more out-of-school suspensions than similar schools.

Marcus Robinson, the chancellor and CEO of Tindley Accelerated Schools, said he understands the seriousness of what the national research says. He doesn't discount the problem, nationally speaking, of black students being disproportionately suspended or expelled.

But at Arlington, Robinson said the disproportionate discipline argument doesn't apply because almost all the students are black. Instead, he suggests that the school is doing what is needed to maintain a good learning environment for the students who show up to learn and who don't cause problems.

"We expect kids to go to class, pay attention, not be a disruption and not use pejorative language. And we hold kids accountable," Robinson said.

Before Tindley, then known as EdPower arrived, Arlington was a school where there were as many as seven fights in a single day, many of them gang-related, Robinson said. During that first year after the takeover, there were no fights among boys at the high school level. And the calm has prevailed since.

"Most of our discipline," Robinson said, "is set around the idea of making it safe enough to go to school."

As for the incident last month, Robinson declined to speak in detail, other than to say the account he's heard of the incident is different than what the student is saying.

Arlington doesn't have an in-school suspension alternative because it can't afford it, Robinson said. And while Arlington's suspension numbers are high, Robinson said that was also true in the days the school was run by Indianapolis Public Schools. Back then, he said, hundreds of children each year were expelled, sent to alternative schools or detained in in-school suspension programs that offered no real instruction.

"I'm not convinced that Arlington is in a categorically different place than it was before we took over," Robinson said.

That's true in another way, too. While calm now prevails in the hallways, Arlington remains on the state's list of failing schools, where it had been the six years prior to the state's takeover and before Tindley took over.

Robinson has made the case that the state's takeover formula is the cause — that an exodus of students, including some who chafe at the strict environment — has reduced the state money needed to right the ship. And, next year, it's likely that Tindley will abandon its effort at Arlington and the school could return to the IPS' fold.

Craig, with the NAACP, said that will be good for the students because IPS isn't as quick to expel or suspend. But she said next year is still a long time away.

"I have confidence that IPS next year will move on a different path," Craig said. "What we're worried about is those children are still in the school from now to June under this excessive punitive policy that flies in the opposition to what the Justice Department has recommended for schools."

Robert King covers community crime issues. He can be reached at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter at @RbtKing.