Denver Public Schools is updating discipline policies

Officers monitor the campus of East High School in Denver on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. The officers were reinstated in April after the school shooting. The district’s board voted to remove them from campus in 2020. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Denver Public Schools has revised its discipline schedule, which drew criticism after last year’s shooting at East High School, but the district has refrained from making significant changes to its guidelines for expelling or suspending students, according to a presentation by Superintendent Alex Marrero. on Thursday, the Pedagogical Council.

District officials began reviewing the matrix, which guides school administrators in deciding how to discipline a student, last year before the East shooting, but made further revisions after the incident. Thursday’s presentation is a first look at the changes that will be implemented in the 2024-25 academic year.

“People think what happened at East is a direct result of the discipline matrix, but it’s not,” said Deborah Staten, the district’s deputy chief of staff.

“Our goal is not to get kids out of school,” she said. “Our goal is to keep kids in school.”

A copy of the new discipline matrix has not been made public, but the superintendent’s presentation showed the changes to the guidelines include seven levels of behavior and severity of discipline instead of the previous six, as well as new categories of conduct and a new layout. According to the presentation, DPS added 12 new categories of student behavior, including homicide, unethical use of technology and nicotine-related crimes.

The new seventh level of the matrix states that if students bring a gun to campus, they are almost always expelled, Staten said.

As part of this change, the dangerous weapons category – excluding firearms – is now divided into levels five and six, depending on whether the weapon was found or used. The tiers rank student behavior by severity and recommended discipline, including whether expulsion or suspension should be considered.

Staten said the district has received feedback that officials should clarify the previous matrix when it comes to where certain behaviors fit in the matrix.

A committee of teachers, administrators and community members met eight times between October and April to recommend changes to the previous matrix, according to the presentation. The new discipline matrix was last published in 2021.

Last year, parents and teachers criticized DPS’s disciplinary policies as too lenient after the East shooting, saying administrators were too reluctant to expel students. During the shooting, a teenager shot and wounded two administrators during a search. The student who died by suicide had previously been expelled by the Cherry Creek School District and was on probation due to prior weapons charges.

Collinus Newsome, sister of Wayne Mason, one of the deans shooting for East, said changes to the district’s discipline structure will create more confusion, including the addition of a seventh level, for both teachers and parents.

“It doesn’t actually make sense, the situation is so different,” she said, adding that she was speaking on behalf of herself, not her brother. “They took a process that could have been simpler and made it more complicated.”

Expulsions at DPS have been declining for about a decade, and district officials say they are trying to reduce the rate of expulsions of children, especially students of color. DPS officials have previously said they have a “moral obligation” to provide an education to all students.

During the 2023–2024 academic year, DPS issued eight expulsions for firearms and another four expulsions for dangerous weapons. For the 2022-2023 academic year, that represents an increase from seven expulsions for firearms and zero expulsions for dangerous weapons, according to the district’s presentation.

Expulsions decreased while DPS suspensions increased by nearly 13% in the five years between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 academic years, according to the latest data available from the Colorado Department of Education.

According to state data, DPS suspended 3,429 people from out-of-school placements in the 2022-2023 academic year, up from 3,046 five years earlier.

The increase in out-of-school suspensions at DPS is part of a statewide trend, as total suspensions for the 2022-2023 academic year hit a 10-year high, according to state data.