‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy Spells Out Disciplinary Rules Central Valley Document Specifies Punishment For Infractions

When Sharon Jayne years ago suspended her own daughter from junior high school, the then-assistant principal had only her own judgment to go by.

This fall, Greenacres Junior High principal Jayne and other administrators in Central Valley schools have “Zero Tolerance,” a written policy for student discipline.

The document spells out when a student will receive in-school punishment, mostly detention; which wrongs will receive a short-term or long-term suspension; and what behavior will meet with expulsion.

The desire to send a strong, consistent message about student behavior started with the district’s safety committee, said Mike Pearson, school district secondary education director. District officials sought comment last year from parents, law enforcement, teachers and other school districts to help creat the policy.

“In years past as an assistant principal, I had all this in my head,” said Jayne, her hand on a copy of the document.

“Now it’s all laid out in black and white. This is a teaching tool to use with the kids.”

Jayne intends to do just that. During school on Sept. 17, which happens to be Central Valley’s back to school night for parents of junior high students, she and assistant principal Vern Digiovanni will meet with classes, explaining and discussing the document.

Other Central Valley schools will discuss the policy with students, too.

Seventh graders, new to Greenacres, will spend up to two hours or more learning about the consequences to poor behavior.

Possess alcohol? Start with a one- to 10-day suspension.

Fireworks? Ditto.

Forgery? Start with discipline at school, likely either detention or Saturday school.

After 28 years educating junior high school students, Jayne knows how to put adult concepts into adolescents’ terms.

Extortion? “What does that mean, folks?” Jayne will ask.

“Say you’re a ninth-grader in math and there’s an eighth-grader in your class and you want to copy his homework. Extortion can be something as subtle as you standing over him in a menacing way and taking that homework.”

“Then, that evening (Sept. 17) I will tell parents, ‘Today, we went over this. Please go over it with your child and come to us if you have any questions.”’ Jayne admits that some of the language in an accompanying document, Student Responsibilities and Rights, is complicated.

“That’s because some of it is taken straight out of … Washington Administrative Code,” she said.

Principals and, more often, assistant principals still have to decide how to deal with lesser discipline problems. They try to do that by talking with parents, Jayne said.

Today, with two working parents in many families, Jayne said she would sometimes advise that a shorter suspension be served in school.

“If the parents can come up with enough extra chores that the student will feel the pinch, that’s what we want.”

Or, as an assistant principal, Jayne sometimes used to suggest that parents faced with a child’s suspension from school turn to a non-profit agency.

“That’s what I did with my daughter (now 20),” Jayne said. “I got her up good and early, and took her down to Ogden Hall and let her work there until five in the afternoon.”

Three days of work at Ogden Hall resulted in a positive attitude adjustment.

“It was her first, and only, suspension,” Jayne said with a smile. “She’d kill me for telling you this.”

, DataTimes