Dan Ophardt: Keeping students in school is a community value

The Spokesman Review’s June 15 headline – “As Spokane school discipline rates drop, parents and teachers wonder at what cost?” – dangerously implies a zero-sum game in which educating children in our public schools requires the exclusion of other students. That notion is undemocratic and against the very foundation of Washington citizens’ constitutional right to an education.

I was at the school board meeting that story reported on, and, thankfully, a zero-sum game is not what I heard described by the students, parents, teachers, district leadership and other community members who spoke that night. The clear shared goal of every person who spoke, both from the community and from Spokane Public Schools, was to figure out how to keep students in school while keeping all students and staff safe.

I heard unanimous acknowledgment of a community challenge: We have children who have a vast variety of needs, but we operate a public school system originally designed to teach in narrow ways to a mostly homogeneous group of students. This outdated approach has resulted in our public schools in Spokane and throughout the country suspending and expelling students of color and students with disabilities at much higher rates than white students without disabilities. This can lead to involvement in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, which also disproportionately touch the lives of people of color and people with disabilities.

We know that missing school harms children. Federal ads on bus stops and billboards around Spokane remind us that even two days a month of missed school, as early as elementary school, decreases a student’s chances of graduating from high school. That’s why our state enforces truancy laws.

If I heard any “costs” spoken about at the June 14 board meeting, they were the costs to our system that has thrown away young members of our community for far too long. Both the social and economic costs of deciding that some children just can’t participate in school have proved to be enormous, much greater than the costs it will take to keep them there.

A Spokane Public Schools kindergarten teacher spoke at the meeting, saying that as a traumatized child in public school she herself demonstrated dangerous behavior and injured another student. She says she considers her teachers “heroes” who helped her get through childhood safely and to where she is today. In her work now, she sees children who need support and teachers who also need to be supported as they support those children. She stands as an example that students exhibiting misbehavior have worth and potential, and that public school is often the best place for that worth and potential to be cultivated and realized.

District board Vice President Sue Chapin was quoted during the meeting as saying: “This is a bigger problem than Spokane Public Schools or a single classroom problem. This is a community problem.” This is indeed a community problem. Our public schools are possibly our single most important community program. It will take this entire community to embrace all of its children and help them to learn both book knowledge and safe behavior.

To that end, Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Shelley Redinger will make a presentation on budget priorities at the next general school board meeting on Wednesday. The following night, the Every Student Counts Alliance will host a listening session for the school board at the Spokane Regional Health District, 1101 W. College Ave. All members of the community are encouraged to attend and to speak up for their priorities in the upcoming budget, including their ideas on how to most effectively spend their tax dollars to ensure that all students are educated and don’t enter even more expensive community systems.

Where a community spends its dollars reflects its values, and Spokane Public Schools needs to hear what Spokane values. My belief is that this community’s values are not as simple as that headline suggested.