Questions and Answers: Windham Central Office on Child Suspensions

Why are Windham 6 year olds suspended?

windhamweek interview with Windham's BOE central officeb

windhamweek: Could you tell me the steps taken before the child is suspended?

A child is suspended out of school when they are a safety threat. In school suspensions are reserved for behavior related issues that are disruptive to the learning environment.

windhamweek: Reasons for the suspensions?

The majority of suspensions in K and 1^st graders are fights, physical altercations, battery, throwing objects, disorderly conduct, safety code (bus suspensions).

windhamweek: Why Windham uses out of school suspensions the majority of the time opposed to in school suspensions?

Out of school suspensions are used for safety, not punishment. As you can see from the suspension reasons listed above, many students are a safety concern and to protect them and other students they must be removed from the school building. Windhams objective is to keep all of our kids in school. Out of school suspensions give us the time needed to develop a safety plan with teachers and parents of students who pose and threat and then return them to their school building as soon as possible. Our in school suspensions at the K and 1^st grade level are not suited for kids that are unsafe so we must use out of school suspension in these cases.

windhamweek: Do the police get involved?

No. The schools do not contact the police.

windhamweek: Average number of suspensions over the last 5-6 yrs.

The number of suspensions of age 6 and under (K and 1^st) over the past several years ranges from 15 to 23. These are not the total number of students suspended. The total suspensions have come from 6 to 8 of the same students. These numbers are inclusive of in school, out of school and bus suspensions.

windhamweek: In fact was there 29 suspensions in 2011-12?

No. There were not 29 suspensions. There were 17 and these were from 8 students. It should also be noted that these are not just Kindergarteners but 1^st graders as well. The articles data was for age 6 and under which is K and 1^st.

Read Main Story: Shocking: Ct  Kindergarten, First Grade Suspensions including Windham

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Sewall: Cuts to school funds contradict state intervention

Sewall: Cuts to school funds contradict state intervention

By LOUISA OWEN SONSTROEM

Chronicle Staff Writer
thechronicle.com
WILLIMANTIC — By mandating Windham school district improvements and then cutting funding to that same district it purportedly wants to help, the state may be doing about as much harm as good.

At least that’s the fear school officials have regarding the district’s share of state dollars.

Concerned about a net reduction in proposed state funding to Windham public schools, Windham Board of Education Chairman Murphy Sewall has submitted a letter requesting reconsideration.

“The net effect of your proposed education budget will decrease state funding for the already substantially underfunded Windham School District,” Sewall wrote in a letter mailed Friday to the state legislature’s appropriations committee.

This 56-member committee is responsible for all state appropriations and agency budgets.

As the state deliberates over budget appropriations for municipalities, state agencies and more, towns and districts such as Windham must form and attempt to pass budgets without knowing what to expect from Hartford, whose proposals are still shifting and may do so until June.

Currently, Sewall explained, the state’s proposal would be to leave Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funds for Windham at the same level they have been since 2007-08, meanwhile cutting out school transportation subsidy funds for a loss to Windham of about $311,000.

Funding to Windham would be raised by $200,000 through the Alliance District grant allotment, but Sewall explained the overall effect on Windham would be to cut funds by more than $100,000.

Windham Middle School may well receive an undisclosed amount of additional financial assistance if accepted into the Commissioner’s Network later this year, but that assistance would be used exclusively for the middle school and would not benefit the rest of Windham’s children.

“Hence,” Sewall explained in an e-mail to the Chronicle, “the net effect of the appropriations committee’s proposal is in the opposite direction of the state intervention in Windham that is being directed by Special Master (Steven) Adamowski.”

Writing on behalf of the local board of education, Sewall cau­tioned the appropriations commit­tee against cutting much-needed funding for a district struggling as much as ever and for a district partway through a state interven­tion.

“The Alliance Network funding and other grants have helped,” he wrote, “and the efforts of Special Master Steven Adamowski have been extremely useful in improv­ing student performance a lit­tle in the face of declining real resources, but the district is far short of what is actually required to achieve the level of improve­ment required by the Department of Education and desired by Windham’s board of education.”

As Sewall explained in his let­ter, Windham has the lowest per­capita grand list in Connecticut and is among the state’s poorest municipalities.

The school district has one of the largest achievement gaps in the state and Adamowski’s arrival in Windham in 2011 was intended to help improve student perfor­mance.

By mandating improvement through a state intervention on one hand and then decreasing resources with the other, Sewall said, the state is undermining its own efforts to assist Windham.

“ Solving this problem is not rocket science. We know what to do,” Sewall wrote. “The issue is that what needs to be done requires resources that are not being provided.”

Despite the district’s need for funding, he said, local taxpayers are reluctant to pay more each year while the state pays less.

Sewall requested more state funding in the short term.

In the long term, he said, the state should look into combin­ing some of the state’s school districts.

“No doubt the legislature re­ceives numerous requests for jus­tified appropriations, but resourc­es are limited,” he wrote. “Why then does Connecticut continue to waste large amounts of resources on widely acknowledged ineffi­cient school districts?

“The number of districts in the state far exceeds an economically rational number. Waste exists not only in redundant administrative costs but also in too many school buildings with excess capacity,” he wrote.

“A long-term solution will in­clude overcoming the inertia that supports five to 10 times as many school districts as Connecticut should have,” Sewall stated.