HARTFORD – Senate President Martin Looney, Majority Leader Bob Duff and Senator Doug McCrory condemned Thursday a new executive order from President Donald Trump, which reverses policies designed to address long-standing racial disparities in school disciplinary actions.
These policies have sought to keep more students in classrooms across the country. However the order, one of several signed by Trump on Wednesday, rolls back federal guidance, which had previously advised schools to adjust their disciplinary policies if students of color were found to be suspended or expelled from school at a disproportionate rate.
“This executive order from the Trump administration is troubling, given that large disparities already exist in how discipline is applied in classrooms across the country,” Senators Looney and Duff said. “Policies that endeavor to address those inequities are not ‘ideological,’ they are grounded in statistics that demonstrate that the American education system has disproportionately penalized Black and Brown students. Reversing those policies doesn’t make anyone safer; it simply reinforces the injustices we should be working to end. It’s yet another cruel and regressive directive from an administration intent on undermining the futures of those who aren’t wealthy and white. Our kids deserve better.”
“One look at the data should be enough to clear up any misconceptions about the ‘fairness’ of school disciplinary policies,” said Senator McCrory, Senate Chair of the legislature’s Education Committee. “Here’s the headline: Black and Brown kids are being kicked out of schools far more often and far longer than their white counterparts who engage in the same behavior. That was before this destructive new executive order. We must do better than this for the sake of an entire generation of young people, who are entitled to an education system that prepares them for success instead of putting a target on their backs.”
Disparities in the application of school discipline are longstanding and exist in states across the country, including Connecticut. In 2015, the General Assembly took action to address the issue in an effort to ensure more students stay in school. Connecticut law, with certain exceptions, prohibits local school boards from imposing out-of-school suspension on students in grades pre-K through two.
Share this page: