Public to Brevard school board: Find and address root causes of increased discipline rates

With an updated code of conduct set to be approved on the agenda, and on the heels of the previous week's discussion of discipline rates at Brevard Public Schools, community members turned out Tuesday to discuss recent statistics.

It's been a heated topic for many months, with some calling for stricter punishment against unruly students. In late 2022, board member Matt Susin promised harsher discipline practices to address what he has since called "the most massive train wreck you guys have ever seen in your entire life."

For others, the issue is more nuanced. They've focused less on stricter rules and harsher punishments, instead encouraging the district to work with parents and teach children how to cope with their emotions in healthy ways.

Since the debate began, an audit was completed in early 2023 that suggested the district form a centralized discipline office and a cabinet position to oversee discipline. No such position has been created, with the district's organizational structure being changed instead. Chief of Schools James Rehmer and the office of Student Services oversee discipline together, and teachers have undergone updated training that requires they submit discipline referrals more quickly than in the past.

While the district uses Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support System, a framework whose goal is to reduce undesirable behaviors and acknowledge appropriate behaviors, the board discontinued the use of conscious discipline — which provided coping strategies and conflict resolution skills for students — in the summer of 2023.

During a work session last week, data presented to the board by Student Services showed that discipline rates had gone up since last year. Black students and students on free or reduced lunches had the highest risk ratios — a number used by the state to determine if a district is "at risk" based on the number of suspensions within certain demographics — at 2.5286 and 2.6855. White and Asian students had the lowest risk ratios at 0.5504 and 0.3604.

A risk ratio of 2.5 is an "alert status," and a ratio of 3.0 is when action must take place. The goal is to get every population to 1.0.

Community: root causes need to be addressed

At the poorly attended 9:30 a.m. meeting, discipline was the main topic of discussion during public comment. Bernard Bryan, education chair of South Brevard NAACP, has been analyzing Brevard Public Schools' discipline data for more than five years. His goal: to track trends in discipline rates and encourage the district to find solutions for problem areas.

He gave board members a printout of an analysis he performed with the most recent data.

"In my brain, at five o'clock in the morning on Sunday, this is what I came up with," he said. "What I'm asking the board to do is to really consider those opportunities, what is causing the risk ratios to be (above 2.5), and what can we do to implement corrective action as a plan to minimize that?"

Bryan has advocated numerous times for searching for a root cause for the discipline rates, asking board members to not act on their own personal feelings, but to find objective facts they can base their actions on.

But Kevin Jeffrey, president of Brevard County Republican Assembly, felt he already knew the reason for the discrepancy in the data, saying it could be blamed on parenting issues and that there was far too much focus on race.

Federal law requires Florida districts to collect data on the demographics of students being disciplined to determine if any demographic is being disproportionately disciplined.

"When we raised our kids, we raised them with that same standard -- you will not make race an excuse, ever," Jeffrey said of him and his siblings, adding that he was raised in a family with 13 brothers and two sisters.

He went on to bring up the rates of Black children born to single mothers, saying it is "unsustainable."

"You can't do everything," he said to the board. "The parents have to do it, and the disintegration of parenthood in our society is contributing to a lot of problems."

Mom Kelly Kervin chastised board members, specifically Susin, for viewing the increased rates of discipline as improvements over last year.

"This issue isn't new," she said.

She brought up Bill Gary, president of North Brevard NAACP, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education about Brevard Public Schools and their handling of multiple issues related to Black students and teachers.

"We have had a community member who entered this arena for Black and brown students 13 years ago, and yet the data continues to stay the same. Do better for that community member so that when he passes on, as he's getting to an older age, he realizes that his work was not in vain," she said.

While the board didn't directly discuss discipline data, Susin attempted to clarify that a correction he had made to the data regarding referrals to the alternative learning center during last week's work session was accurate.

When FLORIDA TODAY asked for clarification regarding this correction, Brevard Public Schools provided the following statement:

"There are three sets of numbers, 733. 692, and 684 for 2022-2023 involving students and the ALC. The 733 number was derived from a spreadsheet that was used by a division that no longer exists. After careful analysis, that spreadsheet included students that committed an expellable offense but were not sent to the ALC. The 692 number designates the number of secondary students sent to the ALC. The 684 number designates the number of students by discipline code who attended the ALC. Eight discipline codes were not reported on the slide."

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Community asks Brevard Schools to find, fix root of discipline increase