Tensions over school safety and discipline dominated Thursday night’s Durham school board meeting. Even as board members voted to rehire School Resource Officers for the upcoming year, they also debated how to handle physical restraint and isolation and how to roll out restorative justice techniques across the district.
Rebecca Ferguson, the mother of a first grader with disabilities, appealed for greater transparency around the use of seclusion and isolation in schools.
“Under the current policy my son, who’s nonverbal and has communication difficulties, could be isolated for an entire day without it even being required to be reported to me,” she said. “I think that’s probably got to be scary for any parent in the room. It’s especially problematic and scary for me when my child can’t communicate it on his own behalf.”
Ferguson also urged the district to prohibit any use of prone restraint or chokeholds. But administrators pushed back, citing safety concerns.
The district “strongly discourages” temporary prone (facedown) restraint, but does not forbid it.
“Given the choice between a child having access to a weapon, and a child being placed in a prone restraint for two minutes in order to restore the safety of the school, I think we would choose that prone restraint for two minutes, right?” said Deputy Superintendent Nicholas King.
The exchange underscored the high stakes looming over the use of seclusion and restraint in Durham Public Schools. The board proposed tighter restrictions on physical force and expanded reporting covering all instances of seclusion. Members also called for regular district reports on restraint and seclusion, including demographic data to help identify disparities.
The revisions, intended to bring clarity, instead sparked new questions regarding privacy and feasibility. The district’s attorney, Rod Malone, said the requested reports could violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ information.
King also cautioned against restricting safety practices beyond state standards. “Board members, you’re going to have to ask yourselves and grapple with whether or not you want to put your staff members in a place where you require them to go beyond what the law requires,” he said.
After the back-and-forth, the board referred the issue to its policy committee for further review.
Officers to remain in schools
Earlier in the meeting, the board also voted to retain School Resource Officer positions across the district.
Currently, the program is active in 16 DPS schools. Last year Student Resource Officers responded to three acts of arson, 29 threats of mass destruction, two sexual assaults, and 22 knives and eight guns on school campuses, according to a presentation by Sheriff Clarence Birkhead and five officers from the program.
Birkhead noted that officers made 663 referrals to community resources over the past year.
“We’re not there to criminalize behavior…we don’t do school discipline, that’s not our role,” he said. “But we support our teachers and administrators in their efforts to keep our schools as safe as possible.”
The officers’ intended role includes promoting campus safety and providing early intervention in juvenile delinquency, he said.
Some board members, however, expressed concern that officers’ presence could create a climate of fear.
“Y’all’s uniforms are intimidating. Your belts are intimidating. All the stuff on there that I hope you never have to use in the community or in a school is intimidating. And I’m speaking from a place of enormous privilege,” said Natalie Beyer.
Birkhead said officers need to carry “tools” required for law enforcement. He emphasized their efforts to engage with the school community such as attending sports games and giving bi-monthly demonstrations in classrooms.
“I’m no longer looked at as an officer with a gun on his waist,” said Deputy Derek Moore, an SRO at Shepard Middle School. “I’m no longer Deputy Moore, I’m D-mo. [Students] come to me almost every day during school with their own complaints because they trust me….We’re there to teach them, we’re there to be their mentors.”
When asked about how officers would handle potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity on campus, Birkhead attempted reassurance but withheld detailed plans.
“There are protocols, and I won’t go into those tonight, but just rest assured that if that call comes, we all know how to respond to protect our schools and our students first and foremost,” he said.
Slow rollout for district-wide ‘restorative justice’
The board also learned that the district-wide rollout of restorative justice practices will take longer than expected. Some schools have already adopted a restorative approach to discipline, but the board seeks to make these changes universal.
Director of Student Alternatives and Supports Melissa Watson and Senior Executive Director of Student Support Services Leverne Mattocks-Perry presented plans to incorporate restorative justice values into the student code of conduct. The goal is to reduce suspensions and other reactive responses while increasing mental health support, peer mediation and other proactive measures.
Watson and Mattocks-Perry said revised policies likely won’t be ready for review until the fall and requested a “long runway” to enact changes in schools. Board members expressed frustration with the extension of an already drawn-out timeline.
“As a board we thought we did this in 2016…We invested in restorative practice centers. We invested in training and in people and it feels like we worked on the student code of conduct,” said Beyer. “We brought what was over 18 months worth of work. We thought we’d done the work, and so it’s frustrating to hear that you need a runway that is this long.”
King defended the timeline.
“We do have to create a scenario where we give those schools that did not volunteer the time to catch up with those schools that did, right,” he said. “I think when we talk about a long runway, that’s what we’re talking about— is making sure that we provide those schools with the time that they need to get up to par in a way that is fair and equitable for them.”
Board member Emily Chávez worried that vague definitions of certain infractions could lead to students of color being unfairly disciplined.
“They can be sources of racial disparities because they are more subjective and so bias can, you know, play into how staff, you know, read those or kind of code… disrespect,” she said.
Work on a draft of a new student code of conduct will continue through July and August.
