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SALT LAKE CITY — Students evacuating with raised hands and schools in lockdown — these too-familiar scenes end with students arrested. And for good reason.
But in the era of zero-tolerance, the feds want to reign in school punishment.
"Even as we set high expectations for student behavior, we also must emphasize prevention and support that will keep students engaged in school and in learning," said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The U.S. Secretary of Education and U.S. Attorney General issued new guidelines this week urging Utah and other states to refrain from suspending students for non-violent infractions.
Each year, American secondary schools suspend 3 million students, and as many as 95-percent of those involve non-violent offenses, according to Duncan.
Last February, a middle school student in Hurricane was suspended for having "distracting" hair color, and in November, four Whittier elementary students were briefly suspended for playing with Pop-Its.
While not commenting on these cases specifically, Norma Villar, who oversees student intervention services for Jordan District, said except for extreme cases, students need to stay in school.
"It is the aim to keep them in school where they are supervised and where they are structured," she said.
It is the aim to keep them in school where they are supervised and where they are structured.
–Norma Villar, Jordan District
Villar works on a committee in the Jordan, Salt Lake and Granite Districts charged with carrying out the new federal guidelines. She believes the change in focus will help students and taxpayers by helping kids avoid what she calls a "pipeline to prison."
"What that is about is building the student," she added, "so that we don't have in the long run those students who are delinquents out in the community causing more problems."
Part of the impetus for the new guidelines also involves curbing discrimination. National Education statistics show that African American students are three times more likely than their white peers to be suspended.
Villar and her colleagues received a $100,000 federal grant to study best practices and begin training Utah educators on how to meet the new guidelines.
They'll also work with law enforcement. National studies have shown that with the growing number of officers in schools, infractions that used to get students sent to the principal's office now get them kicked out.
