School discipline code rewrite to take immediate effect

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports public school educators in Texas are set to reclaim flexibility over how they punish students who bring e-cigarettes onto campus under legislation sent to the governor this week. That change — along with giving administrators more leeway to suspend young kids — is part of a broader rewrite of Texas’ school discipline code that won final passage on Wednesday. The legislation received more than two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate and will take effect in time for students attending summer school. Several North Texas superintendents have pressed for the legislation for months, saying teachers need better tools to maintain order in their classrooms and more leeway over how to address vapes, one of the most common reasons students are disciplined.

House Bill 6, by state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, waters down a 2023 law that required students caught with vapes to be sent to off-campus disciplinary alternative schools. There were more than 32,000 violations last year. The mandate led to over-crowded disciplinary campuses and a uniformly harsh approach to children who may need help with nicotine addiction. Committee testimony included the stories of young children who got in serious trouble after they accidentally brought an older sibling’s vape onto campus. Educators have long urged lawmakers to revamp school discipline laws, detailing horror stories about suffering injuries on the job from violent students. In a poll cited by the state’s 2023 Teacher Vacancy Task Force report, nearly half of educators listed discipline and safe working conditions as a top concern. Education justice advocates cautioned against a return to zero-tolerance discipline that led to disproportionately high numbers of Black children and those with disabilities being punished – saying that exclusionary discipline is detrimental to a child’s development as well as the school climate. Lawmakers watered down or eliminated some of the most stringent proposals under consideration, including a provision that would have involved civil courts in serious disciplinary cases.