'I'll give you 2 Crips for 1 MS 13!'

[Confederate Kahanist]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6934342.html



Principals in Houston ISD would be able to swap students with discipline problems — instead of sending them to special, tightly secured alternative schools — under a plan pitched by Superintendent Terry Grier.

The transfer program, meant to give students a second chance in a traditional school away from their friends, would not be open to violent offenders or to those who require suspension to a separate alternative program under state law. But Grier, who recently floated the idea with principals, said transfers might be granted for students who are frequently tardy or who get caught drinking beer at a football game, for example.

“What intrigued the principals about this is that many times they have seen that kids moving from one school to another school in a year — many times because parents just stayed ahead of the rent collector — do better in different environments because they're not around old friends,” Grier said.

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, opposes the transfer idea. Her union newsletter this month features a cartoon of two principals negotiating a trade of three gangster students. “I'LL GIVE YOU 2 CRIPS FOR 1 MS 13!!” one principal says to the other.

“Just make a teacher's day by sending her someone that's had five to seven (discipline) referrals at his other school,” Fallon said. “Rather than sending him somewhere where we can get him counseling, we're sending him to you.”

The Houston Independent School District still would have a separate alternative school for students with major discipline problems; state law requires it.

But Grier announced this month that he wants to sever ties with Community Education Partners, the private Nashville, Tenn.-based company that has operated the district's program for more than a decade for about $20 million a year.

According to HISD data, only a quarter of the 2,441 referrals to CEP last school year were for mandatory reasons.

Fallon, whose union has exclusive bargaining rights on behalf of employees at the two CEP schools in Houston, is a strong supporter of the program.
Success, failure elsewhere

Grier has not formalized his proposal for a discipline transfer program but said he's intrigued by the idea, which he learned about from Paul Vallas, who is experimenting with it as superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans.

“The feeling is, rather than expel them from the system, we will counsel them and place them in another school with an opportunity to start over,” Vallas said.

The transfer students and their families must agree to a contract with the new school, and each child is put on a behavior-intervention plan, which could require meetings with a social worker or an outside social services agency, said Michael Haggen, deputy superintendent of the Recovery School District. A school psychologist also checks in with the students.

If the students misbehave, they can be kicked to an alternative school. Otherwise, the change of setting is permanent, Haggen said. The students do not get to return to their home schools.

Last year, 82 New Orleans students were given discipline transfers while 442 were expelled to special alternative schools, according to Haggen. That's out of 35,725 students.

Vallas said the Philadelphia school district, which he used to run, had a discipline transfer system, but he acknowledged it didn't work. Gwen Morris, who worked as Vallas' chief of alternative schools in Philadelphia and now consults in New Orleans, agreed. She said the old Philadelphia system did not offer students any supports or help them change their behavior.

Grier, in his preliminary presentation on the transfer idea, said each student would enter into a contract and get a mentor. Schools would receive $10,000 for mentors.

“To try to oversimplify it and say each school is going to have a mentor, that's not going to work,” Morris said. “Don't send that kid down that abyss without some goals that are set, something that is unique to that particular student.”
‘Right direction'

Some veteran HISD employees said they recall an informal swapping system among principals years ago.

“It obviously was not that successful, or we would have been continuing it,” said Furr High School Principal Bertie Simmons, who began working for HISD in 1956.

Simmons said she prefers to try to reform students at her own school, rather than sending them to CEP or to another traditional campus.

Russ Skiba, the director of the Equity Project at Indiana University who has studied school discipline, called the transfer system “an interesting idea. … It is certainly a step in the right direction to think about separating out more serious and less serious cases,” he said. But Skiba questioned why schools would need to transfer out students if they had resources in-house.

“What we've been finding is what works best is for schools to improve their own resources,” he said.