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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | October 18, 2023 10:21 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Joe Webster |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Keeping Our Youngest Students In School |
| Students belong in school, and this is all the more true of our youngest students. I am proposing legislation that will ban the suspension or expulsion of any child eight years of age or younger unless the child poses an imminent threat of harm or danger to others. Additionally, my legislation would specify that no student, regardless of age, shall be excluded from in-person classroom instruction for more than 10 school days without a proper disciplinary hearing. Numerous studies have shown that suspending or expelling a child from the classroom results in further behavioral issues and dramatically increases the likelihood that the child drops out of high school, experiences academic failure, or is incarcerated. Worse still, additional studies have found that such disciplinary actions carry both a heavy racial bias and are disproportionately utilized at the preschool level. Among all students, preschoolers are three times as likely as their K-12 counterparts to be expelled from school. In response to this data, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued revised guidance to states that strongly urged action towards either eliminating or severely limiting the use of suspension and expulsion of children in a preschool setting. In response to the federal directive, Pennsylvania’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning updated its guidance to preschools and childcare programs, noting that the use of suspension and expulsion should be reduced and ultimately phased out. Despite these shifts in policy, the use of these disciplinary measures on our youngest students continues to be legal in Pennsylvania. Please join me in co-sponsoring this important legislation to ensure we are supporting our students and moving towards closing the school to prison pipeline. |
Introduced as HB1870