"Zero-tolerance policies came out of a time when the function of schools was really just to sort kids."
Garth Harries
New Haven schools have partnered with various organizations to help discipline students more effectively. The city's efforts are part of a broader statewide push to examine behavior problems through a new lens.
Local officials partnered last year to create Youth Stat, a program that mobilizes community resources to help the students who are the most disengaged from the classroom or are prone to violence.
Speaking on WNPR’s Where We Live, New Haven Superintendent Garth Harries described Youth Stat, which is modeled on a similar program developed by New Haven police.
“Essentially what we do," Harries explained, "is we put an individual kid’s name on the wall, with their statistics about what’s going on in school, and what’s going on in their lives, and with a set of partners who sign privacy agreements so that the parents know this is all happening -- so we’ve dealt with those issues. And we just collectively problem solve around the needs of that kid.”
Harries said that these partners include employees from the Department of Children and Families, social workers, and police and probation officers. There are roughly 300 students in the program, Harries said, out of a total of about 21,000.
"The zero-tolerance policies came out of a time when the function of schools was really just to sort kids," he said. "Some were gonna go to college, some were not, the ones that weren't could go work in factory jobs -- that's not what we have any more. So we need to make sure that we're moving all kids through and engaging them all throughout."
Metropolitan Business Academy's Judith Puglisi told Where We Live that school success is being increasingly defined by factors other than academics, such as impulse control, problem solving, and anger management.
Other districts have implemented an alternative approach to student discipline called SBDI, or "school-based diversion initiative."
It’s meant to keep minor incidents from spiraling into serious discipline problems that involve police. The initiative has helped some Connecticut districts decrease their juvenile referrals to police by 45 percent, with other districts reporting an even higher success rate.
