Expulsion epidemic draws national attention
The national issue of high rates of expulsion and suspension that disproportionately affect students of color,highlighted locally by a study earlier this year, is the subject of this investigative report just published by theCenter for Public Integrity. The Center is a Notebook partner through the Investigative News Network.
by Susan Ferriss
for the Center for Public Integrity
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — As he waited for his first disciplinary appeal hearing to begin this fall, the sixth-grade student began sobbing.
He was barely 11 years old. He had been expelled again — for the rest of the school year — from his Bakersfield elementary school district, this time for alleged sexual battery and obscenity.
The offense: “Slapping a girl on the buttock and running away laughing,
