Urbana School Roundup

The News-Gazette had a recent follow up to the restorative disciplinary practice changes that removed Deans from the High School and caused a great deal of concern about effectiveness versus equity. The impetus for the change stems from the disparity in disciplinary outcomes that have long plagued the district. Recently there has been data on racial disparity in punishment in our local schools that has backed up other studies and data showing that even for the same offenses, some minority students are punished more often and more harshly. More at the recent Cheat Sheet post: Education Racial Disparity Data. This years changes without deans is a big and controversial step towards addressing that. From Sunday's paper:

New discipline policy in at Urbana, while deans, suspensions are out
...
What might in March have seemed like a sudden change was actually the result of a gradual, three-year shift away from traditional public school discipline, Owen says.

A memorandum of agreement indicates the district began working with restorative practice specialists Elaine Shpungin and her husband, Mikhail Lyubansky, in August 2015.

"When we first got in touch with them, they were at the U of I in the psych department," Owen said. "They were known in the region as some of the experts on restorative practices in the area."

Now the director and founder of the consulting service Conflict 180, Shpungin has been training Urbana staffers and students on the ins-and-outs of restorative practices for nearly three years, serving as the district's primary point person and coordinator on the subject...

One of the keys to successfully executing a restorative practice-based system is communication, Shpungin said, be it informal (such as a lunch shared between a teacher and student to repair a relationship) or formal (such as the "circles" students can request, where an adult facilitates a discussion between two feuding students).

"One of the mind shifts we encourage in a traditional justice project is we ask: Who broke what rule and how do we punish them?" she said. "In a restorative process, we ask who was harmed, what kind of harm, how do we repair that harm and make it right? Those are really different..."

Although the overall number of suspensions and expulsions has trended downward as Urbana's restorative practice efforts moved forward, the disparity ratio between students of color and whites increased, which Owen said prompted bigger changes to the district's discipline policy...

Critics of the decision to remove deans pointed to an uptick in physical violence at the middle school as one possible indicator of the failures of restorative practices to effectively manage student behavior.

A lot more at the full article, including criticisms, anecdotes, and details. There was also news about the pay raise cap for employees of the district nearing retirement age and whether that could be construed as age discrimination. A common issue with retirement costs include pay spiking towards the end of a career where the person's retirement pay is based on their ending compensation. Many systems have had very large raises right before retirement which then results in years of inflated retirement pay. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is looking narrowly at the age restriction of 10 years before retirement. From today's News-Gazette:

Federal agency sues Urbana school district over caps on teacher raises
A federal agency has filed a lawsuit against Urbana schools, alleging the district violated age-discrimination laws by limiting salary increases for teachers over age 45.

Lawyers for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the district's practice of limiting salary increases for those teachers was a result of an "unlawful" provision in a collective-bargaining agreement between the district and the Urbana Education Association.

That provision stipulates that raises for teachers who are within 10 years of retirement eligibility are capped at 6 percent of their salary from the previous year. The EEOC argues that constitutes age discrimination.

Urbana Superintendent Don Owen said the filing wasn't a surprise.

"We've been communicating with the EEOC about this matter for more than a year," he told News-Gazette Media on Monday. "Basically, there was an EEOC investigation and we shared with them everything that we had — notes from when this was negotiated; everything we had about this, we shared."

The suit dates back to an Aug. 9, 2016, grievance filed by Urbana Middle School teacher Chuck Koplinski against the district. In it, Koplinski alleged that he had been denied raises commensurate with experience and professional development on the basis of age.

At the time of filing, Koplinski was 52 and within 10 years of retirement eligibility. It was because of his age, the EEOC argues, that he was denied $4,994 in earnings from the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years despite meeting various criteria for raises.

More details and expanded explanation of both sides of the case at the full article here.