California schools tried to cover up their expulsion rates. Now, a state hotline is trying to call them out.

For years, school districts in California have masked their official suspension and expulsion rates by quietly pushing so-called problem students from the classroom. Sometimes, it’s as simple as sending them home early. Other times, it’s as extreme as forcing kids to transfer to another school.

Now, state education officials have a new plan to expose a practice that they say disproportionately impacts marginalized students and allows districts to fly under the education codes meant to protect children from excessive discipline. It’s a new hotline that lets parents and students report over-the-top punishments in California schools.

“Taking students out of learning time through suspensions and expulsions is proven to push them toward the criminal justice system,” State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said in a news release. “School districts trying to hide actual discipline rates through practices such as masking expulsions as transfers will not be tolerated.”

In California and throughout the country, rates of both suspensions and expulsions measure highest for students of color, homeless students, and students living with disabilities. Throughout California, 8% of Black students were suspended last year, compared with 3.2% of students statewide. The rate for expulsions among Black students was double that of the average student.

Expulsions and suspensions in early grades often predict similar discipline as students get older, experts say. And that creates a domino effect that can lead to academic failure, dropping out of school, and incarceration later in life, particularly for Black boys. The stakes are just as high for homeless students and those with disabilities, said Daniel Losen, the director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA.

“A lot of kids with disabilities are dependent on the schools and the services provided for their mental health needs,” said Losen. “When they’re not allowed to come to school, you’re cutting them off from all sorts of supports and services. And that’s just the beginning of the problem, really.”

The hotline was established after the state received reports that families were being pushed to transfer their children from a district to avoid reporting an expulsion, a label that would have fed into the district’s records. That can also occur with suspensions, too, as a student might be made to sit in the principal’s office instead of engaging with their classes, or be sent home early instead of missing an entire day.

Last year, the National Disability Rights Network released a report that found “off the books” suspensions of students with special needs occur hundreds, if not thousands of times a year, though the true number is nearly impossible to track.

“These removals often go uncounted, are not reported as suspensions, and fly under-the-radar built to ensure that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA’s) discipline protections are exercised,” said Valerie Williams, the director of the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, in a recent blog post.

In the Bay Area, the story is similar: 9.2% of Black students at Oakland Unified were suspended last year, compared to just 1.3% of White students in the district and 6.4% of those with disabilities. Students experiencing homelessness or going through the foster care system were also disproportionately affected by suspensions. At West Contra Costa Unified, for example, nearly 12% of all homeless students in that district were suspended at least once during the 2021-22 school year, a number four times the rate of the average Californian student.

Such disparities are prevalent in the South Bay, too. Though only 3.7% of students in the San Jose Unified district were suspended last year, that number jumped to 9.5% among homeless students, 7% for students with disabilities, and 6.2% among Black students.

Desiree McSwain-Mims, 30, who grew up attending school in San Leandro, knows those statistics intimately. Her first formal suspension occurred when she was in fourth grade.

At first, McSwain-Mims, who is Black, was written up for talking in the classroom — a pattern that spiraled into office referrals, in-house suspensions, and an eventual expulsion once she got to high school. McSwain-Mims got back on her feet through independent studies, and eventually graduated from high school early. But she feels that her case is the exception, not the rule.

She is homeschooling her three children so they don’t experience anything similar.

“I feel like I barely made it out by fighting tooth and nail,” said McSwain-Mims, communications organizer at the Oakland-based nonprofit the Black Organizing Project. “I truly fear what my own children would experience at schools, given the data, the numbers and the disproportionality.”

Teachers need some form of discipline to run an effective classroom, but studies have shown increased parent engagement, peer mediation, mentorship programs, and other types of support can help students struggling with behavioral issues.

On Thursday, the California Department of Education will hold a webinar to help schools explore alternative modes of discipline. Since 2016, the state has moved $140.8 million from the criminal justice system to the classroom in an effort to reduce suspensions and chronic absenteeism. At the end of March, the CDE hopes to expand those programs with a new round of grant funding.

“At the end of the day,” Thurmond said, “this is because we don’t want kids being pushed out, losing the ability to learn and being pushed to the criminal justice system.”

To submit a report to the new hotline, call (916) 445 4624 or email schooldiscipline@cde.ca.gov.