CHARLESTON, W.Va.——- State lawmakers will be reintroducing Senate Bill 614 into their regular session next year, that will allow elementary school educators to remove especially disruptive students from their classrooms.
The bill was originally introduced last year in the regular session but didn’t get through the House before they ran out of time to review the changes the Senate had made.
Sen. Amy Grady (R-Mason)
Senator, Chair of the Education Committee and teacher, Amy Grady says that the bill that will be discussed in next year’s session, will compel educators to use the alternative learning centers that they have available to them.
“The bill compels the county to use those programs if they have one and if they don’t it also mentions sharing services with neighboring counties, because we have that opportunity to do that, so if you have a county that’s beside you that has those services that you don’t have you can utilize those shared services,” Grady said on ‘Talkline’ Tuesday morning.
Right now, only 13 of the 55 counties have access to an alternative learning program. Grady said that if counties don’t have any access to those programs or any neighboring counties that do, then they can make virtual learning, for students who are disruptive and violent, available immediately.
Lawmakers Monday afternoon in their interim committee meeting, heard from educators, two principals and two teachers, saying that they didn’t have any possible way to discipline these students. Grady said that they also received feedback from the educators on what they want to see changed in the bill, in order to get more help.
She said that the feedback will be helpful when discussing the bill next session.
“We had a really great discussion, and I told them to talk to some other colleagues and see if we can come up with a plan that would actually work,” Grady said.
Grady said that they have been evaluating the school aid formula for about four or five months in order to make it more student focused and to accommodate more funding for those counties that don’t have access to those alternative learning centers.
She said that this would be the first time in over 30 years the formula was evaluated.
“The last time the school aid formula was reevaluated was in the 90’s, a complete evaluation, and the schools are so much different now than they were in the 90’s, and the needs are so much different and the student needs, and the schools’ needs and the teacher needs are so much different,” Grady said. “So, we need to have to take that into account when we’re changing it. It’s a long process, but I’m hopeful that we’ll get something that will work a little better than what we’ve seen.”
Grady was asked if she would support bringing back paddling in schools after Delegate Dave Foggin made the statement to bring it back in Monday’s interim committee meeting.
She said that they need to start looking at changing these students’ behavior instead of the punishments.
“We have to think about where these behaviors are coming from and how we can help change the behaviors more instead of punishments and I don’t think paddling is for every child,” Grady said.