Texas Senate Passes Bill to Revise School Discipline Code
Flexibility in Punishing Students for E-Cigarette Offenses
Texas educators would regain flexibility over how they punish students who bring e-cigarettes onto campus under a bill that passed the Senate Thursday night. That change — along with giving administrators more leeway to suspend young kids — is part of a broader rewrite of Texas’ school discipline code that lawmakers are finalizing. Many North Texas superintendents lobbied lawmakers for months on the issue, saying teachers must have better tools to maintain order in the classroom.
The legislation senators passed waters down a 2023 law that required students caught with vapes be sent to off-campus disciplinary alternative schools. Since then, e-cigarette offenses became one of the most common reasons that students were disciplined, with more than 32,000 violations last year.
Background and History
School leaders asked lawmakers to give them back discretion over how students are punished. The strict mandate led to over-crowded disciplinary campuses and a uniformly harsh approach to children who may need help with nicotine addiction. The Education Lab has been following this issue closely, providing in-depth coverage of education issues and stories that affect North Texans.
Senators appeared moved by examples of young children who got in serious trouble after they accidentally brought an older sibling’s vape onto campus. “We want to provide flexibility at the community level to make sure that we respond effectively to students’ behavior,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio. House Bill 6 now allows that on a student’s first e-cigarette offense, he said.
Changes to School Discipline Code
Richardson schools superintendent Tabitha Branum said she expects RISD to send students to in-school suspension for an initial e-cigarette offense, where both the child and the parent would be given educational resources related to the harms of vaping. “It just allows us, with the first infraction, to provide that remediation effort before we are sending them to [a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program],” she said.
Some educators have long urged lawmakers to revamp school discipline laws, detailing horror stories about teachers suffering injuries on the job because of violent students. In a poll cited by the state’s 2023 Teacher Vacancy Task Force report, nearly half of educators listed discipline and safe working conditions as a top concern.
Concerns and Controversies
But education justice advocates cautioned legislators against returning Texas to an age of zero-tolerance discipline that led to huge numbers of students — disproportionately Black children and those with disabilities — being punished. “Decades of research have shown that exclusionary discipline not only hurts the excluded child’s academic and emotional development — it also negatively impacts school climate,” said Paige Duggins-Clay, the chief legal analyst for Intercultural Development Research Association.
Senators ultimately watered down or eliminated some of the most stringent proposals on the table, including a provision that would have involved civil courts in serious disciplinary cases. House members must agree with the changes before the bill goes to the governor.
Suspension of Young Children
Among the most controversial elements of HB 6 is a plan to make it easier to kick young children out of Texas classrooms. Students below third grade could be removed for “conduct that results in repeated or significant disruption to the classroom.” This comes nearly a decade after lawmakers banned out-of-school suspensions for these littlest learners, except for serious offenses such as bringing a gun or marijuana to class.
Opponents worried HB 6 would essentially gut the ban because little kids are frequently disruptive and the original bill language was vague as to what constitutes “significant disruption.” So senators added a provision Thursday requiring school officials to document the behavior that results in out-of-school suspensions for young students.
Conclusion
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the main goal of the bill passed by the Texas Senate? A: The main goal of the bill is to revise the school discipline code to give educators more flexibility in punishing students for e-cigarette offenses and to address the issue of disruptive behavior in classrooms.
Q: What are the concerns about the bill? A: Some educators and advocates are concerned that the bill could lead to a return to zero-tolerance discipline, which disproportionately affects Black children and those with disabilities. Others worry that the bill does not provide enough support for students who need help with nicotine addiction.
Q: What is the current status of the bill? A: The bill has passed the Senate and now needs to be approved by the House of Representatives before it can be sent to the governor for signature.
Q: How will the bill affect young children who are suspended from school? A: The bill allows for the suspension of young children, but only after a thorough documentation of their behavior and after other strategies have been tried. The goal is to provide a last resort for schools to address disruptive behavior while also ensuring that young children are not unfairly punished.
