Malcolm Calvert was in 7th grade when he got into an argument with his 6th grade friend on a school bus and hit him with a Tootsie Pop.
“I hit him with it on his head,” recalls Malcolm, who was a student at Lanier James Alternative School in Hallandale Beach, Fla., when the Tootsie Pop incident happened in 2011. “They handcuffed me and took me off the school bus.”
Leon County schools led the state in the number of students put into seclusion for behavior or safety reason in 2012, according to Florida Department of Education data. Leon County schools used seclusion almost twice as often as the next district on the list, Pinellas County schools. Orange and Hillsborough county schools were most likely [...]
Editor’s note: We’ve followed up this post answering some questions about the data raised by readers. Florida keeps two sets of seclusion data. State officials say school districts should record incidents of seclusion in both sets of data, but admit that it does not happen. As a result, Florida Department of Education spokeswoman Cheryl Etters [...]
For today’s installment in our series, The Secret Lives of Students, students write a letter to their future teachers.
Editor’s note: This post was written by rising middle school students Teley Laporte and Joshua Partridge.
For today’s installment in our series, The Secret Lives of Students, students wrote and reported on class punishment.
Editor’s note: This post was written by elementary school students Joshua Johnson, 11, and Joshua Partridge, 10.
Editor’s note: We’re launching a new series for the next month, asking students to tell us what life is like in Florida schools.
The students are part of Breakthrough Miami, which runs programs in the summer and during the school year for students in elementary, middle and high schools.
State law allows schools in Florida to punish students by spanking them with a paddle, which is often a wooden or plexiglass board. The administrators at most schools with corporal punishment policies ask parents for permission to paddle their children. Many principals say they will not paddle a kid against the parent’s wishes. But schools [...]
An Ohio state agency is suing Columbus public schools over the use of “seclusion rooms often used to isolate special needs students, according to our colleagues at StateImpact Ohio. Florida also allows schools to seclude and restrain students with disabilities. The state places a few limits on schools: Students can not be choked or their [...]
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