ANOTHER ATTEMPT — Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady, seated at right, listens as Mary C. Snow Elementary School Principal Destiny Spencer, standing at left, explains her school’s successes at bringing the number of student suspensions down. -- Steven Allen Adams

CHARLESTON — The leader of one of the West Virginia Legislature’s major education committees wants to try again to pass a bill to address discipline issues in elementary schools, with fellow lawmakers learning what is working first-hand.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady will again introduce legislation dealing with student discipline in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Last year, Grady introduced Senate Bill 614 that passed the Senate, but died in the final hours of the 2024 legislative session over disagreements between the House and the Senate.

“That’s still a priority of mine,” said Grady, R-Mason, during last week’s West Virginia Press Association Legislative Lookahead. “I’m not going to sit up here and lie and say I wasn’t disappointed when that bill didn’t pass last year. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I was disappointed that it didn’t pass.”

SB 614 would have required students in elementary grades to be placed in a county behavioral intervention program if their behavior in the classroom was violent, threatening or intimidating toward staff and other students and allowed counties without such programs to partner with neighboring counties.

For counties without behavioral intervention programs, students would have been removed from the classroom following the incidents and suspended from school for one to three days while alternative learning accommodations were made, with the student receiving instruction through alternative learning.

Parents would have been required to pick up the student either immediately or by the end of the school day, with law enforcement being notified of any student not picked up by a parent or guardian by the end of the school day.

While she was unhappy that SB 614 did not pass last year, Grady said the attention the bill received allowed her to begin discussions to improve the legislation when it gets reintroduced during the 2025 legislative session beginning today at noon. Grady said she has been working with experts in mental health and with State Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt.

“I’ll tell you what, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” Grady said. “I was really disappointed, but some really great conversations have come out over the last year about that bill because of the exposure that it had. And it didn’t pass, but I have been contacted by several mental health providers, mental health agencies, agencies that work with other school systems in other states that have contacted me and said, how can we help? Superintendent Blatt and I have been on phone calls with different organizations to see what we can do to help our students in our state.”

One thing that could be added to the bill is allowing for telehealth services for schools without individualized mental health specialists in order to provide help for disruptive students without requiring those students to be removed from school settings.

“If we can get some sort of support for our kids in schools to where we can keep them in schools but also focus on the majority of the kids – the 99% that are in a classroom to learn – I think that’s the best thing we can do,” Grady said. “The focus is more on how we can help provide those alternative learning centers or mental health supports within our schools.”

Grady, the co-chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Education, held a legislative interim meeting Monday afternoon at Mary C. Snow Elementary School on Charleston’s West Side, a school that serves students of low socio-economic status (SES) in a community serving one of the largest African American populations in the state.

According to a bi-annual report released last July from the state Department of Education regarding harassment, intimidation and/or bullying student behaviors covering the 2022-2023 school year, there was a 3.8% decrease in the number of disciplinary incidents in West Virginia’s public schools — from 169,963 incidents during the 2022-2023 school year to 163,473 incidents during the 2023-2024 school year. But the number of incidents resulting in suspensions increased slightly by just over 1% — from 66,904 incidents in 2022-2023 to 67,565 incidents during the last school year.

Mary C. Snow Principal Destiny Spencer briefed committee members about her school’s successful implementation of a multi-tiered positive behavioral interventions and supports, that have significantly reduced out-of-school suspensions.

Spencer said that combining classroom strategies, a behavior intervention room, strong parent-teacher relationships and prioritizing in-school support and restorative practices have led to a drop of out-of-school suspensions, from 360 in one year to around 20 per year.

Spencer said that the school’s student discipline strategies have led to improved student behavior and academic performance. When asked if her school’s successes could be replicated across the state, Spencer said only if the Legislature was willing to fund similar programs.

“Yes, I think, but it would require funding,” Spencer said. “But yes, I do believe that every school, or at least every school that has a lot of behavioral issues, could try to implement having a behavior interventionist and start there.”