Passing the Senate 42 – 8 was SB 191 which allows a school to boot a student because of the student’s disruptive behavior or frequent unexcused absences. The superintendent trying to get rid of the disruptive student can move the student to, among other places, another school corporation. It is unclear from the text of the bill whether the alternate school corporation has the right to refuse, but I suspect they do. In any event, the removing school cannot stop serving the student until he or she has been successfully placed and the removing school has to pay tuition for the student up to a certain amount.
For a good number of the disruptive students out there, I suspect the tuition part of the equation is no sweat. I think one of the mostly unspoken facts about educating kids is that some are far more expensive to educate than others. It doesn’t take too many disruptive kids to cause a whole class room to fall apart. Seems like lawmakers are struggling for a balance between, on the one hand, trying hard to make sure kids don’t fall through the class and become adults who don’t contribute to society; and, on the other hand, making sure that a couple of bad apples don’t spoil the barrel.
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