LYNN — Suspensions are down in the Lynn Public Schools, but administrators are blaming student vaping for a spike in disciplinary incidents at the middle school level.
Data shared by Superintendent Dr. Patrick Tutwiler showed that 6.8 percent of the district’s student population were disciplined with out-of-school suspensions last school year, which is down a tenth of a point from the previous year. That suspension rate matches the district’s all-time low from the 2016-2017 school year, he said.
The number of total suspensions fell 6.35 percent from 2018 to 2019 (755 to 707), but there’s still some cause for concern.
In comparison to other large urban districts, Lynn’s suspension rate last year was lower than Brockton, but higher than Boston, Lawrence and Springfield.
Although suspensions are down 29 percent in the district’s high schools, there’s been a 60 percent spike at the middle school level. Tutwiler said that increase is due to a large number of student vaping incidents, particularly among sixth graders.
“We have some work to do with weaving information about vaping into our curriculum,” said Tutwiler. “It’s a challenge because even in the adult community, there’s sort of a low view of harm around vaping. When the adults are engaged in that behavior, it’s hard to tell the kids not to be engaged in that behavior.”
A potential solution, Tutwiler said, could be to build a targeted intervention program at the middle school for students who are using substances. For instance, Positive Alternative to School Suspension (PASS), which started in the district’s high schools last year and provides an alternative to suspensions, could be expanded to the middle schools.
Lynn pays $10,000 annually to participate in the program, which is offered through the North Shore Consortium. Tutwiler credits PASS with reducing suspensions at the high school level, which sends students disciplined for substance-use infractions off-campus to Beverly for educational and therapeutic intervention.
But School Committee member John Ford, who has cited student vaping as one of the largest concerns in the district, said at last week’s meeting that intervention should start even sooner.
“I strongly felt over the past few years we should start introducing drug intervention and vaping at the elementary (schools),” said Ford. “I think we’re being terribly naive. We should start at elementary rather than at middle schools.”
To reduce suspensions, the district has increased social-emotional support and has implemented intervention programs, such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which teaches students behavioral expectations in the same manner as any core subject.
Expanding those efforts should continue to decrease suspension rates, Tutwiler said.
“The desire to reduce is both from a belief that out-of-school suspensions may not always be a solution or result in changed behavior, as well as what research says about the link between suspensions and later incarceration (school-to-prison-pipeline),” said Tutwiler.