By Carol Chmelynski
5/17/05 -- Expulsion is commonly used by school officials as a last resort for maintaining discipline and keeping schools safe. But an increasing number of administrators are turning to “restorative justice” -- an alternative method emerging from the field of criminology -- with promising results.
“Restorative justice is a systemic response to wrongdoing that emphasizes healing the wounds of victims, offenders, and communities” caused by criminal behavior, states Prison Fellowship International. “Parties with a stake in a specific offense resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offense and its implications for the future.”
Under this concept, everyone affected by an incident of misbehavior sits in a circle, where they have a chance to speak and to be an active listener, says Randall Comfort, assistant upper school director at the Mounds Park Academy in St. Paul, Minn.
Restorative practices in schools include peer mediation, classroom circles to resolve problems, and family group conferencing. All of these practices involve face-to-face resolution to address the multiple impacts of a student’s offending behavior. Those people most affected by the behavior play an important role in resolving the incident.
Healing and learning
PEASE Academy, a school that serves students recovering from chemical addiction from all over the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, was selected by the Minnesota Department of Education to pilot-test a restorative justice program in 2002.
The entire staff attended a three-day comprehensive training session on restorative practices. Comfort says staff members learned skills relating to restoring safety to a community after a conflict had arisen and were trained to become “circle keepers.”
“The circle keeper is the one person that shapes the topic to be discussed and facilitates the passing of a ‘talking piece’ around the circle,” he says. “A participant may choose to pass the piece without talking, but only the person holding the talking piece is allowed to speak.” (A talking piece can be any object; some facilitators use a stuffed animal or a Koosh ball.)
The aim of the circle is not to solve problems, but should be seen as part of a process of healing and learning. “When used appropriately, circles are extraordinary in opening lines of communication and understanding,” says Comfort. “But if overused, their power can become diluted and ineffective.”
“Since PEASE adopted the restorative justice process, the staff has seen some amazing culture shaping at the school,” he notes. “The number of disciplinary interventions has dropped, [and] students report feeling more connected to the community and to each other.”
In 1998, the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning (CFL) received a three-year, $300,000 state grant to implement and evaluate alternative approaches to expulsions.
Four school districts were chosen to implement restorative practices and develop an evaluation plan to gauge the impact of these programs on suspensions, expulsions, attendance, academics, and school climate.
“Educators are very frustrated. They see that you can’t just keep sending kids away,” says Nancy Reistenberg, who manages the grant for CFL. “That doesn’t function very well. So having an alternative that doesn’t throw away the regular system, but adds to it, really helps.”
In Wisconsin, the state’s department of public instruction invited six school districts to take part in a restorative justice experiment, which began in the 2002-03 school year.
All of the participating districts -- Beloit, Janesville, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Racine, and Waukesha -- are required to use “researched practices that would occupy students’ time meaningfully, ensure students avoid negative behavior during the expulsion period, and teach the value of service,” says Jim Haessly, executive director of student services and special education at the Waukesha school district.
The six districts agreed to collaborate and share information, consider the increased use of community service, and build capacity to give more help to expelled students when they return to school.
Haessly hopes restorative justice will prove to be “a bright light in a dark process” and will discourage the use of expulsions, which he says “can be negative, legalistic, adversarial, expensive, and time-consuming.”
In Waukesha, with an enrollment of 13,000 students, just 28 have been expelled this year as of March 21. Haessly describes his method as “kind yet strict” and rankles against the idea of zero tolerance in high schools. “If I had to give our approach a name it would be zero tolerance with compassion, common sense, and service,” he says.
Re-engaging students
“We need to make the whole expulsion process less adversarial,” he says. “Restorative justice works and we know it. We have a closer relationship with the police department, county departments, and parents. We have more places and ways of dealing with kids, and kids report an increased commitment to school and the community.”
“We have to use all our tools to re-engage these students” Haessly says, “or many will be lost, angry, retaliatory, or even worse -- they won’t finish school.”
Also, such measures may serve to minimize legal liability and exposure of school boards, administrators, and teachers, he says. “Let’s spend money on kids, not lawyers.”
Much of the drive for bringing restorative justice practices to schools started when Ted Wachtel, president of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), based in Bethlehem, Pa., began developing SaferSanerSchools in the mid-1990s. That program was created in response to what Wachtel saw as a crisis in American education and in society as a whole.
According to Wachtel, the dramatic change in behavior among young people -- manifested in rising truancy and dropout rates, increasing disciplinary problems, violence, and even mass murder -- is largely the result of a loss of connectedness and community in modern society.
“Schools have become larger, more impersonal institutions, and educators feel less connected to the families whose children they teach,” he says. “Restorative practices involve changing relationships by engaging people: doing things with them, rather than to them or for them -- providing both high control and high support at the same time.”
The SaferSanerSchools program is now in 30 or 40 schools, mostly in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, as well as in Australia, Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, says IRRP Director of Training Bob Costello.
ýIn our schools, we provide a huge amount of support,” Wachtel says. “We’re very understanding and find all sorts of ways to help kids understand their behavior. But at the same time, we don’t tolerate inappropriate behavior. We really hold them accountable.”
Sense of community
Instead of zero tolerance and authoritarian punishment, restorative practices place responsibility on students themselves, using a collaborative response to wrongdoing. Students are encouraged to both give and ask for support and are responsible for helping to address behavior in other students. This fosters a strong sense of community as well as a strong sense of safety.
Restorative practices represent a fundamental change in the nature of relationships in schools, adds Costello. “It is the relationships, not specific strategies, which bring about meaningful change.”
School officials at Palisades High School in Kintnersville, Pa., which became the first SaferSanerSchools pilot school in 1998, credit the program with creating a more positive relationship among staff and students.
The number of disciplinary referrals to the school office dropped from 1,752 in 1999 to 815 in 2003, reports guidance counselor Monica Losinno. During the same time frame, the number of incidents of disruptive behavior went from 273 to 142, and out-of-school suspensions dropped from 105 to 53.
Before Palisades Middle School started using restorative justice practices in the fall of 2000, the school climate was discourteous and disrespectful, altercations were common, and about 200 students were suspended a year, says Principal Ed Baumgartner.
Baumgartner says he decided to implement the SaferSanerSchools program in 2000 after he saw how it benefited Palisades High School. He was inspired by what he saw at a graduation ceremony: “Kids who had routinely been behavior problems at the middle school were hugging the assistant principal and thanking her.”
Now that all faculty and support staff at the middle school have been trained in the SaferSanerSchools program, “it’s changed the way we think about discipline and behavior management,” Baumgartner says. “We get along here, and that’s because the kids are respected and they know it.”
There’s also been a significant increase in students reporting other students for behavior problems, students self-reporting, and parents reporting their children. And, in a school with 517 students, “there hasn’t been a single fistfight this year,” he adds.
“We’ve grown a culture here of mutual collaboration and trust. Kids feel comfortable coming to me and saying, ‘We need to circle up’ They see this as a solution,” says Baumgartner.
“I’ve had an epiphany, a metamorphosis,” says Baumgartner. “I used to be one of these black-and-white, law-and-order guys. Kids had to be held accountable, and the only way to do that was to kick them out of school -- to show the other kids that you’re the boss.”
“That doesn’t work,” he says. “I didn’t solve problems. I just postponed them until they got to high school, and then somebody else had to deal with them. Restorative practices work. We now fix and solve problems.”