{"id":68195,"date":"2016-12-01T16:53:30","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T23:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-schools-report-reveals-discipline-stats\/"},"modified":"2016-12-01T23:53:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T23:53:30","slug":"cortez-schools-report-reveals-discipline-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-schools-report-reveals-discipline-stats\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez schools report reveals discipline stats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cortez
Cortez Middle School students displayed signs during the Dude Be Nice program for anti-bullying.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Over the past three years, the number of expulsions in the Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 District has fallen, but the number of total discipline incidents has stayed about the same.<\/p>\n

The Indian Policies and Procedures report includes details about discipline, attendance and test scores provided by the district and the Colorado Department of Education. The district released the report in October.<\/p>\n

The report reveals the amount of disciplinary actions taken by the district on all students from the 2013 to 2016 school years.<\/p>\n

District-wide, 270 behavior incidents during the 2015-2016 school year resulted in five expulsions and 265 out-of-school suspensions, according to CDE. Those numbers include Southwest Open School and Children\u2019s Kiva Montessori charter schools.<\/p>\n

Consequences differ among students<\/div>\n

Re-1 Assistant Superintendent Dan Porter, who handles district discipline, said that the number of expulsions and suspensions varies over the years. The consequence for a violation may vary depending on a student\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intent is to provide good, safe education for all kids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Administrators tailor consequences to individuals to have the most impact, said M-CHS Principal Jason Wayman.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have a balance in consequence and learning that supports the kids. You have to have consistency there so you\u2019re not playing favorites,\u201d he said. \u201cWe look at the data to make sure we\u2019re not unduly targeting one population or the other. \u2026 It\u2019s a tough balance, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

M-CHS reports 108 suspensions<\/div>\n

At Montezuma-Cortez High School during the 2015-2016 school year, 112 behavior incidents resulted in four expulsions and 108 out-of-school suspensions. The incidents involved 77 students.<\/p>\n

Two expulsions were attributed to drug and marijuana violations and two were attributed to code of conduct violations.<\/p>\n

Two of the four expelled M-CHS students were Native American, one was Hispanic, and one was white. Porter didn\u2019t identify races of students who were involved in more than one incident, saying that doing so might identify the individuals involved.<\/p>\n

SWOS reported five behavior incidents, resulting in one expulsion of a Native American for a marijuana violation and four suspensions.<\/p>\n

Middle School suspends 96<\/p>\n

No students were expelled from Cortez Middle School in the 2015-2016 year, but 96 incidents resulted in out-of-school suspensions for 73 students.<\/p>\n

Discipline in past years<\/p>\n

The number of suspensions and expulsions has been up and down over the past three school years, according to them IPP report.<\/p>\n

In the 2014-15 school year, there were six expulsions at M-CHS and none at SWOS, as well as 113 suspensions.<\/p>\n

At CMS during the 2014-15 school year, there were seven expulsions, including four Native students, two Hispanic students and one white student. There also were 142 suspensions.<\/p>\n

In the 2013-14 year, there were five expulsions at M-CHS and two at SWOS, all involving Native American students. There were 94 suspensions.<\/p>\n

At SWOS, there were 11 suspensions, with six involving white students, three involving Native American students and two involving Hispanic students.<\/p>\n

In the 2013-14 school year at CMS, eight students were expelled, including five white students, two Native American students and one Hispanic student. There were 126 suspensions.<\/p>\n

District, Utes improve communication<\/div>\n

District officials are working to improve their communication with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, Porter said. Superintendent Haukeness last week signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the tribe, allowing the district and the tribe to share student information in order to better use resources from both organizations, Porter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur communication with the tribe is only getting better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ute Mountain Ute Tribe K-12 Education Director Tina King-Washington said Re-1 Superintendent Lori Haukeness and Porter have been helpful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been a wonderful resource for us,\u201d she said. \u201cI have hopes that our communication will continue to get better under their administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

King-Washington hopes that the MOU will allow the tribal education department to be proactive in dealing with students\u2019 issues. Previously, a parental release was required, and tribal officials sometimes didn\u2019t know about discipline incidents until students were already in expulsion hearings, she said.<\/p>\n

Counseling and treatment services are available for free to tribal students, including a full medical staff and child psychologist, she said. There are lots of resources available for students, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalking about issues before they happen to get a head start before they show up as a discipline issue \u2014 that\u2019s one thing we need to work on,\u201d King-Washington said.<\/p>\n

What about bullying?<\/div>\n

No single disciplinary category includes every instance of bullying, and the IPP report doesn\u2019t include data on the number of bullying incidents. Those may be categorized as \u201cdetrimental behavior,\u201d \u201cassault\u201d or another category in the report.<\/p>\n

But staff members investigate every report of bullying, Wayman said.<\/p>\n

There were fewer than 10 instances of bullying in which students received disciplinary action at M-CHS during the 2015-2016 school year, he said. Cortez Middle School Principal Glenn Smith was not sure how many bullying incidents had occurred during that time.<\/p>\n

Very few students experience one-sided bullying at M-CHS, Wayman said. More often, two students have a conflict with each other, and those issues can usually be solved with mediation and communication, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it is truly bullying, there\u2019s no room for it,\u201d Wayman said.<\/p>\n

Not every incident of bullying is investigated by police, Porter said. Police will investigate assaults as well as possession of a drug or dangerous weapons, he said.<\/p>\n

Wayman said police also get involved if there is a verbal threat of violence from one student to another.<\/p>\n

School Resource Officers (SROs) report to both the police department and the school district, and both agencies pay a portion of their salary, Porter said.<\/p>\n

Under Colorado state law, bullying is defined as \u201cany written or verbal expression, or physical or electronic act or gesture, or a pattern thereof, that is intended to coerce, intimidate, or cause any physical, mental, or emotional harm to any student.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBullying is not tolerated in any of our schools,\u201d Haukeness said.<\/p>\n

jacobk@the-journal.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

2015-2016 Discipline<\/h4>\n

Students can be handed suspensions for a variety of reasons, including marijuana, drug and alcohol violations, disobedience, repeated bad behavior, weapons and destruction of school property.
\n Student actions that disrupt the learning of other students may result in suspensions, Re-1 Assistant Superintendent Dan Porter said.
\n Most other code of conduct violations are attributed to marijuana possession, but there are more severe consequences for distribution, Porter said.
\n \u201cDetrimental behavior\u201d refers to any behavior that disrupts learning of other students, which would include bullying, he said. \u201cDisobedience, Defiant or repeated interference\u201d may be the result of a combination of a number of violations that warrant further disciplinary action, which also could include bullying, he said.
\n Violations
\n M-CHS
\n Number of incidents: 112
\n Marijuana: 31
\n Disobedience: 9
\n Drugs: 7
\n Tobacco: 4
\n Detrimental behavior: 4
\n Alcohol: 2
\n Dangerous weapon: 1
\n Property destruction: 1
\n Other: 53
\n Southwest Open School
\n Number of incidents: 5
\n Marijuana: 1
\n Detrimental behavior: 2
\n Tobacco: 1
\n Other: 1
\n Cortez Middle School
\n Number of incidents: 96
\n Marijuana: 8
\n Alcohol: 3
\n 3rd degree assault: 2
\n Disobedience: 2
\n Drugs: 1
\n Dangerous weapon: 1
\n Detrimental behavior: 1
\n Other: 78
\n Races
\n M-CHS
\n Number of students involved in incidents: 77
\n Native American: 31
\n White: 26
\n Hispanic: 14
\n Other: 6
\n Southwest Open School
\n Number of students involved in incidents: 4
\n Native American: 3
\n Hispanic: 1
\n Cortez Middle School
\n Number of students involved in incidents: 73
\n Native American: 34
\n White: 21
\n Hispanic: 13
\n Other: 5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tribe, Re-1 work to improve communication<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,60,216],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68195"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}