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The Center for Children’s Advocacy was instrumental in writing and helping achieve passage of Connecticut Law Prohibiting Out-Of-School Suspensions and Expulsions for Very Young Children. Public Act 15-96 prohibits most out-of-school suspensions and expulsions for students enrolled in a preschool program or in kindergarten through grade two.
KDLG Public Radio
September 5, 2016
Every year, thousands of children are suspended from preschool. Take a second to let that sink in.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 6,743 children who were enrolled in district-provided pre-K in 2013-14 received one or more out-of-school suspensions. And that’s just public pre-K. Still more children were likely suspended from the nation’s many privately-run preschools and day cares.
While most suspensions come as the result of a child’s disruptive, sometimes violent, behavior, experts and advocates
now argue that suspending a 3- or 4-year-old, no matter how bad the behavior, is a bad idea.
“Expelling preschoolers is not an intervention,” according to a policy statement issued earlier this year by the NationalAssociation for the Education of Young Children and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Rather, it disrupts the learning process, pushing a child out the door of one early care and education program, only for him or her to be enrolled somewhere else, continuing a negative cycle of revolving doors that increases inequality and hides the child and family from access to meaningful supports.”
But what to do?
Answer: Study Connecticut.
First, lawmakers there took a rare vote last year, limiting out-of-school suspensions for children from preschool through second grade.