Be it enacted by the Youth Model Legislature of the State of New Jersey that the "Zero Tolerance" policy in New Jersey public schools will be reformed and constructed into a new, statewide program.
|
Section I:
|
Remove restrictions that incorporate harsh, automatic consequences that do not consider mitigating circumstances in school codes of conduct for specific violations.
|
|
Section II:
|
Employ a wide variety of disciplinary consequences in student codes of conduct, and indicate that the use of these should be tailored to the specific circumstances of the student and the violation.
|
|
Section III:
|
Specify graduated categories of inappropriate or undesirable behaviors, and align them with categories of consequences. This is more desirable than specifying punishments for each behavior.
|
|
Section IV:
|
Minimize the use of exclusionary disciplinary punishments.
|
|
Section V:
|
Include an amnesty clause for non-violent students who inadvertently bring banned objects to school, or in finding the objects can give them to a school official without fear of punishment.
|
|
Section VI:
|
Encourage problem solving among students by creating a peer mediation club.
|
|
Section VII:
|
Note that after 3 repetitive offenses of this new program, Zero Tolerance will be enforced as punishment.
|
| |
|
|
| Statement of Intent: The purpose of this Bill is to establish the following basic rights of students:
1. The right to have individual needs, circumstances and intent considered in disciplinary proceedings; and
2. The right to have schools consider suspension and expulsion only as a last resort, after all reasonable intervention and prevention measures have failed to help the student correct inappropriate behavior.
Effective Date: This Bill shall take effect 6 months following enactment.
Financial Statement: The cost will be $5,000 to change the law books.
|
* Primary Sponsor |
| Download PDF Version |
|
