Recent changes to the school’s new discipline policy have led teachers to question how effective the policy will be.

These changes include the removal of in-school suspension, centralized detentions, and Saturday detentions. Students now spend up to two hours -- depending on the severity of their offense -- in centralized detention on Friday’s, leaving teachers to proctor their own detentions during the week. Teachers said they felt the new policy was unfair.

“Many teachers really want to engage students in social and academic growth, including after-school programs and activities; however, faculty cannot be expected to run clubs, sports and tutoring and then be expected to cover detentions as well,” English teacher Louis Gallo said.

Multiple teachers have echoed Gallo’s concern.

The policy was modified by acting Dean Erie Lugo and acting Assistant Dean Sean Sawyer in attempts to add what Lugo said was the necessary disciplinary structure that the school has lacked in previous years. But many teachers expressed concerns that handling the new load of problems would deter them from executing instructional duties such as teaching and tutoring.

Gym teacher Nicholas Morris said although he agrees with the need for teachers to establish their own disciplinary structure, he feels it’s unfair to the teachers who have to deal with behavioral issues during class.

Although new to the school, Sawyer said he used tactics that have worked in his previous school, Sojourner Truth Middle School in East Orange, New Jersey. This Tactic encourages teachers more governorship over their classrooms.

“By creating this kind of structure teachers are now able to address the offenses using certain skills that work best for them,” said Sawyer.

Lugo agreed. “It’s very easy to just kick a misbehaving student out of class and since often times it’s the teachers who more familiar with the student, they can better help get to the root of the problem,” said Lugo.

Lugo said he saw too many cases of kids being made to leave class to sit in the administrative office last year.

“Last year we recorded some students with 30 or 40 days out of class. The student can’t be expected to pass or learn anything that way,” he said.



While many teachers expressed concern about having to proctor

their own detentions, some say they agree with Lugo’s approach to handling infractions when they

occur in the classroom.

“I think that it’s in the best interest of all teachers to learn how to deal with the students in the classroom because they’re less likely to commit the same offense twice,” said math teacher Jacqueline William.

Another revision to the policy permits only the administration to decide what offenses require centralized detention.

“This rule has two aspects to it, one it’s forcing the teachers to devise their own interventions in the classroom. More, importantly tracking detentions [has] become less of a problem,” said Lugo.

Currently, only the administration are allowed to determine the severity of the infraction, creating what some teachers call a gap in communication between teachers and the administration.

“If it gets to the point where I would have to send a student out of my class for certain behavioral issues, I would like to know how the student is being handled,” said lead English teacher Mary Garofalo.

Union President Jesse Thatcher expressed the same concern.

“A student might’ve committed multiple offenses and repeatedly disturbed the class, but when I send them to the administrative office it doesn’t mean that they’ll receive detention. We’re expected to accept this and on top of that, proctor our own detentions,” said Thatcher.

Lugo demonstrated how all of the detentions were going to be tracked through the PowerSchool administration software; however, he said these records will not be open to the public.

According to Sawyer, the previous detention policy gave too many chances to students.

Lugo said the school wasted up to $25,000 on a program that granted the students leverage to do whatever they wanted. He said in-school suspension became an environment that students actually wanted to get into.

Students had mixed emotions about the program.

“I’m not sure how fair it is to the teachers, but I also don’t see how it’s going to be fair to the students because teachers now have the power to decide how long to keep you and that time limit can vary between 15-40 minutes,” said Samantha Masinsin, senior.

Even though proctoring their own detentions appears to be a concern for most teachers, many of them attribute the lack of consistency in the policy to a lot of its problems.

“To date we’ve seen four changes with the school’s discipline policies. Although I know the administration is trying their best, their policies would be a lot more effective if they agreed on one, and stuck with it,” said Service Learning Coordinator Jamie Rice.

William expressed similar sentiments.

“My only hope is that the school is consistent with this policy because if there’s no stability the students don’t really have a definite set of guidelines to follow,” William said.

In response, Lugo said welcoming change is the only sure thing that any institution has to go by.