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When Raychel Proudie’s nephew was a senior at McCluer High School last year, the Democratic state representative from Ferguson had no idea that dozens of students had been kicked out of the school without due process.

The point was made in a letter by Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and read aloud by Ferguson-Florissant School Board President Courtney Graves at a June meeting. Superintendent Joseph Davis, the letter states, “unilaterally and without hearings” removed between 40 and 60 students from school and placed them in unsupervised virtual learning.

“Without question, we have a problem here,” Proudie told me this week, responding to a recent column about the ongoing suspension controversy. “I’m interested in what data we have that supports putting all these kids out.”

To get that data, Proudie, chair of the House Special Committee on Urban Issues, plans to hold hearings on the fact that Ferguson-Florissant leads the state in long-term suspensions. She called me to talk on Aug. 8, the day before the eighth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. In addition to months of protests in the ������Ƶ region, his death created an intense focus on equity issues in various institutions, from police departments to school districts.

Redditt Hudson remembers that time well. He is one of the reasons the current Ferguson-Florissant School Board is responsive to the community it serves.

In late 2014, Hudson was one of the parents of Ferguson-Florissant students to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the district. The parents, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, alleged that the board — then seven white people and one Black person — didn’t properly represent a district with a student population that was almost 80% Black, or a voting population that was fairly evenly split between Black and white. Just a year before, the board, then with all white members, had suspended the popular Black superintendent, Art McCoy, for unspecified reasons. McCoy later resigned and finished his career in nearby Jennings.

The lawsuit was successful, and it changed how school board members were elected, making sure that Black votes in the district were not diluted. The current board has five Black members, one white member, and one Hispanic members.

That new board is poised on Wednesday to pass a series of policies meant to rein in the record number of long-term suspensions handed out by Davis since he was hired in 2016.

That first school year, 599 students faced suspensions of 10 days or longer; the next year, it was 729, before rising again to 924. In the pandemic-shortened year of 2019-20, the district was on pace for more than 1,000 long-term suspensions. Most of the suspensions were handed out to Black students, and many of those students had learning disabilities.

Last year, the board adopted different disciplinary practices in an attempt to keep more students in school. Now it is doubling down after discovering Davis has skipped due process requirements by sending some students home for long periods of time on unsupervised virtual education.

In a statement last week, Davis said he disagreed with some of the contentions in the Legal Services letter but that the administration “fully supports” the board’s proposed new policies.

For Hudson, whose children have graduated, the current board’s action shows that representatives with strong connections to a community can make a difference.

“I am encouraged that the board, newly diversified, is engaged and up for addressing this issue, which has real and lasting impacts on student learning and other outcomes,” Hudson says. “As a resident that sued the district because of actions it took that harmed Black students, I am concerned that this superintendent has apparently circumvented the law to suspend more students than any other district in the state.”

Proudie, like Hudson, is glad the new school board is more responsive to the needs of the community. It’s a sign that equity issues are taken more seriously in north ������Ƶ County than they were eight years ago.

She hopes Davis and other school leaders are ready to explain to lawmakers why so many Black students have been kicked out of class in the past few years, at a much higher rate than surrounding school districts.

“I’m certainly not paying taxes for kids to be just put out of school,” Proudie says. “We need answers.”

Editor's note: Column has been updated to correct current make up of the board.