Raychel Proudie wants answers.
The Democratic state representative from Ferguson has been hearing a lot lately from parents and teachers in the Ferguson-Florissant School District about the suspension policies of Superintendent Joseph Davis. Since Davis took over in 2015, long-term suspensions in the district have skyrocketed. The district leads Missouri in such suspensions, accounting for about 10% of all 10-day or longer suspensions in the state in 2020.
Some of the folks contacting Proudie are worried that female students aren’t being treated fairly. Others are concerned that some acts, like bringing a gun to school, aren’t being taken seriously enough. One thing everybody she talks to seems to agree on is the need for consistency and transparency in how student suspensions are handled.
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The way Proudie sees it, holding a legislative hearing is a great way to achieve that transparency. So on Aug. 31, she sent a letter to Davis and Ferguson-Florissant School Board President Courtney Graves, asking that a board member or administrator appear at a hearing in Jefferson City. Proudie is chairperson of the House Special Committee on Urban Issues, and she scheduled a hearing in the state Capitol on Sept. 13.
Proudie’s letter came a couple of days after I reported that state regulators at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are investigating the district’s suspension policies. Specifically, regulators are seeking information about how Davis handled suspensions last year, when a large number of students were reassigned to virtual education for much of the year, many of them without the necessary due process, according to DESE.
State regulators, among other issues, want to know how the district recorded attendance for students who were reassigned to virtual education or otherwise suspended. School districts receive much of their state funding based on attendance figures. “We also have concerns as to whether these students were given due process as called for under state and federal laws,” regulators wrote in a letter to Ferguson-Florissant.
Both Graves and Davis told Proudie the district would not participate in the legislative hearing, citing the investigation. “The District is currently working with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on the issues you wish to discuss, and it would be premature to discuss the issues prior to the outcome of that work with DESE,” Graves wrote.
She offered Proudie a private meeting to answer questions.
Proudie was not happy with the response.
“The community is asking what’s going on with this, and they offer me specifically a ‘one-on-one’ meeting to explain themselves? That’s not transparency or good governance,” Proudie said.
It’s not uncommon for the Legislature to conduct hearings on topics that involve ongoing investigations or controversies in state departments. They are two separate branches of government, after all, and school districts are creatures of state statute, subject to legislative control. There is urgency, Proudie says, because if legislation is needed to resolve problems related to the suspension crisis, she wants to know before next year’s session starts in January.
“I want to know how the district responded to DESE, if laws were broken, parent or student rights violated, and if so, what is the penalty, recourse and remedy,” Proudie says.
She plans to go ahead with her hearing. She’s asked DESE for documents related to its investigation, and Ferguson-Florissant’s response to it. If officials won’t appear in person, she plans to make the documents public and continue to pressure the district to explain itself to parents and taxpayers.
“The people are always owed an explanation when it comes to their government entities,” she says, “and it is never ‘premature’ to give the people what they are entitled to.”