Fairfax, VA Student Discipline Policy Sees Second Student Suicide

Since 2009, Fairfax Co. Public Schools’ (FCPS) unconscionably harsh, student discipline policy, recently brought the second student suicide in as many years. Two teens have taken their own lives following FCPS’ excessive, unnecessarily protracted policy of student discipline school suspension. FCPS has amassed a shocking record of student suspension in recent years . As of 2009, at least two student suicides  have followed on the heels of the over long, and plainly harmful policy of school suspension carried out against virtually all students, even those with excellant grades and no history of prior discipline.

FCPS’s antiquated system of multiple hearings, laborious appeal procedures and  multi-level administrative review, frequently brings significant harm in the name of student discipline.  Allowing this kind of over long student school suspension in the cause of good order and school safety, goes far beyond  any rational purpose for student school removal. The legitimate purposes which may be served by a brief period of suspension can never justify the practice by FCPS which serves mainly to bring about significant harm to the academic standing and the personal development  of  several hundred high school teens every year.

Read the most recent news report on this sad, broken system here.