Proposal Would Make it Easier To Arrest, Expel Texas Students

Across Texas, teachers are grappling with a student behavior crisis, and some state legislators believe the issue has become so severe that it’s time to really crack down.

Last week, the Texas Senate Education Committee considered three bills that would give school districts the authority to pursue stricter consequences for students accused of violent or disruptive behaviors. Senate Bill 27, proposed by Republican Sen. Brandon Creighton of Conroe, would allow teachers to remove disruptive students from their classrooms at their discretion without the currently required prior documentation of repeat behavior. The bill was advanced out of committee.

Two other bills, SB 1871 and SB 1924, would make it easier to expel students for disruptive behaviors and allow police to issue misdemeanor charges to students deemed disruptive or dangerous, respectively, and are left pending in committee.

Creighton, who also authored SB 1924, and the so-called Parent's Bill of Rights, said the measures are necessary to “reinforce a basic sense of discipline and respect in [Texas’] classrooms.” Kaylan Dixon Smith, an attorney for the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, told the committee that on a scale of one to 10, addressing student discipline needs to be “a 10” on the Legislature’s priority list.

Last year, the Observer reported that North Texas school districts have seen a spiking number of on-campus assaults and behavioral incidents in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic. In Plano ISD, disciplinary infractions increased 140% between the 2018-2019 and 2023-2024 school years, data showed. In Corsicana ISD, an administrator sounded the alarm on increasingly violent behaviors being targeted at educators after her eye was knocked out of its socket by a student throwing a hanger last year.

“The mistakes that the Legislature has made in the past have put our teachers at serious, serious risk and in harm’s way,” Creighton told the committee. “When your teachers tell a student, ‘Sit down, be quiet, do not make a move that is disruptive for the entire time you are in this classroom, and take care of business’ … is that an unreasonable expectation among students in a classroom today? Is that just old school and no longer the way it is?”

A Punitive Approach to Disruption

Democratic State Sen. Royce West of Dallas questioned the severity of the three bills.

In the 1990s, Texas school districts broadly adopted “zero tolerance” policies for student behavior, where a suspension or expulsion was considered a proportional response to behavioral incidents. The policies were phased out through the 2000s as studies showed they were often disproportionately used to punish Black male students without consideration for nuances like self-defense.

“Let’s make certain we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” West said. “There were instances where kids were being arrested in front of their classmates.”

In softening school discipline policies, Texas' education policymakers were looking to keep kids in the classroom and limit suspensions or expulsions as a disciplinary tool. Protections have been put in place that ban kicking young or homeless students out of classes, and teachers are required to document disruptive behavior in order to build a case against a problematic student rather than jump to a punitive measure.

“I've been conditioned not to [go to the administration about student behavioral issues] because when I send it to them, nothing happens. ... I don’t see the point in putting myself through all that.” - Sandy Kramer, Fort Worth ISD Educator

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Some educators, though, have told the Observer that this approach isn't working. Last year, Sandy Kramer, a long-time teacher at Fort Worth ISD, told us that unless a student has become violent, she is completely on her own when it comes to discipline.

“I've been conditioned not to [go to the administration about student behavioral issues] because when I send it to them, nothing happens,” Kramer said. “I don’t see the point in putting myself through all that.”

Renuka Rege, senior staff attorney with the Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed, said SB 1924 would be a return to pre-2013 policies that authorized police officers to issue citations for Class C misdemeanors to students. At the time, Texas Appleseed’s research found “ridiculous” examples of students being ticketed for chewing gum, tossing a paper airplane or throwing food in a cafeteria.

In 2013, Texas adopted a policy change requiring an officer to file a complaint with a court to issue a citation to a student. Rege said this offers students some due process while ensuring that truly disruptive behaviors can be handled through the court system if deemed necessary by a school district or officer.

“The biggest problem is that Class C misdemeanor citations are not going to address the issues they're trying to solve. All the stories in terms of teachers getting hurt and teachers getting injured, there is no Class C misdemeanor that actually addresses that,” Rege said. “The only thing that these citations actually can be used for is those more minor behaviors, and research showed that a citation is not helpful in addressing that type of behavior.”

Though Creighton emphasized that his bills are intended to handle "violent propensity students," a Class C misdemeanor is only issued in an assault case if no bodily injury is sustained.

Kirby Basham, superintendent of Grandview ISD south of Fort Worth, told the committee that he would not support officers “walking into English class” to arrest a student who had been issued a citation and failed to appear, resulting in a warrant. But state policies have moved from “zero tolerance to zero consequences,” he said, leaving teachers and districts helpless in cases of extreme behavioral issues.

“I don’t want it to be a pipeline to the criminal system, but I do think there are instances where [issuing a citation] isn’t the worst idea in the world,” Basham said.

Rege is also concerned about a student discipline measure making its way through the Texas House. House Bill 6, pending in committee, is sponsored by dozens of Republicans and mirrors some of the measures in SB 1871 that would make it easier for a student to be removed from school.

"Removing a child out of the classroom is kind of like a band-aid to an immediate situation, but unfortunately, it's not going to address the causes of that behavior." - Renuka Rege, Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed

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In 2017, Texas outlawed out-of-school suspensions for kindergarten through second-grade students except in extreme cases. A similar measure was passed in 2019, protecting homeless students from being kicked out of school. HB 6 would allow disruptive behavior to be cited as an exception to the expulsion ban, potentially circumventing the guardrails keeping youngsters and homeless children in classrooms. Rege adds that it would do so despite evidence showing that removal from a classroom setting is not a productive correction for young students.

“It's kind of sending them a message that, ‘Maybe I'm a bad kid, I don't belong in school,’ and it's not really teaching them why what they did was wrong,” Rege said. “‘Disruption’ can cover a lot of behavior that very young children engage in, and it's very vague and subjective.”

A Broader Crisis in Education

Instead of seeking punitive actions for student behaviors, Rege hopes to see the Legislature consider more preventative measures. Mental health in young people has been rocky at best in the years since the pandemic, but schools are critically understaffed when it comes to support staff equipped to deal with issues like anxiety and depression.

While the American School Counselors Association recommends one school counselor for every 250 students, Texas schools typically have one counselor for every 390 students. School social workers are outnumbered one to 5,200 across the state.

And, as more Texas educators turn to alternative certification programs, fewer are being trained in conflict resolution and classroom management skills. Nearly 40% of Texas’ new hires were uncertified last year, the Texas Tribune reports. Some proposals in the Legislature would end this hiring trend or seek to incentivize teachers to get appropriately certified after they are hired.

“Let’s make certain we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. ... There were instances where kids were being arrested in front of their classmates.” - State Senator Royce West

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“It's kind of unfair to take somebody who has not been given any training or practice in behavioral management and just plop them in a classroom and expect them to be able to do that,” Rege said, “because a lot of these behaviors start out as something minor that then because it's not addressed effectively, turns into something more serious.”

In the Senate committee, legislators discussed the need for districts to offer training on managing behavioral issues before they become disruptive or violent.

Rege added that growing class sizes are another issue that could make it more difficult for teachers to control classroom behaviors. But while none of these factors are at the fault of a student, “it feels like the current climate” is solely focusing on getting rid of children with problematic behaviors.

"Removing a child out of the classroom is kind of like a Band-Aid to an immediate situation, but unfortunately, it's not going to address the causes of that behavior," Rege said. "The most important thing is figuring out why they are causing these disruptions."