'Restorative Justice' at Beach High School Questioned Amid Breakdown of Discipline

"Restorative justice" is the big new thing on campus where administrators simply give up on student discipline, turning classrooms over to thugs in the name of "social justice."

Rather than consequences for student misbehavior, "restorative justice" seeks to "repair" relationships and give perpetrators a "second chance." (Or a third, fourth, fifth chance ad infinitum).

Background at the Long Beach Post, "LBUSD Board Unanimously Votes to Reform Exclusionary Disciplinary Policies."

And here's a report on Beach High School, an alternative high school for LBUSD's worst offenders, at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Student discipline at Beach High School in Long Beach called into question":

LONG BEACH - Suspensions at Beach High School have been cut in half from last school year to the present. But not everyone on the campus of the alternative school, designed for students who need to recover class credits, sees this as a positive development.

Students at Beach High, located on the same grounds as Long Beach Adult School in the 3700 block of Willow Street, are routinely let off the hook for misdeeds such as fighting, cursing at staff members, leaving campus and substance abuse, according to some community members and employees of the district.

“There are excessive fights,” said math teacher Ronnie Roberts. “Drug use on campus is rampant.”

Roberts said that the same students are allowed to misbehave at the school, which opened in 2011, with few to no consequences.

“Verbal assaults upon school personnel are the rule here, rather than the exception,” he said.

The African-American math teacher said that most of the youth at Beach, which has a student body of nearly 290, are low-income Latinos, blacks and Asian-Americans with gang ties.

“All have been literally kicked out of the large, comprehensive high schools, and are credit deficient, have poor attendance, and have extreme discipline issues, some obviously of a criminal nature,” he said.

Roberts added that these students need “no-nonsense leadership skills” but described Beach High Principal Matt Saldana as a “classic enabler.” Roberts said Saldana “means well but is a poor fit for this type of student and thusly, we are all in danger.”

Roberts has complained about the principal and discipline at Beach High to district officials, but he said his concerns have largely gone ignored.

Another faculty member at Beach, who asked not to be named, raised similar concerns about the school’s leadership. She said that the rules are applied inconsistently and unevenly, and both the staff and the students recognize the problem, which has created division in the school community. Students and staff members are fragmented, the faculty member said.

Saldana, who reported a 50 percent drop in suspensions from last school year to the current one, disagrees with the characterization of his school and of himself. He said the negative depiction of Beach is the view of one or two “disgruntled” teachers. “Generally speaking, this is actually a great place to work if you like dealing with at-risk kids,” he said.

Saldana, who has led the school since it opened, said the staff works hard to help Beach students improve their behavior and get on track to graduate.

Last fall, the Long Beach Unified school board implemented a policy known as restorative justice that requires schools to explore nonpunitive alternatives before suspending students. Beach High students have access to counseling services, gang intervention specialists and more, according to Saldana. But he does suspend students or remove them from school if they are repeat offenders.

“Just last week, I referred four students to alternative schools,” Saldana said. “We suspend kids who bring weapons to school. They are also sometimes arrested. In relation to drugs and alcohol, sometimes they are suspended. Sometimes they are removed from school. Sometimes counseling services are offered.”

Montalva Hill, the parent of a 10th grader at Beach, said that she’s not impressed with how the school disciplines students. Hill said that her daughter, who’s been suspended previously for fighting, has been bullied, harassed and physically attacked by a group of girls she fell out with last fall. Beach administrators and district officials, however, have neglected to pursue a resolution, according to Hill.

“They see things happening and they don’t intervene right away,” she said. “There’s no preventive measures.”

I'm sure it's totally out of control.

And no doubt the student body's nearly 100 percent minority, so really cracking down on rowdies and delinquents will elicit cries of racism!

Like I said. It's out of control. "Restorative justice" is just giving up in the face of seemingly hopeless discipline problems among populations of students who've been deprived of guided discipline their entire lives.

Sad.