Focus Report: Volume 75, Number 12, April 1997 Page: 1
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TYD 1801..7 H816SEF NOJ7%-12
D. L. 0610 "676595?*
* RESEARCH
ORGANIZATION s=i
r
ssion focus
Texas House of Representatives
April 4, 1997
Making the Grade:
Alternative Education and Safe Schools
Texas schools continue to grapple with problems created by violent and disruptive students. In enacting
the Safe Schools Act as part of the 1995 rewrite of the Education Code, the Legislature had two main
objectives: to give teachers and administrators clear authority to remove disruptive students from the
classroom and to create a safety net so that students expelled from school would not be cast on the streets.
The act aimed at eliminating the traditional process of suspending and expelling students, requiring instead
that students be "expelled" to an alternative education program either within the public school system or
operated in conjunction with the juvenile justice system. However, thousands of students with behavioral
problems still are being expelled to the streets, primarily because of gaps in the current law and funding
limitations. There is also concern about students' rights to due process; the Safe Schools Act does not
specify procedures for protecting these rights in certain situations. On the other hand, some say the act
weakened local control by establishing looser standards than the "zero tolerance" policies some districts
already had in place for students caught with alcohol or drugs at school or school-sponsored events.In an attempt to solve some of these problems, the
75th Legislature is revisiting the Safe Schools Act.
The Senate has already passed several bills (SB 132,
SB 139, and SB 136) to revise provisions of the Safe
Schools Act. Most of the provisions in the Senate
bills have been included in an omnibus House bill, HB
1090 by Goodman.
Operational Issues
Funding is a major area of concern for school dis-
tricts and counties trying to operate effective and
efficient alternative education programs (AEPs) and
juvenile justice alternative education programs
(JJAEPs). School districts are expected to operate
AEPs on the basis of a "dollar following the student"
formula, but the cost of educating students in an AEP
is often higher because of the demands of educating
disruptive and violent students. Each local school dis-
trict and county makes its own funding arrangementsfor JJAEPs. While every large county in the state
operates a JJAEP, the range of students served var-
ies from county to county. Bexar County operates a
year-round JJAEP that accepts every expelled
Contents
Operational Issues 1
The Safe Schools Act 2
Expulsion 3
Due Process 4
Zero Tolerance Policies 5
Quality of Education 5THEUNwIVES
No. 75-12
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Texas. Legislature. House of Representatives. Research Organization. Focus Report: Volume 75, Number 12, April 1997, periodical, April 4, 1997; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth654077/m1/1/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.