DPS Board of Education Work Session - May 14, 2026: International Teachers and Discipline Reform in Durham Schools
The Durham Public Schools Board of Education hears emotional testimony from Burton Elementary students, staff, and families urging continued visa sponsorship for international teachers, alongside concerns about missed McKinney-Vento transportation and special education protections. Board members then grapple with restraint and seclusion rules, child abuse reporting, and a major overhaul of the student code of conduct—aimed at reducing suspensions, strengthening restorative practices, and protecting students with disabilities—while also weighing OT staffing gaps, student mental health, and a proposal to use part of the Durham School of the Arts site for affordable housing. 49mins
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Original Meeting
Thursday, May 14th, 2026
12527.0
#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Monthly Work Session | 5/14/26
Video Notes
#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Monthly Work Session | 5/14/26
In This Video
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A representative from Durham Advocates for Exceptional Children urged the board to strengthen and clarify discipline policies to better protect students with disabilities—especially Black and Hispanic students—by aligning with federal guidance, expanding oversight of suspensions to all elementary grades, and explicitly banning practices such as tying, taping, or strapping students down.
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Pediatrician and DPS parent Doctor Gabriella Maradiaga Panayotti described daily encounters with children’s mental health challenges—from somatic complaints and school avoidance to self-harm and suicidality—and explained the medical concept of toxic stress as cumulative adversity that altered children’s brain and nervous system development.
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Jim Svara, a representative of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit, urged the board to promptly signal willingness to sell the northern three acres of the Durham School of the Arts site to the county for a large affordable housing project near the planned rail trail, rather than waiting for a new board to take office.
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Doctor Deborah Pittman reported that the Policy Committee reviewed updates to the child abuse reports and investigations policy, clarifying administrators’ duty to report specific categories of employee misconduct and highlighting provisions on providing students with abuse and neglect information and resources for first-reading board review.
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Doctor King introduced further board discussion on revisions to Policy 4326 governing restraint and seclusion, noting prior extensive debate and inviting the Executive Director for Elementary Schools Programs Diversity to address how the policy affected exceptional children while emphasizing that it applied to all students.
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A speaker relayed administrators’ concern that because the restraint and seclusion policy applied to all students—including situations like large fights where many students might be separated—it could be unrealistic for principals to notify every family the same day, and argued that allowing notification by the next day would help ensure timely, practical compliance.
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A board member recounted a fight where a family was told days later, argued that the restraint and seclusion policy should distinguish situations requiring immediate notification rather than allowing a 30‑day window, and voiced strong support for advocates’ recommendations to rethink isolation and explicitly ban practices such as taping or tying students.
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Board Member Chávez and colleagues agreed to forward Durham Advocates for Exceptional Children’s recommendations on isolation and specific restraints to administration and the board attorney, while a board member requested further Policy Committee discussion on whether isolation or restraint was ever appropriate for students with special needs or needed clearer definitions in the policy.
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District staff reported that while overall incidents and suspensions—especially in early grades—had declined, suspensions remained disproportionately high for students with disabilities and Black students, and explained that proposed revisions to Policy 4301 were designed to address inconsistent discipline decisions by emphasizing restorative practices, clearer expectations, and more equitable outcomes.
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Doctor Watson explained that revisions to Policy 4301 embedded restorative practices, clarified that suspension was a last-resort response requiring documented interventions and consultation, aligned discipline decisions more explicitly with IEP and 504 protections, and replaced discretionary removals with a required framework of alternative interventions to ensure consistent responses across schools.
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Dr. Mattocks-Perry outlined how revised discipline rules took a developmentally appropriate approach by prioritizing restorative interventions over suspension in pre‑K through grade 3—where suspension rates were already low—and by providing older students with structured alternatives such as community programs, alternative learning environments, and restorative reentry supports.
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Staff explained how pairing revised early‑grade discipline policies with strong restorative practices, consistent coding, and standardized interventions was projected to significantly reduce suspensions, increase the number of students positively impacted, and cut repeat incidents by strengthening student supports.
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Dr. Mattocks-Perry emphasized that discipline responses for students with disabilities required mandatory IEP and Section 504 reviews and consultations, acknowledged the need to make these protections more explicit in Policy 4301, highlighted the positive impact of behavior matrices and support assistants, and outlined schools’ calls for more trauma-informed, autism, and mental health supports to guide future staffing and regional implementation plans.
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A board member questioned the timeline for adopting revised discipline policies, and Assistant Superintendent Sidbury explained that staff needed more time to gather feedback from additional school‑level stakeholders—especially given concurrent staffing cuts and schools’ requests for more supports—before bringing refined recommendations back, likely in June.
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Superintendent Dr. Lewis noted that relatively few kindergarteners had been suspended but stressed that even one was too many, while Assistant Superintendent Sidbury explained that serious safety issues were addressed as level 2 offenses under the policy, with any ‘cooling off’ send‑home counted as a suspension and principals retaining flexibility in consultation with supervisors.
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Board Member Carda-Auten questioned why out-of-school suspension remained allowed for young students’ Level 1B behaviors like noncompliance and disrespect, while Assistant Superintendent Sidbury responded that the district was not suspending solely for disrespect and that many such cases involved mis-coded incidents that actually reflected aggression or physical acts.
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Board Member Carda-Auten advocated for prohibiting suspensions for lower-level behaviors in early grades, called for discipline policies to explicitly consider mitigating factors for students with disabilities and include pre‑K through third grade, and proposed additional layers of review by principal supervisors and specialists before suspending or placing students with disabilities in alternative settings.
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Board Vice Chair Millicent Rogers emphasized that restorative practices were intended as proactive learning tools rather than alternatives to suspension and asked how the board could be assured that MTSS staff and the Superintendent were ensuring those practices were effectively taught and implemented in schools where they were not yet working well.
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Dr. Mattocks-Perry and Doctor King explained that restorative practices were meant to center daily relationship- and trust-building so schools could respond constructively when conflicts arose, and described using impact meetings and SEL curriculum data alongside discipline trends to monitor how effectively administrators implemented these approaches.
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Board Member Joy Harrell Goff urged the district to treat suspension as an unhealthy last resort, called for eliminating suspensions in grades K–5 by building adequate supports and resources, and stressed the need to deepen understanding and implementation of restorative and restorative justice practices rather than using suspension as classroom management.
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Board Member Natalie Beyer explained that the committee focused its no‑suspension starting point on pre‑K through second grade—rather than including grades three through five—because older students already had additional supports like New Directions and because expanding farther would be difficult amid major staffing cuts, budget shortfalls, and uncertainty about future resources.
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Superintendent Dr. Lewis clarified that students suspected of having disabilities were already afforded the 10‑day suspension safeguard, while a board member questioned whether shorter suspension thresholds and earlier assessments should be used to trigger MTSS reviews and reduce instructional time lost for young students.
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