When Shanlay Claude was in 10th grade, one of his friends was suspended for being in the bathroom with the wrong group of kids at the wrong time.

From that moment on, Claude said, his friend “changed for the worse.”

“He spent like two months not coming, not showing up to school, not showing up anywhere,” Claude said. “I’ve seen him posting online about guns … things students shouldn’t have in their hands.”

Both Claude and his friend were in AP math together and would compete to see who could get better grades. When his friend transferred out of the class the next year, Claude said his own performance in class suffered.

“Since he’s not here, I can’t — there’s no more competition,” Claude said. “I don’t feel like doing the best I could as when he was with me.”

Claude was one of several speakers at a press conference held Wednesday by Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, and the Re-Imagining School Safety Coalition. The group argues public schools in Connecticut rely too heavily on out-of-school suspensions to discipline students, with harm caused disproportionately to students of color, students with disabilities and LGBTQ students. The group is pushing for legislation to prohibit out-of-school suspensions for nonviolent behavior.

“In Connecticut, students can currently be removed from school for nonviolent behavior … and it’s under broad and subjective categories like serious disruption,” Nolan said. “These out-of-school suspensions remove students from the classroom, interrupt their education and often push them further behind academically and socially.”

State law currently requires schools in Connecticut to issue in-school suspensions unless the student is “seriously disruptive of the educational process,” at which point an out-of-school suspension is warranted. Advocates say that language is too vague and has given teachers and schools room to continue removing kids from school unnecessarily.

CT Black and Brown Student Union Organizing and Policy Director Anghy Idrovo said such cases are widespread and cause significant harm.

“Last year, 32,897 suspensions were issued in the state of Connecticut. Nearly half of those suspensions were for nonviolent behavior. That means that students were removed from class for talking, for dress code violations, for minor disruptions, not because they were violent, but because adults have the authority to exclude them,” Idrovo said. “And that matters because students who experience even one suspension are 23% less likely to graduate.”

Idrovo said one in seven Black students received a suspension in the 2023-2024 school year, compared to one in 11 Latino students and one in 23 white students.

The proposed legislation would embed a description of violent behavior in state law and limit the use of out-of-school suspensions to such cases. It would also reduce the maximum number of days a student can be suspended from 50 to 20 and require schools to hold a formal hearing if students are likely to go beyond that number.

As for what schools would do instead, Idrovo said state law already provides an answer. Public Act 23-167, passed in 2023, called on schools to begin implementing restorative justice practices — the goal being to address problematic student behavior without resorting to punitive measures like suspension.

Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Hartford, said instead of out-of-school suspensions, she hopes to see proactive solutions to keep students in the school building.

“A few years ago, the state passed legislation that addressed school safety that was more based in proactive measures,” she said. “So we’ve given everybody two and a half years to have put in policies in place that are proactive, that are helpful for student learning, and keep students in our buildings learning, rather than send them home.”

Khan, herself a teacher, said kids who are sent home often don’t learn anything and come back with the same issues they had when they left. 

“I can tell you, on a ground level, as a teacher, one of the best things that I would like to see is my students get the support they need, rather than remove them,” Khan said. “To actually target behavior is to do something proactive about it.”

Jahneel Small, chief of staff and special organizing projects for Educators for Excellence, worked as a teacher and dean of students for 17 years. During that time, she said, she led efforts to take this kind of restorative approach with students.

“I built relationships. I helped teachers keep students engaged, and I made sure we understood students’ backgrounds and home lives, because students don’t leave their lives at the school door,” Small said. “When we respond to these crises with exclusion, the research is unequivocal about the harm that we cause.”

Small said that research shows that “students who are suspended, especially out of school, experience increased mental health crisis, feel less safe and are more likely to disengage from school or form harmful peer relationships.” 

To do that, Small said, teachers need smaller classes, more para-educators and counselors and more training. 

“These are the very things educators have been asking policy makers for, and the very things that keep students in classrooms and teachers in the profession,” she said. “This is about dignity, safety and opportunity for students and for educators.”

The proposed legislation doesn’t address funding for such positions, though advocates have previously drawn connections between the lack of support staff in schools and the fact that Connecticut’s core formula for education funding has not risen with inflation since 2013. Legislators are showing a strong interest in changing that during this year’s short session.

Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said even switching to in-school suspensions can have a big impact. That’s what he experienced as an eighth grader who was sent to in-school suspension often. He said his teacher would start each suspension with a half-hour chat about anything from his sneaker collections to his extensive traveling. 

“After that 30 minutes was up, he figured out: here’s all the work that I gathered from your teachers today that you have to do. Here’s the test that I know is coming up … I’m going to make sure that you’re prepared for this test,” Felipe said. “He made sure that I graduated eighth grade, and that’s part of the reason why I got here and I’m able to do this work.”

Education Committee ranking member Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, issued a statement after the press conference condemning the proposed legislation as one of many “top-down mandates” from Democrats.

“Decisions about classroom discipline should be made by the professionals that are teaching our students each day, not by policymakers issuing one-size-fits-all directives from the Capitol. If there are districts or incidents where students are being improperly removed, then the local Board of Education and the superintendent should be notified and review those,” Zupkus said.

Near the end of the press conference, Ruben Santiago, founder of Keeping Kids Out of Prison or K.O.P., spoke up from the audience. He applauded the coalition for its work and recounted his own experience with suspension in his youth, after he was jumped by a group of kids three towns away from his school. 

“When I went back to school Monday, my principal found out about it. He expelled me. They packed my whole locker up. They had it in a trash bag. I went, I got called to the principal’s office, and he said, ‘I feel you’re a threat to my students,’” Santiago said. “I was so embarrassed, I was so angry. I started getting in trouble. I ended up doing 13 and a half years in prison.”

“I am a product of getting suspended,” Santiago said.