District reports drop in suspension days, flags kindergarten aggression and attendance challenges

District staff presented end‑of‑year climate and culture data at the July 13 Washington Elementary School District board meeting, reporting progress on a multi‑year effort to reduce suspension days while also calling attention to rising minor aggression at the earliest grade levels and ongoing attendance work.

Perry Mason, who led the presentation, said the district met its goal to reduce days lost to suspension by 10% and instead reported a 15.8% reduction for the year — an outcome Mason quantified as roughly 1,500 fewer student days lost to suspension. Mason said the reduction reflects a shift toward restorative and instructional responses intended to teach students alternative behaviors rather than merely remove them from school.

Mason also said minor aggression (low‑level incidents such as pushing, pulling or poking) increased by about 13% and that roughly 31% of minor aggression incidents occurred in kindergarten and first grade. To address that concentration, the district plans targeted professional development for kindergarten teachers, additional BCBA support, and expanded use of calming spaces and reinforcement strategies.

Vice President Lindsey Peterson asked whether the suspension reduction represented substantive behavioral change or simply a change in reporting or practice; Mason and Dr. Bailey responded that the district is pairing reduced out‑of‑school time with restorative instructional practices and alternatives (including in‑school suspension options and referral to preventive family education programs).

On vaping, Mason and Dr. Bailey described a multi‑year prevention program run in partnership with outside groups and the state attorney general's office: families are asked to attend an educational presentation as an alternative to extended suspension. Mason said participation has had low recidivism among hundreds referred — "only 2" students repeated in four years — and that the program is offered weekly at one school and available more broadly as an alternative to traditional suspension.

On attendance, Mason said the district's goal was a 3% reduction in chronic absenteeism; the packet and presentation show the district ended the year at about 21% chronic absenteeism, and staff cautioned that the state's final calculation could change the published number. Mason described plans to expand Student Support Teams' (SSTs) to focus more on attendance root causes, to bring more teachers into the attendance work, and to publicize top‑performing schools that reduced chronic absenteeism.

What the board asked for: members pressed staff for more disaggregated data (for example, separating in‑school suspension from out‑of‑school suspension in future reports) and asked that more teachers be included in the SST process; staff said additional slides and data are available in the packet and offered to provide breakouts at future meetings.

Quotations from the meeting include Perry Mason's summary of the suspension reduction and a description of the vaping program's low recidivism: "Last year, we had reduced suspension days by 16%... this year we had reduced again by 15.8% the number of days lost... So that's 1500 days that our students were able to serve consequences in a different way other than through suspension." Mason also said of the vape program: "of the hundreds now that we've had referred, only 2 have repeated after that."