OSS: lacking effectiveness

March 1, 2010  
Filed under Feature

From the beginning of the year to end of the year, from your first day of high school until your graduation day, Ottawa High School’s Administrative members try to engrave the 20 Point Discipline Plan into our heads, along with the consequences that coincide with it.

But has the 20 Point Discipline Plan really disciplined anyone, changed student behaviors or even lowered the amount of office referrals?

The answer is no. As a matter of fact, the administration’s attempt to further enforce the 20 Point system has resulted in more office referrals and more suspensions this semester than last year’s total office referrals.

When looking deeper into the 20-Point system it is apparent that the consequence for over half of all school violations is Out-Of-School-Suspension, also known as OSS.

Ottawa High School administrators consider OSS to be any suspension in which you are not allowed on school property, which ranges from one to 90 days, but having no expulsion that exceeds 186 days unless applied to the succeeding school year.

So, a student gets into some trouble and is sentenced to 10 days of Out-Of-School-Suspension. The student goes home, and in a majority of situations, their parents work a 9-5 job, leaving the student home alone to do as they please for eight hours.  That is assuming that parents walk in the door at five. Have the students learned his or her lesson?

Senior Brandon Crowley was suspended for 10 days for possession of illegal drugs. Adderall to be exact.

Crowley said the only way that OSS could be effective is if your parents punish you, because if they do not you can just go home and do what you want to. Crowley also believes OSS is ineffective because even though you are suspended for doing something dumb you still get to do your schoolwork, so it does not affect your grades.

The question: “Is OSS effective?” is one that lingers in students’, parents’ and even some of Ottawa High School’s teachers’ minds, but is not a big enough controversy to be formally brought up and the consequence reconsidered.

English teacher Shawn Denton has mixed feelings about the subject and believes that some changes do need to be made, but whether it is effective or not, the OSS policy is definitely needed.

“The policy needs to be tweaked. It needs to be slightly more detrimental to student’s academic progress to get the point of OSS across. We would still want students to have the opportunity to pass classes, but maybe making it where they could only get a maximum of half credit on their assignments would make students think twice about their decisions. With that said, it would not affect everyone because some kids just do not care about their grades,” Denton said.

Sophomore Megan Shirley was also suspended for 10 days for drinking on school property and attending a school event intoxicated. Shirley agrees with Crowley and Denton.

“You just get to get out of school and go home, getting ISS is more of a punishment because being stuck in that room for 10 days would have made me go nuts.  I wouldn’t ever ever do anything wrong again because I would not want to be in there, but OSS does not really make you think about your consequences,” Shirley said.

Tweaking the system could greatly change students view on OSS, but that is an adjustment that can only be made later. What do we do about now?

Assistant Principal Ryan Cobbs handles a large majority of all suspensions and behavioral issues. Cobbs believes that Out-of-School-Suspension does exactly what he expects it to.

“OSS triggers parental involvement and lets students and parents know that whatever the situation was, it was serious. There are very few students that are suspended more than once, which makes me believe it must be having an impact on students. Suspending students has nothing to do with their academics. It is strictly behavioral issues and it is effective and it does work,” Cobbs said.

Student after student, suspension after suspension, peers refuse to learn from their peers. Many students are often suspended for the same reasons and even though many of them know the consequences they just do not learn or think about them.

Sophomore Angela Barth was suspended for 10 days for drinking and attending a school event intoxicated, soon after her own friend and fellow sophomore Natalie Stoops was suspended for the same thing.

“I honestly did not think I would get caught. I know that my friends and other students had gotten suspended for it, but they were loud and obnoxious about it. Being suspended for 10 days was really boring, but that is about it. I really disappointed my parents and that was the worst thing and just being out of school was not really any kind of punishment,” Barth said

Sometimes students are suspending for things they did not intend on happening. Junior Nathan Ward was suspended for three days for sexual harassment; something he said was not as bad as it was made out to be.

“Being suspended was not really helpful because I basically just sat at home and did nothing. It was more of a vacation then a punishment. The only bad part was it was really embarrassing,” Ward said.

The opinion on whether OSS is effective or not varies from student to teacher to administration. It all depends on whether you are the suspender or the suspendee.

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Danon Taylor

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