The St. Paul school district’s custom of kicking black students out of school made it an appealing landing spot for Kevin Brezler.

Hired in November 2018 as the restorative practices coordinator for Washington Technology Magnet, Brezler was eager to work with staff to establish more equitable systems around school climate and discipline.

But in the third and final year of a pilot project to implement restorative practices at Washington, the school remains unchanged.

“The leadership at this school was never committed to it,” Brezler said. “At Washington, restorative practices has never even been attempted.”

Brezler, who had worked in restorative practices in three other states, said the school’s administrators have made training optional for teachers, refused to release funds for materials and been unwilling to adopt new systems around student discipline.

“It has been tremendously disappointing. I came here to do this work and there was no work to be done,” he said.

Four years after the district began a $4.5 million exploration of restorative practices as a way to improve school climate and keep kids in the classroom, implementation has been uneven.

Washington and a few others lacking support from school administrators have all but abandoned the work. In other schools, teachers still take a punitive approach with minor behavioral problems. And the earliest schools to embrace circle discussions and harm-reparation face the prospect of losing their building experts when they run out of grant money in June.

As school district leaders weigh a teachers union proposal to make restorative practices a permanent fixture in St. Paul schools, there is scant evidence it’s been worth the effort.

Although several schools report strong support among teachers, they haven’t seen improvement in student attendance, suspensions or discipline referrals.

“After three years, we are not seeing consistent shifts,” said Kara Beckman, a University of Minnesota faculty member who is evaluating the effort under grants from the National Education Association and the U.S. Department of Education.

Beckman said there are indications in pilot schools that teachers feel better, are showing up to work more often and are better equipped to resolve conflict with co-workers. But it’s hard to tell whether that’s related to the pilot, she said.

And without regular surveys, she can’t tell what restorative practices have done for the mental health of students at the pilot schools.

Beckman said the more successful pilot schools have focused on building community and giving students a voice. What they haven’t done well is change the impulses of teachers who remove kids from their classrooms and administrators who send them home.

“I would not say that very many schools are in a place where I would expect their suspension data will change,” Beckman said.

AIMING FOR EQUITY

Disparities in discipline and academic achievement have been a long-standing concern for the district, which began working with an equity consultant in late 2010.

Since then, St. Paul has adopted a high-profile equity policy, tried to diversify its staff, moved disruptive students back to mainstream classes, reduced the kinds of behavior that warranted a suspension, and implemented mandatory “Beyond Diversity” training for all staff.

Even so, St. Paul is one of 41 districts and charter schools that the Minnesota Department of Human Rights is monitoring for glaring racial disparities in discipline.

The district in 2017-18 suspended 13 percent of its black students but just 2.5 percent of its white students and 1 percent of Asians.

As part of the teacher contract settlement in 2016, St. Paul committed to spending $4.5 million to start implementing restorative practices in 12 schools over three years. With help from a dedicated team at each school, teachers were to use circle discussions to get to know their students, teach core content and repair harm after a fight or major disruption.

Four years later, the teachers union is trying again through contract negotiations to make restorative practices a permanent fixture in the school district.

“What we’ve done in the past hasn’t necessarily worked,” said Nick Faber, president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators. “It hasn’t been good for our students and it hasn’t been good for our members.”

Under their proposal, the district would continue funding restorative practices coordinators in established schools and pay for the addition of up to six more schools each year.

The union also wants four days of training for all senior leaders in the district, money for ongoing professional development and a full-time circle keeper to visit schools when tragedy strikes.

The proposal is one of dozens offered by the union. Their top ask is for mental health teams at each school. Faber said the “student-centered” proposals complement each other.

The teacher contract should be settled in the coming weeks, but there’s been no resolution yet on restorative practices.

Superintendent Joe Gothard said by email that he believes in the value of restorative practices.

“Building more inclusive school communities is essential to learning and the circle process is an excellent way to build strong community and ensure all voices are heard,” he said.

He said the district now has many experts in restorative practices who train people in the district and throughout the state. “Our intent is to keep building on this.”

Gothard said the district is planning to spend $700,000 on restorative practices next year — more than the $450,000 required by the 2018 teacher contract.

His strategic plan mentions restorative practices as part of his work toward positive school and district culture, but it remains to be seen whether that will include circle keepers embedded in the city’s schools.

Next school year will be the final year of the 2016 pilot as the final three schools close out their grants.

If the project ends without continued funding, it may confirm teachers’ fears that restorative practices is just another passing fad.

As a Johnson Senior High teacher told Beckman in year two of that school’s pilot: “We abandon things around here. … Don’t assume it will be sustainable without any investment.”

WASHINGTON, OTHER SCHOOLS

For Brezler, Washington’s failure speaks to a tendency for school leaders to pay lip service to racial equity without actually changing things.

Some teachers don’t allow him to pull students out of their classrooms, he said. Summer training was sparsely attended. And his job has been reduced to resolving conflicts and counseling students out of fighting or skipping class.

“Teachers are more hostile to restorative practices now than they were three years ago because it has been done so poorly,” he said. “I know restorative practices can be used to deflect criticism around equity, and I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Brezler’s predecessor, Tamara Mattison, took the Washington job expecting staff would be open to changing the practices that created wide racial disparities in student suspensions. Instead, teachers kept kicking students out of class for laughing too loudly or demanding a written excuse for showing up late to class, she said.

“You have teachers who have been there too long, so to change their mindset is just really tough,” Mattison said.

“It starts at the top. If the principal has full buy-in and he holds his staff accountable, it’s extremely doable. But without that, it’s a shot in the dark,” she said.

In a survey last year, just 44 percent of Washington staffers said they felt the administration supported restorative practices.

Mike McCollor, who retired as Washington’s principal before this school year, said in an interview that he thought the pilot was going well. He acknowledged the paid summer training was optional for teachers but said it had to be.

He called restorative practices a promising concept but said it’ll take time to show results.

However, the new administrative team at Washington was unfamiliar with restorative practices and decided to “pause” the pilot for this school year, said Becky McCammon, the district’s coordinator for the project.

Of the six pilot sites that got started in 2016-17, four continue to be staffed this year with leftover grant funds: Farnsworth’s upper campus, Maxfield Elementary, Riverview West Side School of Excellence and Johnson Senior High.

Murray Middle School was making some progress on implementation but no longer has staff dedicated to restorative practices, McCammon said.

American Indian Magnet School also has no restorative practices staff after largely failing with implementation, due in part to turnover in both the teaching and administrative ranks.

LESSONS LEARNED

Experiences with the 12 pilot schools have informed the rollout of restorative practices at additional schools funded by the federal government.

The district in October 2018 won a five-year, $3.8 million innovation grant to implement and evaluate the model at eight more schools; the new E-STEM middle school in Woodbury was the only one to get started last fall.

Instead of selecting schools based solely on written applications, district leaders now are holding multiple interviews with administrators, assessing the staffs’ readiness for change and providing 10 hours of training before the school year begins.

The district also has changed the way it hires building leads for the project. A central administrative office now creates candidate pools for the positions after watching school principals hire people who lacked knowledge or commitment to restorative practices. And those people no longer need be licensed educators, which many experienced circle keepers are not.

Mattison, the former coordinator at Washington, said the district now “has a great plan in place” because of what they learned with the first 12 schools.

“I think they rushed and it didn’t work,” she said.

DATA PROBLEMS

Limitations in data collection have made it difficult to assess whether the project is working.

Beckman is tracking student attendance, suspensions and discipline referrals, as well as self-reported figures about how often teachers use circles and other restorative techniques. She’d like to survey students about their experiences but that hasn’t happened yet.

The district also has not updated its discipline-tracking software to specifically measure restorative practices. And the way staffers are recording strategies like harm-repairing circles has not been consistent even within the pilot schools, Beckman said.

Mattison said school administrators can’t be trusted to report accurate data anyway. She said Washington would record a student as having been dismissed, not suspended, but the result was the same: “They’d go home.”

McCammon hadn’t heard of principals skewing data to show false progress, but she said she knows principals who have refused to record a suspension out of concern that it would stain a student’s record.

Beckman said a study is coming on students who spent two years at one of the five pilot schools that actually made progress with restorative practices starting in 2016. Due in March, it will explore whether they were more or less likely than their peers to skip school, get in trouble for behavior or get suspended. Related Articles Distance learning deal with St. Paul teachers calls for ‘regular’ — not necessarily daily — live teaching

St. Paul City Council debates halting charter school bond requests for six months

St. Paul district to prioritize special education, elementary grades if schools reopen next month

How much live instruction should we expect from teachers? St. Paul union argues for once a week

St. Paul district to pay student $48,000 for teacher’s ‘achievement gap’ remarks

But she said the pilot is not really about whether restorative practices works or not. Rather, it’s about identifying the components a school needs to make it work.

St. Paul, she said, doesn’t need a randomized, controlled trial to test restorative practices.

“If it is the right thing, that will emerge,” she said. “But it’s going to take a while.”