Opinion: Baltimore County schools can find better disciplinary solutions than student removal

After essentially a year and a half of being online, school has changed. Maryland students returned to in-person school with gaps in their learning and effects on their behavior. And when things change, it’s tempting to cling more tightly to the strategies that we used before, to double down on what used to work. But it is an unfortunate truth that being tough with school discipline without addressing the root issues that lead to student misbehavior won’t fix anything. If Baltimore County Public Schools and other Maryland districts truly want to make their schools safer for all students, they must be willing to embrace new strategies that are responsive to our new reality. They must resist the tough-on-crime rhetoric that is edging into school discipline discussions and resist relying only on exclusionary discipline to deal with student misbehavior.