Debate on suspensions starting at pre-K shows a deeper problem. Schools need help

When Tunette Powell’s son was 4 years old, he was sitting at the breakfast table at his Bellevue preschool crying. Then, he was suspended.

“They asked him to get away from the table because he could spread germs,” Powell said. “They didn't ask him why he was crying or anything. When they asked him to do that, he pushed the chair. He didn't hit anybody with the chair, and he also didn't throw the chair, he pushed it.”

That was the first time the preschool suspended him in 2014. Both her sons were suspended several times throughout that year. She shared the story with a white mom, who said she only got a phone call when her child hit another student. Powell’s sons are Black.

“That was kind of like a wakeup call for me, which is actually what made me write about it, what made me speak about it, what made me go through all of the embarrassment that comes from sharing with the rest of the world that you have two children that have been suspended from school,” Powell said.

In 2023, state senators passed a law banning certain suspensions for students in preschool through second grade, except if a student brought a weapon to school. Sen. Terrell McKinney, a Black senator from Omaha, introduced and championed the original bill. His main argument was that a disproportionate number of Black students are suspended.

The Legislature recently changed that law to allow suspensions for violent behavior that could cause physical harm to others. Educators and school administrators have shared stories of students throwing furniture, hurting teachers or harming other students. However, some say the new law is too vague.

Walter Gilliam, executive director of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, said Black children are twice as likely to be suspended as white and Latino children in preschool, and boys are more than four times likely to be suspended.

“In some cases, children are sent home. In some cases, they're just sent to someplace else in the building,” Gilliam said. “But either way, it's a form of excluding a child from an educational opportunity.”

Gilliam has been studying preschool suspension and expulsion for more than 20 years. He said suspension and expulsion are associated with a greater likelihood of failing a grade later on, poor test scores, more behavior problems, dropping out of high school and incarceration.

He said no teacher wants to suspend a child, but sometimes, they feel like they have no options left.

“We're never going to have enough psychologists and social workers and behavioral health experts to help every single child who needs it, one child at a time,” Gilliam said. “We need to have ways in which these specialists can go into early childhood settings, in elementary schools and help a teacher with an individual child in a way that leaves behind skills that helps that teacher with each and every child in that classroom.”

It also helps the child when the parent and school have a strong relationship. That’s something Kathy Poehling, the Omaha Education Association president, said she wants to improve — more communication between schools and families.

“I don't want to go back to how it used to be, where we just suspend everybody for things,” Poehling said. “There really has to be a plan in place.”

She said teachers need more support to not only help those children, but also their peers, who may struggle to return to learning after they see their friends throw a chair or hurt their teacher. Poehling added that these situations also leave an impact on teachers, leading to some leaving the job.

“Most people go into the profession thinking, ‘I'm going to be able to teach kids how to read. I can't wait for that light bulb moment when they finally understand something, or they finally get something,’” Poehling said. “I just don't think teachers are feeling that way as much as they used to.”

Jack Moles, executive director of the Nebraska Rural Schools Community Association, said rural schools have even fewer resources. They don’t always have the staff or space to safely deescalate a situation at that moment.

“Very few teachers, principals, superintendents, SPED directors, whatever else, want to suspend a kindergarten or a first grader or a second grader,” Moles said. “They don't want to do that, but sometimes they have to have that in their tool bag to address it as well as they can, and, it's, in my observation, has always been a last resort.”

Moles said he’s seen classroom supplies or furniture destroyed, eyeglasses broken and teachers hurt.

“When I first started being an administrator, we didn't see those things,” Moles said. “By the time I was getting ready to retire, we were seeing them very frequently.”

Mitch Bartholomew, the York Public Schools superintendent, said suspension should only be used if there is an unsafe situation and in collaboration with the parents. For his district, they emphasize deescalation strategies first, ideally with the student’s teacher. If needed, the student may work with a school administrator or counselor.

“Sometimes we get in situations with students, no matter the age, that it's very obvious that for the safety of themselves, for the safety of other students, for the safety of our teaching staff, that a student may need to be removed from school,” Bartholomew said. “Now, when you're talking at a younger age, that means totally something different than when you're talking a 17-year-old.”

He added that the time at home should still be filled with educational activities while the school and family figure out the best way for that student to return to class.

“The obvious goal then is to get that student back in that classroom as soon as possible,” Bartholomew said. “That's really a conversation of, what does that look like at home for mom or dad, sitting down with the principal or assistant principal and working together to create that plan. Then as they come back, what is the transition plan coming back into it?”

Gilliam, with the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, said throughout his research, he’s never met a teacher who wants to suspend a child.

“I've met teachers who have said that they have cried over the decision to kick a child out of their classroom, and they ended up doing it because they had no other options. They were afraid that another child might get hurt,” Gilliam said. “No teacher should be put in a position where they have to make a Sophie's choice between a child and other children in their classroom.”

More funding for schools

In the past two years, the State Board of Education has deadlocked 4-4 on several mental health grants for schools. At its March meeting, board members failed to accept two federal grants that would have helped with recruiting and retaining school psychologists. In 2025, a state grant program for teacher mental health training also fell short.

Board members voting against the grants said they wanted to see more guardrails for mental health, while those voting in support said those guardrails are already there.

Anahi Salazar, director of education, health and economic stability at non-profit Voices for Children, said there needs to be more funding for schools to have counselors, mental health therapists and social workers, along with training teachers to be trauma-informed.

“I think those are all really pivotal in creating a safe village for students and families, but they also need to be compensated fairly,” Salazar said. “I think extra funding always helps retain those really qualified and important people in the education space that aren't just teachers.”

She said suspending kids can harm their relationship with the classroom and cause lifelong impacts.

“They learn that school just isn't for them from a young age, and so they take that in their trajectory throughout their education, and they drop out earlier, a lot of them encounter the youth justice system,” Salazar said. “It reaffirms what they internally are feeling, that they don't belong.”

Salazar pointed to restorative practices as the best way to help a student who has behavior challenges. For example, if a student flips a desk and is then escorted from class, the next step would be to talk with an adult about how they felt in that moment and why they flipped the desk. Then, they would talk through ways to avoid that behavior. Finally, there would be work to help the other students in the classroom understand what happened.

Concerns about vagueness

Joy Kathurima, legal and policy counsel at Omaha non-profit I Be Black Girl, said the new law leaves it up to teachers to decide what can be considered violent behavior.

“If we're saying violent behaviors are cussing, talking back, these types of things, it's like, okay, does out-of-school suspension solve that?” Kathurima said. “I think that's part of what we see as the concern is that depending on what the violent behaviors are, removing a child out of school doesn't necessarily resolve any violent behavior.”

She said it’s important for schools and families to have connections before the school year even starts. That way, if a behavior incident does happen, there’s already the relationship to help that child.

“I think that there is a desire for us, knowing how powerful education is for any community, but particularly for ours and the doors that it can open, and knowing that one good teacher can make such a difference in a child's life, but also knowing that negative experiences can also make a difference in how that child is viewing their value in society,” Kathurima said.

Although Powell’s sons are much older and won’t be impacted by the new law, she is worried it is too vague and will put families in the same spot she was in.

“Without that state policy, without us really, really saying this is what we believe and having preschool programs stick to that, I feel like you leave it to individual leaders to either do the right thing or not,” Powell said. “I feel like that's always going to create bias in the system.”

Powell said there was that need for resources and support back when her sons were being suspended 12 years ago.

“One of the teachers who was involved with my youngest son being suspended, about two years after 2014, she reached out to me and told me she had left the preschool, she was going to get a master's, and she was really trying to figure out how we do better by children, knowing that suspension wasn't going to be the answer,” Powell said.

Now, her sons barely remember the suspensions. Powell’s oldest son, JJ, is a chef and travels the world taking cooking classes. And her middle son, Joah, wrote a children’s book called “Books or Basketball.”

“They are absolutely thriving, and they're great, kind young men who are not in trouble,” Powell said. “I think that's important, because I feel like people have a tendency, and maybe it's just the adult thing, you want to rationalize why a kid was suspended. Tell me the bad thing that they did, so I can make it make sense in my head. The truth is, is that suspending three- and four-year-olds will never make sense.”