A recent report released by the Madison Metropolitan School District revealed several groups of non-white students were more likely to be suspended than white students in the 2012-’13 academic year.

During 2012-’13, African American students, who make up 19 percent of MMSD’s population, received 60 percent of the total out-of-school suspensions recorded, according to a behavior report compiled by the district. In comparison, white students, who make up 45 percent of the district population, received 15 percent of the out-of-school suspensions.

Dean Loumos, Madison Board of Education member and member of the district’s Code of Conduct ad hoc committee, said he, as well as other board members, are frustrated by the racial disparity reports. The entire board is taking the report very seriously, he said.

“It’s been infuriating for years, and I’m pretty sure the board, most of us, have various levels of fury around it,” Loumos said. “So this is a big issue that we are going to really, in the next several months, address very directly and seriously.”

This racial disparity in expulsions and suspensions has been a problem in the Madison School District for more than 10 years now, Loumos said.

Madison Board of Education members of the district met Monday to formally discuss the ways in which they will improve the current code of conduct.

Loumos said the board members spent hours during this meeting discussing what steps need to be taken in order for the district to completely rewrite its code of conduct.

“We just spent Monday night at a several hour meeting was the beginning of several months of ground work leading up towards a complete rewriting of our code of conduct and then the subsequent realigning of our behavioral practices,” Loumos said.

Board president Ed Hughes said the meeting was successful in beginning to generate ideas that will improve the district’s disciplinary code.

“We will revise our code of conduct to bring it more in harmony with the approach to student behavior that we have adopted over the years in our schools,” Hughes said. “It will have a different approach and it will emphasize teaching in interventions rather than exclusion and segregation and zero tolerance based policies.”

Hughes said the disciplinary code will likely change to focus on intervening with students instead of the exclusionary zero tolerance policies that are currently in place.

Loumos said the school district is inventing programs that will allow students to learn how to cope with their behavior if they were to get out of hand in school, instead of punishing them.

“We are not going to criminalize bad behavior,” Loumos said, “What I want to see done, my views, is that we keep our kids in school, develop programs that will walk people through and teach people how to deal with behavior that gets out of bounds.”

Loumos said these intervention and integration programs have been effective in other schools around the country and supported by experts.

Although each school will individually be in charge of implementing new disciplinary practices, this code of conduct change would apply to all schools in the District, Loumos said.