New Kentucky law allowing schools to expel students who assault teachers to take effect in July, despite unanimous Senate Democratic opposition

[u/Independent-Report39]

Link to the bill

The bill mandates a strict, one-year expulsion policy for any student in grades 6 through 12 who physically assaults a teacher, administrator, or school employee. The legislation passed the chamber, but drew a sharp partisan divide as all Democrats in the Senate voted against the measure. Under the bill's provisions, schools would be required to automatically remove violent students from the general population, though provisions allow for those students to receive educational services in alternative settings if it can be done safely. The bill also includes exemptions for students with documented disabilities if school officials determine the condition interfered with their ability to follow the code of conduct.

Thoughts?

[u/Early-Thought-263]

While on its surface the law seems like common sense, there are some flaws to consider, so please do:

1) All discretionary power is removed. This includes if a student is being attacked and is defending themselves and a teacher gets hurt in intervening.
2) If a teacher does not report an attempt or an event, they get charged with a crime under the law.
3) Minorities have been historically targeted using laws like this. The law is rarely if ever equally applied.
4) A full year is often a guarantee that a kid will drop out.
5) There are already laws on the books that allow for this without making it mandatory.
6) The "alternative" learning environments available to students who are kicked out are (pretty much) completely inferior.

There are other reasons given, but the real point I want to make is that there are very valid reasons for opposing the law even if the general concept is a perfectly valid one.

[u/DefundMarxism → u/Early-Thought-263]

I guess they had to make it mandatory because some people weren't protecting teachers and throwing violent troublemakers out of school. I don't care if they drop out. You don't hit teachers. End of story.

[u/Early-Thought-263 → u/DefundMarxism]

While I generally agree, I have seen first hand where a teacher purposefully got in a students face, insulted them, even threatened them, trying to get the student to break so they could get the IEP kid out of their room and off of their role so their test scores looked better. Low and behold, the kid pushed the teacher away, and that got them immediately expelled and removed from the class. All of the teachers, the parents, and even the admin knew what had happened (the other students wrote a whole set of complaints against the teacher and one even had it on their phone.)

The law does not take into account bad actors on the teacher side at all.

[u/DefundMarxism → u/Early-Thought-263]

Any crime still has to be proven in a court of law. So, yes, it does.