Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 6.

This bill revises and adds to the present law provisions governing student discipline under the Student and Employee Safe Environment Act of 1996, as discussed below. Present law requires each local board of education and charter school governing body to adopt a discipline policy to apply to the students in each school operated by the LEA or charter school governing body. This bill adds that the adopted discipline policy must align with the guidance and recommendations issued by the department of education pursuant to this bill, as discussed below in (1)(A)-(C). This bill also requires each local board of education and charter school governing body to submit a discipline policy that complies with the discipline policy requirements of the Act and requires the commissioner to review each policy submitted to ensure compliance. This bill requires the department of education to: (1) Issue guidance and recommendations to school districts to foster supportive and safe school climates and promote evidence-based discipline practices to keep children in school and reduce criminal justice involvement. Such guidance and recommendations must include: (A) Fostering positive school climates by: engaging the school community to identify school or LEA goals for a positive school climate, to complement the school's or LEA's academic goals; prioritizing the use of evidence-based prevention strategies; promoting social and emotional learning to complement academic skills and encourage positive behavior; providing regular training and supports to all school personnel on how to engage students and support positive behavior; collaborating with local mental health, child welfare, law enforcement, and juvenile justice agencies and other stakeholders to align resources, prevention strategies, and intervention services; and ensuring that a school resource officer's role focuses on improving school safety and reducing inappropriate referrals to law enforcement; (B) Providing clear, appropriate, and consistent expectations and consequences for student behavior, by: ensuring a school discipline policy that sets high expectations for behavior and adopts an instructional approach to school discipline; involving families, students, and school personnel in the development and implementation of discipline policies or codes of conduct, and communicating those policies regularly and clearly; ensuring that clear, developmentally appropriate, and proportional consequences apply for misbehavior; ensuring policies include appropriate procedures for students with disabilities and due process for all students; and removing students from the classroom only as a last resort, ensuring that any alternative settings provide students with academic instruction and return students to their regular class as soon as possible; and (C) Promoting equity and continuous improvement, by: training all school staff to apply school discipline policies and practices in a fair and equitable manner so as not to disproportionately impact students of color, students with disabilities, or at-risk students; and using proactive, data-driven, and continuous efforts to prevent, identify, reduce, and eliminate discriminatory discipline and unintended consequences; (2) Develop and make available to local boards of education and charter school governing bodies a grade-appropriate model school discipline policy that aligns with the guidance and standards issued pursuant to items (1)(A)-(C) above; (3) Provide training and professional development opportunities to assist local boards of education and charter school governing bodies with developing a discipline policy that aligns with the guidance and recommendations issued by the department pursuant to items (1)(A)-(C) above; (4) Annually collect and examine data regarding in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, school-based arrests, other in-school disciplinary actions, length of suspensions, suspension and expulsion rate, and percentage of students that experienced each type of discipline. This data must be disaggregated by school, LEA, race, ethnicity, gender, age, grade, students with disabilities, English language learners, and students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and the reason such discipline was imposed; and (5) Annually compare data and trends in state to available data from other states if feasible. For purposes of items (4) and (5) above, this bill requires the commissioner to submit a report to the governor and to the education committees of the senate and the house of representatives by January 15, 2023, and by January 15 each year thereafter. The full text of this bill details the requirements of such report, including the requirement that the report be posted on the department's website. This bill will take effect on January 1, 2022.