Have you ever wondered how many students get suspended in a school year or what is the most common reason why students get suspended? In the school year of 2013-2014, 504 students had been suspended and for a bunch of different reasons. Here at West High, students get suspended for many things like failure to serve, disruptive behavior and using drugs or alcohol at school.

Mrs. Jennifer Ehrheart, the Discipline/Student Services Principal, says that the most common in school suspensions this year are for failure to serve, which means they got a detention for being late to class, and they didn’t serve it or try to work it out with the security guards.

The most common out of school suspension are drug offenses and fights. Another common suspension is when students repeat their disruptive behavior multiple times that cause them a suspension.

“The craziest thing that someone has done to get suspended in my whole career is someone pulled a knife on me,” Ehrheart said. She said she had no idea what to do but scream asking for help. She was lucky enough the security guards were able to come and arrest the kid so this student never injured her. Situations like that are very rare.

A student at West High, Allie, has been suspended for being highly intoxicated at a school dance, got an out of school suspension for 10 days, but she took a drug class at Volunteers of America “VOA” and was only suspended for five days. Not only was the school involved in her suspension but the cops were involved as well. She ended up getting an MIC and had a probation officer for 10 months with having to make a $100 payment to the state, $10 each month. Since she was at her VOA class, she didn’t get to stay home like the rest of the kids do when they get an out of school suspension.

After those five long days of classes at VOA, she came back to school and ended up having to give a speech to her student government class saying how she disrespected student government, then got kicked out of the class. She said no other teacher really treated her different when she got back to school. Allie says, “it was definitely a learning experience and I would never do it again.”

Another student at West High, Isaac, has been suspended twice for different reasons. The first time was for jumping on another students back because that kid had stolen the football Isaac was using. The second time he got suspended was for stealing a pipe cleaner from a classroom. They were both in school suspensions for just a day.

The first time Isaac got suspended he was so worried because he thought his parents were going to get mad and be disappointed in him, turns out they weren’t even that mad because they know that he is a good kid and that he had learned from his mistake. The second time the school didn’t even call his parents; still to this day they don’t know that he got suspended a second time.

Isaac claims that the first time getting suspended was fair but  “the second time I didn’t think so, I stole about two pipe cleaners and that’s it.” Isaac’s suspensions weren’t that big of a deal but they were for sure a learning experience for him.

There are so many different reasons why students get suspended. If its failure to serve, disruptive behavior or using drugs at school, 504 students in a school year is a lot of students being suspended