By Bruce Barton

In the wake of the recent successful appeal of an expulsion, trustees and administrators in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District are rethinking their process for punishing students, but trustees said the district is determined to keep its hard-line approach.

Following a case in which four Mountain View High School seniors who vandalized facilities had their expulsions overturned, trustees are expected to move forward on Superintendent Rich Fischer’s recommendation to create an administrative panel to conduct expulsion hearings. Up until now, board members conducted such hearings themselves. The board is expected to approve a recommendation at its May 9 meeting.

It was at such a hearing that the district expelled the four boys after a December senior prank in which 80 classroom locks were filled with glue and a wall was defaced with graffiti, causing $2,000 damage. The parents of one of the boys appealed to the county board. The board upheld the appeal, saying the school board did not prove the boy represented a threat to himself or to others. That prompted the district, last month, to overturn the expulsions of the three other boys.

District officials are proposing a panel after discovering other districts used a hearing officer or administrative panel in their expulsion processes. Fischer noted the panel relieves the board of the time-consuming task of hearing cases themselves.

“Our practice has the additional drawback that in the case of a dispute, the family has no other recourse but to appeal the expulsion to the County Board of Education instead of requesting a hearing with the district’s board,” Fischer wrote to trustees at their April 11 meeting.

Fischer is recommending an “impartial administrative panel composed of three or more certified personnel, none of whom shall be members of the board or on the staff of the school in which the student is enrolled.”

Whether heard on appeal or not, the final action to expel must be taken by the board at a public meeting.

“We want to make our expulsions essentially appeal-proof,” said board member Phil Faillace. Such senior pranks involving vandalism will warrant automatic suspensions (five days from school) and a loss of all senior privileges, Faillace said. These privileges include participation in commencement exercises and parties.

In the case of an expulsion, trustees said they need to determine whether other means of punishment have been tried or are feasible, in addition to the education code’s litmus test of a student being a threat to self and others. Faillace said these issues have to be determined in communicating directly with both involved students and parents.

Faillace and fellow trustee Susan Sweeley were quick to point out the district will continue to come down hard on vandalizing senior pranksters.

In 1997, Los Altos High senior pranksters dumped a car into the school’s swimming pool, causing an algae problem and essentially rendering it unusable. Vandals struck again in 2000 shortly after a new pool was opened.

“Senior pranks almost always involve something destructive,” Faillace said. “What about a ‘Senior Thanks’ day where they do something for the community, instead of a senior prank day?”