Proposal could make it easier to expel HISD students

07:41 PM CDT on Sunday, June 26, 2005

By Amy Tortolani / 11 News

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HOUSTON -- It's summer vacation for students, but the Houston Independent School District is hard at work on a tougher code of conduct for the upcoming year.

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If approved the proposal would allow HISD to automatically expel any student who makes a hit list.

Simply put, it makes it simpler to expel students.

Before all the students within the Houston Independent School District walk the hallways again, HISD wants a new, tougher conduct code in place.

"And we'll continue to make the code of student conduct tougher when we find the need to do that," said Terry Abbott, HISD spokesman.

There are three parts to this proposal.

If approved it would allow HISD to automatically expel any student who makes a hit list.

The district is also asking the board to allow expulsion of any student who recruits and directs gang members while he or she acts as the boss.

And lastly, HISD wants to combat high-tech cheating.

"As camera phones become more and more common, what we've heard from some teachers is that kids will actually use their camera phones to take a picture of a test and e-mail the answers to someone else across the room," Abbott said.

That too could get a student kicked out of school.

Andy Dewey, former Vice President of the Teachers Union, thinks the idea is great, but said it must be implemented. "Where the teachers might be distrustful of it are areas where they have been distrustful in the past. Is the administration going to back me up on this, is this perceived of being another paper policy"

The district said the proposal came from a committee of principals, teachers and administrators.

The HISD School Board will discuss the proposal on Monday at the administration building, but it will not be voted on until Thursday.

If passed, it would go into effect at the start of the school year.