HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A Pennsylvania house bill proposes to do away with out-of-school suspensions for elementary school students.
Two states representatives who sponsored the bill believe the suspensions create more problems than would be solved.
The bill in question is House Bill 715. It proposes to ban out-of-school suspensions for kindergarten through fifth-grade students for minor disobedience or misconduct.
Some ask for a better solution to disciplining kids than giving students who misbehave a day of from school with a suspension.
Tenth grade student Sadira McClean said "I've been suspended many times in elementary school, it was hard for me to catch up, my grades started slipping a little bit, but I learned to behave."
State representative Jordan Harris believes the suspensions do more harm than good.
Rep Jordan Harris (D-Philadelphia) said "because of the missed days of school, they miss out on education. Because of the education that they miss, they fall behind. Because they fall behind, many of them drop out of school. When you drop out of school, we know that they usually drop into our criminal justice system."
It's why Rep. Harris, along with Rep. Jake Wheatley (D-ALLEGHENY), co-sponsored HB 715.
"We're talking about seven and eight-year-olds, who get into minor altercations. A nine-year-old who didn't wear a uniform. A six-year-old who pulled out a cell phone," Harris said.
Students, parents, and other advocates against suspensions weren't the only ones speaking out about their own experiences. Harris is a former teacher himself.
"I was giving a student detentions, and things of that nature. I was going to suspend this kid, because they weren't doing their homework, until I found out the reason the student wasn't doing their homework was because they didn't have electricity in their house. When they went home at night, they couldn't do their homework, because there were no lights," Harris said.
Wheatley suggests administrators find more creative ways to keep kids in school rather than pushing them out.
Rep. Jake Wheatley said "we need to really consider, the wholeness of the child, what's best, and how best to treat and to address whatever is causing the child to act out, and to positively enforce and reinforce behaviors while they're still in a learning environment."
"If kids stop getting suspended a lot, they will be able to have a good future," McClean said.
Harris and Wheatley said kids aren't the only ones who suffer.
They said when administrators suspend a student, they also suspend the parent who will have to stay home with their kids.
Harris added that a parent taking time off from work could lead to lost wages, and more problems at home for the student, as well as his or her family.