Sponsors (12)
The bill shifts K–12 discipline toward less exclusionary, more equitable, and more transparent practices—benefiting students (especially marginalized groups) and increasing federal enforcement and supports—but it brings substantial new reporting and implementation costs, privacy risks, and potential classroom‑safety and implementation challenges if funding, guidance, or safeguards are insufficient.
Students — especially girls of color, students of color, students with disabilities, and other marginalized groups — would face fewer suspensions, expulsions, and law‑enforcement referrals, reducing school pushout and the school‑to‑prison pipeline and keeping students in instructional time.
School discipline data would be expanded, disaggregated, and publicly reported (including multilingual and ADA‑accessible reports), enabling identification of disciplinary disparities and greater transparency for parents, communities, and policymakers.
The bill funds and encourages expansion of counselors, social workers, mentors, and mental‑health supports through grants and task‑force recommendations, increasing support services for students with trauma or behavioral health needs.
State and local school districts — and ultimately taxpayers — would face substantial new administrative, reporting, training, and compliance costs to collect, disclose, and act on expanded student discipline data and to implement required policy changes; the bill also authorizes $1B/year which could increase federal budget pressures if appropriated.
Expanded student‑level data collection and public reporting raises real privacy and confidentiality risks (including potential re‑identification) for students and families if de‑identification or FERPA protections are not fully effective.
Limits on exclusionary discipline, bans on hiring/retaining school‑based law enforcement with grant funds, and restrictions on surveillance tools may create classroom management and safety concerns among educators and parents if adequate alternative supports or guidance are not in place.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Mandates detailed federal data collection on exclusionary discipline, funds grants to replace punitive practices with trauma‑informed supports, bans certain exclusionary tactics for grant recipients, and forms a task force focused on pushout of girls of color.
Official title: To reduce exclusionary discipline practices in schools, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Ayanna Pressley · Last progress April 8, 2025
Creates new civil-rights and school-climate requirements to reduce exclusionary and discriminatory discipline in public preschool, elementary, and secondary schools. It requires annual, student‑level data collection on suspensions, expulsions, referrals, arrests, and lost instructional days; creates a competitive grant program (Healing School Climate Grants) to replace punitive practices with trauma‑informed supports; forms a joint Education‑HHS task force to study the “pushout” of girls of color; and authorizes $1 billion per year (split into two $500M authorizations) to carry out data collection, grants, and the task force work. The bill defines many discipline‑related terms, limits or bans specific practices for grant recipients (most out‑of‑school suspensions for younger grades, corporal punishment, seclusion, most mechanical/chemical restraints), sets conditions for allowed emergency physical restraints, requires public reporting of patterns of discriminatory discipline, and mandates accessibility, privacy, and multi‑language publication standards for reports and materials.