Zero-tolerance policies in public schools are pushing up the numbers of student expulsions in Orange County, straining the capacity of the county's alternative schools to educate those teenagers.
Enrollment in such programs, which include continuation schools, single-sex academies and detention centers, has more than doubled in the last four years. Educators said they are scrambling for classroom space in office buildings and storefronts to adapt to the growth.
Some of the increase in students can be attributed to the overall growth in the student population, which is inflating enrollments at every school. In addition, school administrators increasingly embrace nontraditional ways of educating public schoolchildren with academic or behavioral problems.
But most of the enrollment growth in the alternative schools has been created by the dramatic increase in expulsions from others. The number rose 31% in a single year, from 642 in the 1996-97 school year to 843 in the 1997-98 school year, county figures show. When students are expelled from their local school, they frequently are transferred to a continuation school or are sent to county-run alternative programs, which have smaller classes and emphasize independent study and vocational training.
Expulsion rates are being driven up by so-called zero-tolerance policies heralded by school districts in the last two years for keeping drugs, alcohol and weapons off campus. In the last month, for example, 12 students in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District were punished for violating zero-tolerance policies; six were expelled from the district.
"It's obvious that the zero-tolerance policy is referring more students" to alternative schools, said Ken Williams, a member of the Orange County Board of Education. "We're seeing growth in enrollment, and we're having trouble finding sites to run our programs."
An estimated 13,000 students were enrolled in county alternative education programs in September 1994. By the end of this school year, the number will be nearly 30,000. While those statistics include a rise in home-taught students and charter-school enrollees unrelated to expulsions, administrators said the numbers mainly reflect stepped-up school-safety measures.
And they don't expect the skyrocketing enrollments to flatten any time soon.
"It's a growing problem that's going to grow all over the place," said Ted Price, Orange County's director of alternative programs. "There's going to be more of these programs and more of these students."
