Teacher's Bill of Rights | Senate Bill 611

    As reported by wsaw.com's coverage of a public hearing, State Senator of Wisconsin District 19, covering a portion of NJSD, Rachael Cabral-Guevara authored Senate Bill 611 which "would allow teachers to remove students from classrooms if they disrupt class for more than 10 minutes and notify other students’ parents about the incidents. The bill would also protect teachers from being terminated for enforcing classroom rules."  Folks opposing the bill point out that it would be ripe for abuse where special needs children may be removed from classrooms.  

    Below I share my process about how I consume this information.  The questions below are mostly asked, and minimally answered, in this blog post.  Rather than seeking a "strident support for" or "strong opposition to" perspective on the bill, I want to use these questions related to this article to explore my own understandings, and perspectives.

• How should I think about this bill?
• How else could I think about this bill?
• What societal problem is it addressing?
• How is it addressing that societal problem?
• What other methods for addressing this problem have been considered?
• What do our NJSD teachers, principals and other in-district staff think about legislation like this?
• What do our NJSD constituents think about legislation like this?
• Would I support this legislation?

How should I think about SB 611?

    As an NJSD board member, I remind myself of three tenets tethering my decision-making: social stewardship, humility and intellectual integrity.

• Social Stewardship
• Our teachers deserve to work in a safe environment.  
• It is saddening and frightening to hear, as Senator Cabral-Guevara describes, that this bill is for "the teacher who’s wearing gloves to their classroom because they are bitten numerous times over and over again and it hasn’t been addressed."  Teaching should not be a profession that may require hazard pay for the physical danger it presents.
• Our special needs children are required to receive a free appropriate education alongside their non-disabled peers.  
• Examples given in testimony in the public hearing included one in which a man pointed out that the bill doesn't protect a special needs child from being bullied to the point of outburst, resulting in the teacher's exercising of their right to remove the child.
• How can our teacher's safety be assured whilst ensuring our most challenging students are provided the free appropriate education written into law?
• Does the teacher's 'individual right' to remove the offending student best assure the teacher's safety?
• How would we arbitrate a situation where a teacher exercised the right by removing a special needs child, and then parents or administration dispute the teacher?
• Humility
• My understanding of special needs children is quite broad.  It seems that they could range from students who are mildly distractible and being granted accommodations to re-take tests all the way to non-verbal autistic and other significant cognitive disabilities.  The categories for special ed given by DPI are as follows:
• Autism | 9.9% of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Blind and Visually Impaired
• Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• Deafblind
• Emotional Behavioral Disability | 8.6% of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Intellectual Disability | 25.0%* of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Orthopedic Impairment
• Other Health Impairment | 15.7% of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Significant Developmental Delay | 9.3% of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Specific Learning Disabilities
• Speech and Language | 26.8% of Special Education Students at NJSD
• Traumatic Brain Injury

*The NJSD statistic referenced "Learning Disability" as opposed to DPI's categorization of "Intellectual Disability" which I decided to consider the same across sources.  There were a few more categorizations in NJSD's statistics which I took some discretion to map to what I thought the appropriate DPI categorization would be.   The statistics for NJSD come from the material available for the February 3rd, 2026 NJSD Board Meeting.

• It seems to me that I carry many unknown unknowns about special ed and how it has come about, how it is being implemented and the challenges that it presents our communities.  At the February 3rd, 2026 NJSD School Board meeting the NJSD Director of Special Education will present an Overview of the Program to the board.  
• In the article, it says:
• Senator Cabral-Guevara says that “People are continuing to bring up the issue, but it is not being addressed because of fear of folks being upset or angry.”   But what does she mean by "the issue"?  The article's reporting leads me to think that she is identifying "violent or disruptive students" or maybe "protection from" said students.
• I think I really need to understand what the lawmaker here has identified as the issue and why she believes this bill, in its current form best addresses that issue.
• How does she respond to concerns that special ed kids will be more easily barred from their education? 
• Intellectual Integrity
• Why is Senator Cabral-Guevara authoring this legislation?  
• Why isn't this being addressed at school board levels?  
• Is it appropriate/right/good/desirable to have a state lawmaker putting forth this kind of thing?  
• Is this an example of school boards losing power to the state?
• Where/when do we want to retain local authority about what happens inside our public school classrooms?
• Where/when do our students and community benefit from the state or federal government's involvement?
• Who else should I get perspective from?
• Maybe...
• Teachers
• Administrators
• Parents (of both, non-disabled and disabled)
• Students (if possible)

    I could also try to think about this bill from the perspective of me, the parent of two non-disabled children.  

• From a narrow-minded perspective I could defend supporting the bill on the basis that my children should not have to have their educational experience diminished by the misbehavior of other students.  Teachers-- the literal adults in the room-- should be empowered to clear the classroom of disruptions without fear of serious career consequences.
• I say this is narrow-minded because while it may have a benefit for my girls in the short term, I think it is too narrow in consideration to fathom how anyone else outside my family may experience the bill.
• I think this is an important point as I aspire to be a school board member who is taking in many stakeholders viewpoints to inform decision making; I cannot allow myself to be lulled into simplistic conclusions because of their simplicity.  My family, by itself, is pretty simple; remove all the disruptions from the classroom pronto!  But, it's rather selfish to not consider others, and the sum total of selfish perspectives are not likely to yield policies and laws that protect non-majoritarians.

How else could I think about SB 611?

    Someday I'll be having dinner parties with people who like discussing and debating this stuff.  At that time they'll be fueling my perspective growth.  Until then, I have this blog where I shadow box myself intellectually in the hopes that I cultivate a bit of wisdom to bring to the table.

What societal problem is SB 611 addressing?

• My attempt at steel-manning Senator Cabral-Guevara's perspective:  
• Many teachers do their jobs in fear of physical danger from disruptive and violent students.  Many students' educational experiences are diminished by the unaddressed presence of disruptive and violent students.  Teachers ability to address the disruptive and violent students (by removing them from a classroom) is frustrated by "fear of folks being upset or angry" and potential career consequences.  To address the physical danger, and educational diminishment associated with disruptive and violent students, the state aims to pass SB611 to empower, assure and protect teachers, who want to take the situation into their own hands, that they have rights that they can exercise in their classroom without fear of repercussions from parents and administrators. 
• My diagnosis of the societal problem:
• Managing classrooms is hard!  
• Classroom students are not a designed optimal group.  In private businesses, we reserve the right to hire and fire employees almost willy nilly until we land on a team dynamic that we're satisfied with.  The backgrounds, perspectives, attitudes and abilities of the team hired are calibrated for the purpose.  But a public school classroom is nothing like that.  Public school students come from varied backgrounds, with diverse perspectives, attitudes and abilities.  In fact, the only thing that they inherently have in common is their geography (which can extend into cultural and community commonality to certain degrees).  This group of students has not been recruited for what they bring to the classroom in any way that may be compared to hiring a team calibrated to purpose.  Instead, the students' variability is multi-dimensional, reflecting the society that we share.  Their backgrounds, outside of school, vary across means and attitudes, sometimes in starkly opposing ways.
• Means
• How varied are the students access to basics like nutritious meals and safe places to sleep well?
• How varied are the students access to academic resources (e.g broadband internet, devices, books, quiet safe places to study)?
• How varied are the students access to helpful adults?
• Helpful, with regards to capability to help students away from school.
• Helpful, with regards to availability to help students away from school.
• Helpful, with regards to intent to help with...
• Academics
• Behavior
• Character
• How varied are students' exposure to...
• Phone screens
• TV
• Social Media
• Attitudes
• Do students come from family and community that...
• ...believe education is/is not important?
• ...believe teachers are/are not to be respected?
• ...schools are/are not working in good faith for their students?
• ...generally trusts/distrusts local institutions (school, police, government etc.).
• It seems to me that when we send our kiddos to public school, we are sending them to the kind of varied real-world local community that isn't so easily available to ourselves in adulthood.
• Teachers have varied expectations to fulfill.  
• Academic:  In the wide spectrum of student abilities that the teacher has to work with, there are curriculum expectations that need to be fulfilled.  The teacher cannot move through material too quickly at risk of leaving behind weaker students.  The teacher cannot move too slowly at risk of not covering all the material.
• In loco parentis:  Teachers-- schools generally-- are in place of parents during school hours.  Beyond teaching the kids academic skills, schools are expected to protect students, and this can include feeding or even clothing students in need.  Unlike a college classroom, teachers are having to view their classrooms from a perspective of protectorate which has implications on how they approach their jobs.  
• Special needs accommodations and modifications:  Beyond viewing the students as their temporary wards, and also as their not-necessarily-motivated recipients of curricula, the teachers need to have a nuanced understanding of how to adapt their delivery methods to individualized requirements per students' needs.  To my process-oriented mindset, this is a total efficiency killer from a teacher perspective in that there is-- by law-- the requirement to individualize, rather than rely on a general, delivery method of content.

    I don't mean to boil the issue down to a simple declarative "Managing classrooms is hard!" as being dismissive of Senator Cabral-Guevara's bill.  I'd expect her to respond by saying that, yes, the job is hard, but teachers should have the right to course correct their classroom by removing a student for excessively disruptive behavior, for the sake of safety and quality of educational experience.  

How is SB 611 addressing that societal problem?

• Individual empowerment.  Primarily, as I understand it, SB 611 is simply granting legal protections for teachers who decide that-- enough is enough-- this student needs to be removed from the classroom.  It is in effect empowering the individual teacher to take action without certain fears of repercussion.  
  

What other methods for addressing this problem have been considered?

• I don't know, but my intuition leans towards it being a multi-faceted solution.  Simply bestowing an individual teacher with these rights only empowers them in the face of classroom management crisis to react strongly.  And where do those kicked out students go?  The school cannot open the front door and simply say farewell to the student.  So what's next?
• As long as our public schools are the place where our varied communities send young students for 'free appropriate education', we need to be clear-eyed about what that appropriate education looks like for all of the students.  In public school settings, we don't have the option to truly kick any student out.

What do our NJSD teachers, principals and other in-district staff think about legislation like this?

• I don't know, but I'll be asking around.

What do our NJSD constituents think about legislation like this?

• I'm not sure.  I will be asking about that.  I sent a couple friends who work in nearby school districts the article and asked about what they thought about the legislation.  Here's what they said:

Would I support this legislation?

    I'm open to hearing people's thoughts about it, and reserving the right to update my perspective, but at the moment I don't think I would support this legislation.  In this case I'm in favor of leaving it to the school district, and not the state, to insert itself in how to manage classrooms.  While I do think that this bill is a good faith effort at addressing a real world issue, I don't think a state law enshrining the teacher's right to remove is the best method.  I don't know what I think the best method is, yet.  I do think the bill raises awareness that our societal challenges are seeped into classrooms where the varied expectations of all parties create challenges for everyone.  But, I don't think that those challenges, manifest in classroom management, are well addressed by SB 611.  

    I am open and eager to hear what others have to think about these kinds of things.  Post on this blog, or email me and let's talk about it!