Alison Hudnall got to Northridge High School in Tuscaloosa City within 20 minutes of finding out that her son had been suspended for a fight.

The fight was her son’s first disciplinary infraction and no one was injured. He’d otherwise been a straight A student and member of the track team. According to the school district’s code of conduct, a first fighting offense where no one is hurt is punishable with up to five days of suspension.

But Alison’s son was given a different punishment – 90 days of alternative school.

“I was shocked,” Alison said. “We have always parented from a place of logical consequences and it’s really hard for me to explain from a logical standpoint why this punishment was given when school policy says something else.”

Read more Ed Lab coverage:

• Alabama schools report more fights, threats, guns. But it’s complicated.
• Does your Alabama school have a discipline problem? See the data here.

How are fights reported?

In a parent meeting, Northridge Principal James Evans told the Hudnalls he classifies all fighting under offense 3.99, which is defined in the code of conduct as “any other offense that the principal may deem reasonable to fall within this category after investigation and consideration of all relevant circumstances.”

But the district has two fighting offenses clearly outlined in its code of conduct.

The intermediate-level fighting classification lists in-school suspension, denial of bus privileges, extended work assignments or suspension for one to five school days as possible consequences.

The major classification, which should be used when there is a serious injury, lists the same consequences and also includes expulsion or referral to alternative school following a disciplinary hearing.

In an audio recording of the parent meeting reviewed by AL.com, Evans said that although his policy isn’t written in the code of conduct, students should be well aware of it.

“The number of times we’ve told kids about this procedure, that if you fight you will be recommended [ to alternative school], I say it from day one, I say it on the intercom consistently and if [your son] never heard that I would be shocked,” Evans said.

Evans, who became principal at Northridge in 2019, said he uses the tactic to help eliminate fighting, and it has been supported by the district and adopted by other high schools in Tuscaloosa City.

“When we went to the aspect of fighting, and Tuscaloosa City saw how those kinds of situations went almost to minimal, this summer they told [secondary principals] that if there’s a fight we’re going to do it the same way because it has helped Northridge’s fighting and we want to help Central and Bryant do the same thing. So we went to the 3.99, which is principal discretion,” Evans said in an audio recording reviewed by AL.com.

When category 3.99 offenses are reported to the state in Student Incident Reports – reports compiled by schools every year to document disciplinary infractions – they are marked as “other incidents resulting in a state-defined disciplinary action” instead of as fighting.

As a result, it’s hard to tell how many fights actually occur in a school or district – and whether incidents are treated equally.

The Alabama State Department of Education’s manual on behavioral interventions and supports says the ‘other’ category should be limited and only used when an offense does not fall within the 57 listed infractions tracked by the state.

The Department of Education did not respond to questions about how schools should report disciplinary infractions.

Tuscaloosa City Schools said educators are dealing with higher levels of behavioral issues since the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, 84% of public schools report negative behavioral impacts among students from the pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

An AL.com analysis of Student Incident Reports found that Tuscaloosa City’s number of reported fights have gone up in recent years, despite Evans’ claim that his policy helped make them “almost minimal.”

So have reported infractions of “other incidents resulting in a state-defined disciplinary action.”

Northridge reported two fights in 2018 and 21 in 2021. The school reported 16 ‘other incidents’ in 2018 and 365 in 2021, the highest number of any high school in the state.

Statewide, AL.com found that officials chose that code more than 17,300 times to report infractions during the 2021-22 school year, the latest year data is available. During the 2018-19 school year – which was the last full school year before the pandemic impacted school attendance – the ‘other incidents’ code was used 13,300 times.

In 2021, ‘other incidents’ was the most reported infraction type in the state and in 2022 it was second.

Evans said that his school only uses the 3.99 “other” infractions code for fighting, in the audio recording. But it is not clear how other school districts in the state use the ‘other’ code in their reporting.

See how the use of the “other incidents” code has changed over time in the chart below. If the interactive graphic does not play, see it here.

Evans told the Hudnalls that he has used a zero-tolerance rule for fighting since his time as a principal at Rome High School in Rome, Georgia.

“When I came here as principal in 2019, I told my supervisor what I had done my previous high school that was in Georgia: If we have fights, let kids know we refer them to alternative school because we think it’s a very serious thing,” Evans said in the recording.

“We had that [rule] over there and no more fighting…because kids like coming to school. They like being with their friends, a lot of kids like coming here to eat – to be honest with you this is where they get some meals, you know? To say hey guys if you fight, it’s 10 days [in suspension], for some that don’t matter. But with the alternative school, that matters.”

A 2014 article in The Atlantic followed a freshman at Evans’ school in Georgia who was placed in alternative school after a fight.

While at alternative school, the 14-year-old student was cited for missteps such as talking out of turn or violating the dress code, according to The Atlantic, which ultimately caused her to spend the whole year there. When she returned to high school, she said she struggled to pass the subjects she once excelled at.

“My whole life has been affected by a fight that I was in when I was 14,” she told The Atlantic in 2014. “It’s not something that you can take back and not something that was premeditated, and I still have to deal with the consequences every day.”

The American Psychological Association found in a 2008 report that zero tolerance policies are not effective in schools, and that instead of reducing the likelihood of disruption, policies like suspensions only predict higher rates of misbehavior, suspension, school dropouts and failure to graduate on time.

Tuscaloosa City Schools did not comment on the practices at Northridge, specifically, but did note that their policy gives principals discretion in school discipline matters.

“Tuscaloosa City Schools takes all fighting incidents seriously. While some fights are more severe than others, it is our belief that fighting is unacceptable at any school,” a district spokeswoman said in a statement to AL.com. “Sometimes, principals may classify an incident as “other,” after investigation of the circumstance, according to our Code of Conduct. Classifying an incident as “other” is left to the principal’s discretion when they deem necessary.”

Evans did not separately respond to questions from AL.com.

Is Alabama’s school discipline process fair?

Advocates and experts say they have concerns about how schools in Alabama classify and subsequently handle discipline issues.

“It’s meant to be confusing, because it makes it harder to identify, frankly, illegal patterns that are really discriminatory,” Carey Andrzejewski, professor in the College of Education at Auburn University, said about schools’ use of the ‘other’ category to classify more and more incidents.

Andrzejewski published a book, The Grammar of School Discipline, on school discipline in Alabama last year along with Auburn associate professor Hannah Carson Baggett. They found some schools’ use of subjective discipline policies and categories, like the use of the ‘other’ category, led to disproportionate rates of removal of Black students from schools.

According to Andrzejewski, other subjective infractions include disobedience, defiance of authority and disruptive demonstrations – all behaviors that are left up to the interpretation of adults.

“There’s strong evidence nationally and within the state that it’s within subjective infractions where we see race-based disparities…where a lot of bias and prejudice is showing up in school discipline policy and practice. And in Alabama, there are a lot of exclusionary consequences for subjective incidents,” Andrzejewski said.

Not only was the ‘other’ code one of the leading infractions reported by schools statewide since 2013, but it also was the leading cause of expulsions in 2019 and resulted in the most time spent in alternative schools.

Exclusionary actions like expulsion can have long-term impacts on students, research shows, even leading to lower expected lifetime earnings and higher risk of poverty, as well as mental health impacts such as anxiety and depression.

In the case of the Hudnalls, the family felt that the categorization of their son’s fight as ‘other,’ and the ensuing punishment, was both subjective and a due process violation.

Alabama is one of the only states in the country to not have a student due process law, although some protections are in the federal constitution.

“Instead what we have in Alabama is each school system essentially gets to make up their own rules regarding not only due process, but also regarding the steps to appeal, disciplinary procedures and really what the disciplinary procedures are in themselves,” said Rachel Blume, the attorney for the Hudnalls in their appeal against Tuscaloosa City Schools.

“So what this does is creates an arbitrary and capricious way of determining what discipline is going to be classified as and also what punishments are going to be doled out.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed lawsuits against multiple school boards in Alabama on behalf of students who, advocates say, were subjected to exclusionary discipline without getting the chance to adequately represent themselves.

“Courts have said we’ll give you discretion to create school discipline policies, but then you need to follow the written policies you have established,” said Mike Tafelski, senior attorney in the SPLC’s children’s rights division.

“I think that if schools used that ‘other’ category to charge students in a way that is inconsistent with their own policies, then [students] would have a good claim that any expulsion was unlawful and due process was violated.”

State Sen. Rodger Smitherman has filed a bill to codify student due process protections in Alabama every year since 2020. But it has so far failed to pass the legislature.

“We need a uniform system of expectations just like we have with our penal code in the state,” said Smitherman. “If you commit a particular offense, it doesn’t matter what county you’re in, the same law and the same process and procedures apply. With students, we see the disparity in the implementation of due process.”

Smitherman said he plans to refile the bill in the upcoming legislative session.

The SPLC says that along with Smitherman’s bill to provide a uniform system of due process, schools across the state need to be focused on alternatives to exclusionary discipline – a task made harder by the practice of reporting definable infractions as “other.”

“How can we ever find solutions that will proactively reduce those instances from occurring? I think what happens with ‘other’ is it becomes this sort of bucket that we throw these infractions into, but nobody ever really knows what’s in there and nobody knows what’s really going on,” Tafelski said.

Policy change discussion

Tuscaloosa City Schools told AL.com that they use student discipline data to develop positive behavior support plans and to identify and help students that have at-risk behaviors.

The city’s Board of Education will consider a measure at its March 7 meeting to have all fighting infractions, including the intermediate-level offense, go before the Disciplinary Review Committee.

The district said the measure adds an extra level of investigation before administrative responses are determined. TCS policy, however, does not allow attorneys at the hearings.

“This does not mean all fights are the same or that an intermediate-level offense will be treated the same as a major offense,” the district said of the move in a statement to AL.com. “That is not the case. This is not a zero-tolerance policy. It only means that all fights, regardless of severity, will have the ability to go before the Discipline Review Committee to be thoroughly considered.”

After an appeal, the Hudnalls’ son only served three days out of school suspension.

But his parents say they remain concerned for the hundreds of other students who get punished under the other classification and may not have the resources to fight for a different outcome.

“I’m sure they backed off because we have the resources and privilege to fight them. But that’s not the case for a lot of these other kids, and we are going to continue to speak up on their behalf,” said Alison.

Reporter Trisha Powell Crain contributed to this story.