By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to reinstate “common sense” school discipline, more states may follow and expand the authority of teachers and school officials to deal with disruptive students.

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The order, signed in April, repeals prior federal guidance that encouraged schools to address racial disparities in discipline, arguing that such policies promoted “discriminatory equity ideology” and compromised school safety by pressuring administrators to underreport serious student misconduct.

In some states, new legislation already is trending toward giving teachers more authority to address student misbehavior.

In West Virginia, for example, a new law creates a structured process for responding to violent, threatening or disruptive behavior among students in grades K-6.

Under the law, a student exhibiting such behavior can be immediately removed from class, evaluated by counselors or behavioral specialists and placed on an individualized behavior plan. If there’s no improvement after two rounds of intervention, the student could be moved into a behavioral intervention program or an alternative learning environment.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, and supporters say the law empowers teachers to maintain safe classrooms.

“This legislation provides teachers with the tools to regain control of the classroom and ensure safe learning environments for our kids,” Morrisey said at the bill’s signing.

In April, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill referred to as the “Teacher’s Bill of Rights” with a bipartisan vote of 124-20.

That bill, now sitting in the Senate’s education committee, would significantly expand the grounds for out-of-school suspensions, allowing students to be suspended for repeated disruptions or threats beginning in third grade. It would reverse earlier changes that limited suspensions for younger students. It also would mandate that students making terroristic threats or assaulting school employees be placed in alternative education programs for at least 30 days.

Texas civil rights groups argue that the bill would impose a one-size-fits-all punitive approach, rather than addressing students’ developmental and behavioral needs.

Alycia Castillo, associate director of policy at the Texas Civil Rights Project and a former teacher, said state lawmakers are taking the wrong approach by mandating sweeping discipline policies for a state as diverse as Texas.

During the 2020-21 school year, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Department of Education, Black students faced the highest rates of disciplinary action across all categories — suspension and expulsion — among all racial and ethnic groups.

They were 39% more likely than white students to receive in-school suspensions, 70% more likely to face out-of-school suspensions, and 71% more likely to be expelled.

The disparities were even starker for Black students with disabilities, who experienced suspension and expulsion rates far exceeding those of both their white peers and non-disabled students.

Reviving old, harsh disciplinary policies risks disproportionately harming students of color, students with disabilities and those from low-income backgrounds, Castillo said.

“What works in Austin may not work in West Texas,” Castillo said.

“Children are naturally disruptive — that’s part of their development,” she added. “Excluding them only harms their growth into functional adults.”

Restorative justice models

In recent years, some other states have passed laws promoting restorative practices in schools, in which students and teachers work through problems and focus on repairing the harm caused by disruptions or conflict.

Michigan’s 2017 law requires schools to consider restorative approaches before suspensions or expulsions, aiming to repair harm rather than exclude students. Nevada began mandating restorative justice approaches in 2019, but scaled back that approach in 2023.

This year, Maryland passed a law requiring the state to establish “restorative practices schools,” specific schools with trained educators who use the approach in everyday discipline.

Kimberly Hellerich, an assistant professor at Sacred Heart University and a former K-12 teacher, said discipline policies should go beyond punitive measures to foster accountability and community healing.

“Adding restorative practices to accompany codes of conduct can allow students to recognize the impact of their actions on themselves, peers, the teacher, the class and the school community,” Hellerich said.

In her own classrooms, Hellerich used what she called “community circles” to guide students in processing behavior, offering apologies and rebuilding trust. “The apology served as a way to restore the student’s relationship with the entire class community,” she said.

Calls for a cultural shift on expectations

While lawmakers debate discipline procedures, other education advocates warn that an even deeper issue is unfolding inside classrooms: the gradual erosion of behavioral expectations and academic rigor.

Jessica Bartnick, co-founder and CEO of the Dallas-based mentorship program Foundation for C.H.O.I.C.E., said that declining school discipline and lowered standards are quietly undermining educational outcomes.

“Discipline is the backbone of effective learning,” Bartnick, who supports the Texas legislation, told Stateline in an email. “Without it, classrooms become chaotic, instructional time is lost and teachers are forced to shift their focus from instruction to behavior management.”

Bartnick said efforts to promote equity sometimes inadvertently lower behavioral standards and deprive teachers of the tools they need to maintain safe learning environments.

She also criticized lenient grading policies and unlimited test retakes, arguing that they diminish the value of preparation, responsibility and resilience.

“If students are shielded from the discomfort of failure, they are also shielded from the growth that comes with it,” she wrote. “If we want to prepare students for a world that will not offer endless second chances, we must return to a classroom culture grounded in discipline, responsibility, and rigor.”

Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.

Characterizing vouchers as an “entitlement program,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.

It’s a dilemma that some budget experts fear will become more common nationwide as the costs of school choice measures mount across the states, reaching billions of dollars each year.

“School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term,” said Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Vouchers and scholarship programs, which use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition, are part of the wider school choice movement that also includes charter schools and other alternatives to public schools.

Opponents have long warned about vouchers draining resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. But research into several programs has shown many voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools. That means universal vouchers could drive up costs by creating two parallel education systems — both funded by taxpayers.

In Arizona, state officials reported most private school students receiving vouchers in the first two years of the expanded program were not previously enrolled in public schools. In fiscal year 2024, more than half the state’s 75,000 voucher recipients were previously enrolled in private schools or were being homeschooled.

“Vouchers don’t shift costs — they add costs,” Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who studies the issue, recently told Stateline. “Most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning states are paying for education they previously didn’t have to fund.”

Voucher proponents, though, say those figures can be misleading. Arizona, like other states with recent expansions, previously had more modest voucher programs. So some kids who were already enrolled in private schools could have already been receiving state subsidies.

In addition to increasing competition, supporters say the programs can actually save taxpayer dollars by delivering education at a lower overall cost than traditional public schools.

One thing is certain: With a record number of students receiving subsidies to attend private schools, vouchers are quickly creating budget concerns for some state leaders.

The rising costs of school choice measures come after years of deep cuts to income taxes in many states, leaving them with less money to spend. An end of pandemic-era aid and potential looming cuts to federal support also have created widespread uncertainty about state budgets.

“We’re seeing a number of things that are creating a sort of perfect storm from a fiscal perspective in the states,” said Tucker, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last year, Arizona leaders waded through an estimated $1.3 billion budget shortfall. Budget experts said the voucher program was responsible for hundreds of millions of that deficit.

A new universal voucher program in Texas is expected to cost $1 billion over its next two-year budget cycle — a figure that could balloon to nearly $5 billion by 2030, according to a legislative fiscal note.

Earlier this year, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill expanding the state’s voucher program. But last week, he acknowledged his own “substantial concerns” about the state’s ability to fund vouchers and its public education obligations under the constitution.

“I think the legislature’s got a very tall task to understand how they’re going to be able to fund all of these things,” he said in an interview with WyoFile.

Voucher proponents, who have been active at the state level for years, are gaining new momentum with support from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

In January, Trump ordered federal agencies to allow states, tribes and military families to access federal money for private K-12 education through education savings accounts, voucher programs or tax credits.

Last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of making$20 billion available over the next four years for a federal school voucher program. Part of broader work on a bill to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the measure would need a simple majority in the House and the Senate to pass.

Martin Lueken, the director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice measures, argues school choice measures can actually deliver savings to taxpayers.

Lueken said vouchers are not to blame for state budget woes. He said public school systems for years have increased spending faster than inflation. And he noted that school choice measures make up a small share of overall state spending — nationally about 0.3% of total state expenditures in states with school choice, he said.

“Public schooling remains one of the largest line items in state budgets,” he said in an interview. “They are still the dominant provider of K-12 education, and certainly looking at the education pie, they still receive the lion’s share.

“It’s not a choice problem. I would say that it’s a problem with the status quo and the public school system,” he said.

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Washington, D.C., and 35 states offer some school choice programs, according to EdChoice. That includes 18 states with voucher programs so expansive that virtually all students can participate regardless of income.

But Lueken said framing vouchers as a new entitlement program is misleading. That’s because all students, even the wealthiest, have always been entitled to a public education — whether they’ve chosen to attend free public schools or private ones that charge tuition.

“At the end of the day, the thing that matters most above dollars are students and families,” he said. “Research is clear that competition works. Public schools have responded in very positive ways when they are faced with increased competitive pressure from choice programs.”

Public school advocates say funding both private and public schools is untenable.

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are considering a major voucher expansion that would alter the funding structure for vouchers, potentially putting more strain on the state’s general fund.

The state spent about $629 million on its four voucher programs during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, which represents employees in school district finance, human resources and leadership.

The association warns proposed legislation could exacerbate problems with the “unaffordable parallel school systems” in place now by shifting more private schooling costs from parents of those students to state taxpayers at large.

Such expansion “could create the conditions for even greater funding challenges for Wisconsin’s traditional public schools and the state budget as a whole,” the association’s research director wrote in a paper on the issue.

In Arizona, Hobbs originally sought to eliminate the universal voucher program — a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled legislature. She has since proposed shrinking the program by placing income limits that would disqualify the state’s wealthiest families.

That idea also faced Republican opposition.

Legislators are now pushing to enshrine access to vouchers in the state constitution.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 20,000-member teachers union, noted that vouchers and public education funds are both sourced from the general fund.

“So it almost immediately started to impact public services,” she said of the universal voucher program.

While the union says vouchers have led to cutbacks of important resources such as counselors in public schools, Garcia said the sweeping program also affects the state’s ability to fund other services like housing, transportation and health care.

“Every budget cycle becomes where can we cut in order to essentially feed this out-of-control program?” she said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Memorial Day is Monday, May 26, and there will be a number of events across the Twin Cities metro area over the weekend and on Monday to honor and mourn those who died while serving in the military.

The holiday is observed on the last Monday of May. Since it is a federal and state holiday, many offices will be closed. Most grocery stores, pharmacies and other businesses are open, however.

Ramsey County

St. Paul: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday. Historic Fort Snelling will host an event focused on military history at the site. The fort will be open for people to explore at their own pace and special events are planned including a flag ceremony, cannon firing, swing band performances, a period speech from World War II as well as a performance by the Fife & Drum Corps. Visitors also can witness the firing of historic rifles from five different eras of the fort’s history. The Brooklyn Big Band will be performing at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. inside the fort. Veterans receive free admission to Historic Fort Snelling. Active military personnel and their families receive free admission through the Blue Star program from Armed Forces Day to Labor Day. For more information, go to the Minnesota Historical Society’s website.

The famous Round Tower at the Historic Fort Snelling on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

St. Paul: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day event at Oakland Cemetery, 927 Jackson St. Guest speakers will be Katie Schafer and local historian Mary Benton-Hummel. Refreshments will be available.

St. Paul: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day Mass will be held at Calvary Cemetery. For more information, go to catholic-cemeteries.org/memorial-day-2025.

St. Paul: 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday. An event titled “From Civilian to Soldier: A Decoration Day Remembrance” will be held at Waldmann Brewery, at 445 N. Smith Ave. It will feature a concert and reenactment of scenes from the history of the brewery, including mustering in of its stonemason-builder Jacob Amos, with the assistance of Fifth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry reenactors alongside music from the Civil War era by Century Brass. The event will finish with a reading from the 1868 proclamation that established Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day. Admission is free. Waldmann beer, soda and food will be available for purchase. Seating is outdoors, so dress for the weather.

St. Paul: 3 to 4:30 p.m. Monday. Ceremony honoring Vietnam War deaths at the Minnesota Vietnam Memorial on the state Capitol grounds.

North St. Paul: 9 a.m. Monday. The American Legion Post 39 Honor Guard and VFW Post 1350 Rifle Squad will honor veterans during a ceremony at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

North St. Paul: Noon Monday. The American Legion Post 39 Honor Guard and VFW Post 1350 Rifle Squad will honor veterans during a ceremony at Veterans Memorial Park at 2480 Margaret St. N. Following the appearance at Veterans Park, the Post 39 Honor Guard will head back to the Legion, where they will raise the Post’s flag and play taps at 12:20 p.m. At 2:15 p.m., they will appear at the Fleet Farm in Oakdale for the final ceremony of the day.

Roseville: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day service planned at the Roselawn Cemetery Veterans Memorial. The annual Roselawn Heritage Foundation Picnic Lunch — hot dog, chips, cookie, pop or water — will be offered for $5 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day weekend.

White Bear Lake: 9 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day Parade. The parade forms at City Hall at 9 a.m. and then marches to Union Cemetery at 9:30 a.m. A ceremony will be held at the cemetery at 10 a.m. The ceremony will include White Bear Lake’s own retired Gen. Paul Nakasone as keynote speaker as well as a thank you to Vietnam veterans on the 50th anniversary of the end of that war. There also will be a memorialization of Maj. Curtis Feistner, a White Bear Lake High School graduate killed in support of the war on terrorism in 2002. After the ceremony, Manny Laureano, principal trumpeter for the Minnesota Orchestra, will perform a traditional military/law enforcement funeral song, “Danny Boy” and taps. The ceremony will be followed by a parade down Lake Avenue to American Legion Post 168 at 2210 Third St. where there will be a free hot dog and refreshment lunch.

Dakota County

Burnsville: 9:30 to 11 a.m. Monday. Observe Memorial Day with the Sweet Sioux Garden Club at Bicentennial Garden, at 3400 Nicollet Avenue. In the event of rain, the event will be held at City Hall.

Eagan: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday. The annual Memorial Day Challenge fitness workout returns to the Viking Lakes campus for its 2025 edition — at the Community Plaza of TCO Stadium. More information can be found at memorialdaychallenge.com.

Hastings: 7 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day March. Beginning at 7:30 a.m. at Levee Park in Hastings and proceeding for 10 miles along the River Trail Loop. This year, the keynote speaker will be Drew Carpenter, a veteran of the U.S. Army and active participant with the Wounded Warrior Project. For more information, go to marchforthem.org.

Mendota Heights: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day Mass will be held at Resurrection Cemetery. For more information, go to catholic-cemeteries.org/memorial-day-2025.

Rosemount: 11 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day event at Central Park at 2893 145th St. W. Local officials and representatives from the Rosemount Legion and Rosemount VFW will join to honor the fallen soldiers of Rosemount in a ceremony. Following the ceremony, a free lunch will be served at the Rosemount American Legion at 14590 Burma Ave. W. For more information, go to rosemountmn.gov.

South St. Paul: 9:30 a.m. Monday. A Memorial Day parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at Fourth Street North and 12th Avenue and will proceed to the South St. Paul High School Auditorium. All are welcome to attend the Memorial Day program with performances by the South St. Paul Varsity Singers and the South St. Paul High School Band. Following the program, the South St. Paul Lions Club will host a hot dog picnic at the high school. For more information, go to southstpaul.org/Calendar.

Washington County

Bayport: 8:30 a.m. Monday. The Bayport American Legion Memorial Day Parade will begin on Minnesota Highway 95, between Central Avenue and First Avenue North, and proceed through the city to Hazelwood Cemetery.

Mahtomedi: 9 a.m. Monday. The 2025 Memorial Day Parade will begin in the staging area at Mahtomedi High School and then go down Stillwater Road (CSAH 12), to Veterans Memorial Park. A ceremony will take place at 9:30 a.m. followed by a pancake breakfast at the fire station.

Mahtomedi: 10 a.m. Monday. The American Legion Post 39 Honor Guard and VFW Post 1350 Rifle Squad will honor veterans during a ceremony at Lakeview Cemetery.

Mahtomedi: 11 a.m. Monday. The American Legion Post 39 Honor Guard and VFW Post 1350 Rifle Squad will honor veterans during a ceremony at Evergreen Memorial Gardens.

Stillwater: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday. A Memorial Day ceremony will take place at the Stillwater Veterans Memorial at Third & Pine streets. More information at stillwaterveteransmemorial.org.

Woodbury: 11 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day ceremony will take place at the Woodbury Lions Veterans Memorial on the City Hall campus, 8301 Valley Creek Road. The event will include remarks from Mayor Anne Burt. Maj. Tyler Kistner of the U.S. Marine Corps will give the Memorial Day address. There also will be displays and veteran help groups in the east parking lot near the memorial. They will be staffed from 9 to 11 a.m. and from noon to 1:30 p.m. The observance will take place rain or shine. For more information, go to woodburymn.gov.

Hennepin County

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Minneapolis: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day Mass will be held at St. Mary’s Cemetery. For more information, go to catholic-cemeteries.org/memorial-day-2025.

New Hope: 10 a.m. Monday. Memorial Day Mass will be held at Gethsemane Cemetery. For more information, go to catholic-cemeteries.org/memorial-day-2025.

Radio

WCTS: 10 a.m. Monday. WCTS Radio will broadcast a locally produced Memorial Day service featuring patriotic music, religious and historic readings as well as President Ronald Reagan’s remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 1986. The voices and stories of veterans of war will also be a part of the service, courtesy of the AMPERS network. An encore will air at 5 p.m. WCTS Radio is at 1030 AM, 97.9 FM and streaming at WCTSRadio.com.

When I was a junior officer during the Cold War, the biggest North Atlantic Treaty Organization military training exercises — perhaps the largest in history — were annual drills called Exercise Reforger. The goal was to ensure NATO’s ability to deploy troops rapidly to West Germany if war broke out between the alliance and the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact nations. “Reforger” was a loose acronym of “Return of Forces to Germany.”

The first Reforger was held in 1969, and they ran annually through 1993, just after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Forces from every country in the alliance participated, although the bulk of them were American — drawn from the 400,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe at the height of the Cold War.

At the time, only 16 countries were in NATO (today there are 32). The event was not just an exercise — it was an actual planning and execution demonstration of NATO’s defensive war plans. It required the forces to “marry up” with their huge stockpiles of equipment on NATO’s eastern flank, called Prepositioning of Materiel Configured in Unit Sets (POMCUS) sites.

U.S. Marines were also part of the flow of troops toward the potential combat lines, and the Navy’s Sixth Fleet (focused on the Mediterranean) and Second Fleet (covering the North Atlantic) participated from sea. As a lieutenant junior grade onboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal in the fall of 1980, I remember our participation in air sorties in support of ground operations. Even though we knew it was a drill, we took it with deadly seriousness; the intent was to be prepared to “fight tonight,” as the saying went in those days.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, Reforger exercises were deemed unnecessary. But given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to invade his neighbors, we should ask whether it is time to bring Reforger back. If so, what might the exercises look like in today’s world? And are the NATO allies up to taking a larger role?

The reason for the original Reforger exercises was simple: to create deterrence in the minds of the Soviets. The sight of 150,000-plus allied troops, hundreds of combat aircraft and dozens of warships helped keep Moscow from getting any ideas about further conquests in Central and Western Europe. Today, three things argue strongly for a new Reforger series.

First is Moscow’s two decades of territorial aggression — particularly the invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 and 2022).

Putin has also sought to undermine free elections in various European countries and used hybrid warfare tactics to intimidate nations from Moldova to Armenia. Russia has threatened NATO’s Baltic states and is building up offensive capabilities on the border of new alliance member Finland.

A second reason for a new Reforger series is that Putin has turned his country into a war economy, devoting more than 7% of GDP to military spending (double the U.S. level) and pouring 35% of his annual budget into financing the war in Ukraine.

He is also recruiting mercenaries from around the world and has inveigled Kim Jong Un of North Korea to send him some 10,000 troops. Based on the rope-a-dope he is playing in negotiations with President Donald Trump over Ukraine, Putin seems unlikely to cease and desist anytime soon.

Third, Europe is finally waking from a long period of denial about the threat Moscow presents on its doorstep.

The U.S. allies are boosting military spending and seem ready to put together a major annual exercise to show Putin that they have the capacity and the will to fight if attacked. Ursula von der Leyen, the leader of the European Union, and the new secretary general of NATO, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, recognize that the moment is critical.

A new Reforger series could take some lessons from its illustrious predecessors. It should include forces from each of the 32 allies, including contingents from even the smallest nations like Iceland and Luxembourg. This time, the bulk of the troops, aircraft and warships should come not from the U.S. but from Europe, particularly France, Germany and Poland. Overall command and control should be vested in NATO’s supreme allied commander and run from the nuclear-proofed command bunker in Mons, Belgium — a place I know well.

Like the previous iterations, it should not be simply practice or a tabletop drill, but a real-time manifestation of current war plans giving commanders at all levels real authority over their troops. A potential breakdown of responsibilities in command and control: Turkey for land forces; Britain for maritime; Germany for air and missile defense; Belgium for special forces; Italy to protect the southern flank and the Netherlands on the northern flank.

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The U.S. should focus not on manpower but on what it does better than any other country: providing intelligence, cybersecurity overwatch, satellite and space connectivity, artificial intelligence, and advanced drones and other unmanned vehicles. The U.S. Sixth and Second Fleets should be involved, but as support for carrier strike groups from the UK, France and Italy.

Above all, like its ancestor Reforger, the new exercise should focus on the swift flow of logistics. Smaller recent exercises have revealed infrastructure problems — particularly with highways, bridges and rail lines — that NATO has been working to remedy, especially in the newer Eastern European members. So much of war depends on getting the right troops, transportation and ordnance together at the point of attack. A new Reforger could demonstrate that vital ability — right in front of Vladimir Putin’s nose.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group. He dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and he’s on the boards of Aon, Fortinet and Ankura Consulting Group, and has advised Shield Capital, a firm that invests in the cybersecurity sector.