The Butler Area School District is considering changing its drug and alcohol policy to reduce out-of-school suspensions for students.

A draft policy revision was presented to the school board Tuesday to start the conversation, said Superintendent Brian White.

“We're looking at how we can adapt our drug and alcohol policy to address inappropriate and unacceptable behavior,” White said.

Research shows that out-of-school suspensions exacerbate the problem, he said.

“It's detrimental to the entire educational process and it's hard to recover academically from that, so we're pondering if we should do anything differently,” White said.

Under the current policy, students can be suspended for 10 days and be subject to expulsion depending on the severity of the violation. The number of violations a student committed is also taken into consideration, he said.

White said the draft revision gives school administrators flexibility to reduce out-of-school suspensions if the student receives the appropriate support to address the violation, but he expects the board to make significant changes.

“If we have an incident, we would like to see the family address the issue with the appropriate drug and alcohol resource that provides the right assistance to address the behavior,” White said.

The soonest the board could vote on a revised policy is at the Aug. 19 meeting, he said.