EJS recently joined the Fix School Discipline-Policy Coalition (FSD-PC), a statewide coalition of organizations that work to improve school discipline policies and practices in California’s schools. The coalition works together to ensure that school climate protections and supports for both students and school staff exist at both the state and local levels.
In the last few years the FSD-PC has built awareness around effective school climate practices that should replace punitive approaches shown not to work. FSD-PC has also helped pass laws that provide students with effective alternatives to suspensions; prohibit students in Kindergarten through 3rd grade from being suspended for “willful defiance” (a subjective cause for punishing non-serious behavior often overused against students of color), and ensure schools promptly re-enroll students coming back from the juvenile justice system.
Learn more at http://fixschooldiscipline.org.
EJS is challenging school discipline policies that feed the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” – educational policies and practices that push students, especially students of color and students with disabilities, out of schools and toward the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
Learn more about the lawsuit against the Kern High School District (Kern County, California) and about our success in the Antioch Unified School District (Contra Costa County, California): http://equaljusticesociety.org/school-to-prison-pipeline.
Under the California Constitution, the State must provide every student in public school with an equal educational opportunity to succeed to the best of the student’s ability. When disparate disciplinary practices and policies deprive students of that constitutional right to an education, those policies and practices are subject to challenge under the California Constitution. With its increasingly diverse student population, California’s future depends on honoring this constitutional right for all students.
Photo via fixschooldiscipline.org.
Reblogged this on Keith Kamisugi.