By Georgeanne M. Usova, Washington Legislative Office & Alana Kuhn, Law Clerk, Washington Legislative Office, ACLU at 9:18am
Every parent should be able to send their child off to school knowing that he or she will spend the day in a safe environment. For many parents across the nation, however, that peace of mind was shattered by the unthinkable tragedy that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. Today, the House of Representatives will take up the issue of school safety with a hearing in the House Education and Workforce Committee. The ACLU has submitted a statement suggesting ways to ensure that schools are safe places for students to learn, grow, and thrive.
By Alex Berger, Legislative Assistant, ACLU at 3:29pm
I, like most Americans, watched in horror as the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School unfurled last December. As a former elementary school teacher, I could not stop seeing my former students as possible victims, and I was angry, confused, and eager for change to prevent another incident like this one.
Since the shooting, there’s been a lot of discussion about how to keep kids safe and how to prevent more violence. The tragedy in Newtown has sparked a national conversation about guns, mental illness, violence in the media and school safety, and over the past several weeks, there have been a number of Congressional hearings on these issues. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on a proposed assault weapons ban and the House Education and Workforce Committee will meet later this week for a hearing on school safety. Restricting access to certain types of firearms is one thing. But while some well-meaning policymakers might assume that putting more police in schools will make students safer, experience demonstrates otherwise. Censoring violent media or stigmatizing those with a mental illness as unusually violent won’t fix the problem either.
Texas Judge Lanny Moriarity's decision to "make of an example" of 17-year old honor student Diane Tran succeeds only in highlighting the insensitive and counterproductive treatment of Texas juveniles in the state's criminal justice system. Judge Moriarty fined Diane and sentenced her to spend 24 hours in jail with adults charged with serious criminal offenses. The crime? Truancy. Tran is a straight-A student taking difficult college courses and missed classes because she has been working two jobs to help support a family torn apart by divorce and her mother's abandonment. Tran should, in fact, be made an example of, but not because of the number of school days she missed; Tran exemplifies the triumph of determination and hard work over serious adversity.
EB’s story, common in many ways and tragic in most, demonstrates why we — as advocates against harsh school discipline policies — fight against harsh school discipline policies that funnel children from school to jail. When EB was in the 4th grade, in Jackson, Miss., he was in the talented and gifted program. Around that time, a caring teacher noticed that he was being physically abused and reported it to the county. After this report, EB’s immediate family was broken up, he was separated from siblings, and he went to live with relatives. In a state that has few mental health resources and a foster care system in disarray, EB got little guidance, counseling or comfort. Rather, he returned to school and began to act out. As a result and without regard to his life circumstances, he was placed in Jackson’s alternative school programs where he moved through a revolving door of youth jails, mental health institutions, and alternative schools. Along the way, his fate was sealed. From 2005-2009, EB did not step foot inside a regular education classroom. Advocates fought for EB to return to regular school and the school board permitted EB to return to his regular high school for the 2009-2010 school year. After he was accused of breaking in to a middle school, we, as his advocates, defended EB and asked the Jackson Public School District not to expel him. Expulsion is generally not a solution to any child’s problem. If expelled, EB would have just had more time on the street, when what he wanted was an education. More importantly, we asked the school district to look at what they had done with and for EB in the five years prior to the expulsion. While our fight was worthwhile, it came too late.
The Washington Post ran a great editorial Tuesday pointing out how schools frequently overreact to misbehaving students, and why the resulting loss in classroom time does not lead to better behavior, nor improved school safety.
The editorial references a new report on promoting positive solutions to school discipline, which found that more than 90,500 students were suspended or expelled from a Virginia school in 2010-2011. Most suspensions and expulsions resulted from minor misbehavior, such as disorderly classroom conduct or misuse of electronics. The editorial pointed out the harsh impact of such unnecessary disciplinary measures:
If we were all honest with ourselves, I am sure that we could recall a momentary lapse into delinquency at some point in our childhood, whether it was throwing a temper tantrum over a puzzle piece or being a smart alec to a teacher. These very same delinquencies today can now land a child in jail.
As a former educator in an inner-city school populated almost entirely by black students, I know too intimately the disheartening effects of this course of action on students. Children of color, particularly those with special needs, are disproportionately being funneled into detention centers and alternative schools—a practice known as the “School-to-Prison Pipeline.” I have witnessed first-hand my own student, in desperate need of social services, carted off in handcuffs for an offense that could have been avoided by a little care and concern from the administration. I have encountered ordinary teenagers whose lives were so consumed by the criminal justice system that they barely ever attended school and now boast reading levels so low that they are technically classified as mentally retarded. Once students are propelled down the pipeline, the effects are virtually irreversible—their contact with the criminal justice system brands them with a scarlet letter that creates barriers to re-entry into traditional schools, puts them behind their peers, and haunts them later in life as they may dropout, or be denied student loans, public housing, or occupational licenses.
It’s safe to say that Tyell Morton, a high school senior at Rushville High in Indiana, is probably not laughing anymore. A few months ago the eighteen year old was just another teen enjoying his senior year of high school and eagerly awaiting graduation. Today, he faces up to eight years in prison because of a high school prank gone wrong.
Last weekend, on the day designated to celebrate the abolition of slavery, an anti-abortion group decided to exploit the observance of Juneteenth to spread a demeaning and insulting message to the black community. Through billboards erected throughout the Atlanta area, the group makes the outrageous assertion that a black woman's private health decision is more harmful than slavery. These billboards accuse black women who have made the difficult and personal decision to end a pregnancy of making slavery "seem overly generous."
By Ezekiel Edwards, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project & Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 5:17pm
What kind of person looks into the face of a child and sees no hope? What kind of society locks up children as if they were adults — and sometimes even throws away the key? Unfortunately, ours does. As a case in point, Kansas City prosecutors are currently mulling over whether to charge a five-year-old child for the murder of an 18-month old. Just think — murder charges for a little girl who has not yet even entered first grade!
On Monday, the Rhode Island ACLU filed Boyer v. Jeremiah, a class-action lawsuitchallenging the extremely troubling practices of Rhode Island's truancy court. Ostensibly created to support struggling students and help them stay in school, the truancy court has instead been used to punish students who may have difficulty paying attention in class or doing their schoolwork because of special educational needs, are unable to attend school because of medical or emotional difficulties, or who have family caretaking obligations that cause them to arrive at school late.
