Each time a student is removed from the classroom in the name of discipline, it can do more harm than good. Students barred from attending class due to punitive measures are more likely to get into more trouble, and they are at risk of getting behind with schoolwork because of lost instructional time. What’s more, study after study shows racial disparities with both suspensions and expulsions.

Last month, the San Diego Unified School Board unanimously approved a new discipline policy, one that is a step away from punitive discipline for students. The new policy emphasizes alternative-to-suspension programs for students who get in trouble, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Schools will be required to utilize “restorative” interventions before opting to suspend a student.

The new policy also addresses grading practices throughout the district. Teachers will separate non-academic factors from academic grades and give students the opportunity to re-do assignments.

While California already bans suspensions for “willful defiance” for elementary and middle grades, the San Diego Unified School Board plans to negotiate with teachers to do away with such suspensions across all grades. Those in favor of the move point out that banning willful defiance suspensions will help address racial disparities, particularly in the disciplining of Black and Latino students.

Discriminatory discipline is a severe problem in the United States, according to a national analysis of school suspension data by the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

Lost Opportunities

The Center for Civil Rights Remedies and Learning Policy Institute found “disturbing disparities” among racial groups regarding school suspensions, Patch reports. Their study titled “Lost Opportunities: How Disparate School Discipline Continues to Drive Differences in the Opportunity to Learn” looked at the impact of out-of-school suspensions on instructional time.

There were 11,392,474 days of instruction lost in America due to out-of-school suspension during the 2015-16 school year. The researchers say that is the equivalent of 62,596 years of instruction lost. What’s more, the difference in suspension rates between Black and white students was stark. The report shows:

• Black students lost 103 days per 100 students enrolled, 82 more days than the 21 days their white peers lost due to out-of-school suspensions.
• Black boys lost 132 days per 100 students enrolled.
• Black girls had the second-highest rate, at 77 days per 100 students enrolled, which was seven times the rate of lost instruction experienced by white girls at the secondary level.

“These stark disparities in lost instruction explain why we cannot close the achievement gap if we do not close the discipline gap,” said Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies and the lead researcher on the report. “With all the instructional loss students have had due to COVID-19, educators should have to provide very sound justification for each additional day they prohibit access to instruction.”

Orange County Juvenile Defense Attorney

Please contact the Law Offices of Katie Walsh if your son or daughter faces school expulsion or another legal matter. Call now for a free, confidential consultation, (714) 351-0178. Attorney Walsh will work with your family to help you achieve the best possible outcome.

As the world remains fixated on seeing the global pandemic come to an end, the topic of police brutality in the United States is once again at the forefront of the public’s attention. A recent swath of the killing of unarmed black civilians has caught international attention and led to protests across the nation.

The disproportionate shootings involving people of color has forced millions of Americans to set aside their worries over coronavirus and rethink policing in America. People of color – both teenagers and adults – are far more likely to have run-ins with law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

It’s not just adults in an uproar about what is perceived as unfair treatment of blacks and Latinos. A large number of students have been affected by the role law enforcement plays in their day-to-day lives. The “school-to-prison pipeline” continues to be a subject of the utmost importance, and we must continue taking steps to end this phenomenon. Again, it’s a trend that affects young minorities at significantly higher rates than their white peers.

In California, students have come together to demand this change in their school districts. In several major cities, students are imploring school boards to put a stop to the presence of police in their schools, EdSource reports. They would like to see fewer police and more counselors on campus.

“Police feel like a threat to students, especially to black and brown students. Black and brown students are intimidated by police,” said Ashantee Polk, a high school senior in Los Angeles and a member of Students Deserve Justice, a group of students across the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Police-Free Schools in California

Student resource officers are meant to make students feel safer. However, research shows that having police officers in schools can lead to unfortunate outcomes for black and Latino students.

Data shows that young blacks and Latinos are arrested and disciplined more often than their white peers, often for minor offenses such as willful defiance. In many cases, interactions with student resource officers is a teenager’s first introduction to the criminal justice system—the school-to-prison pipeline.

A more significant investment in student support services could provide young people with resources that will keep them on a path that steers them away from courtrooms and institutions. Pressure from both students and community groups could lead to significant changes in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Francisco in the near future. That’s not to say police-free campuses will be the future, but change could be on the horizon.

“We need to have standards for school resource officers,” said California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “Those standards mean that we should never, ever at any school, expect a police officer to be the dean of students or a disciplinarian who disciplines a student for doing things that students do. There should be no criminalization of students for engaging in student behavior.”

Orange County Juvenile Lawyer

Remember, a young school aged child or teenager needs an advocate as soon as a serious issue comes up! Often times the school’s first priority is to protect the school and the school district, not the child. As a former prosecutor, Attorney Katie Walsh has the expertise to help young people who find themselves in trouble with the law. Please contact The Law Office of Katie Walsh today to learn more about how she can advocate for your family.

Research suggests that corporate and academic grooming policies unfairly impact black women in the workplace. Dove and the Crown Coalition, a group of beauty industry leaders, civil rights activists and legislators, sponsored a survey to learn more about discrimination relating to hairstyles.

The survey shows that black women receive formal grooming policies at a rate significantly higher than White women, according to Diverse. Black women also reported they were 80 percent more likely to change their natural hair to meet social or employment expectations.

An earlier study from 2016, conducted by Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, discovered that black girls were disciplined in the state’s public schools because of their natural hairstyles. Meaning that black girls are often threatened with suspension and expulsion because schools contend that the student’s hair is a disruption.

The authors of the Ohio study write that the disturbing trend “is deeply connected to long-standing Westernized notions of beauty…yet again, this highlights the ways in which black girls are penalized for their incongruity with ‘traditional’ White notions of womanhood.”

California’s CROWN Act

Hairstyles of black people are a part of their heritage; and it’s hard to believe that young girls and women are punished for their natural hair in the 21st Century. In an attempt to reduce instances of discrimination in California, lawmakers passed the CROWN Act (“Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair”).

The Creating a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair or Senate Bill 188 is meant to combat discrimination based on hairstyles. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on July 3.

The law prohibits employers from enforcing purportedly “race-neutral” grooming policies. The legislation was sponsored by State Sen. Holly Mitchell, who also wears her hair in locs. An author of the Ohio study titled “Race Matters . . . And So Does Gender,” Robin A. Wright from the University of Cincinnati, says:

“I actually hear it more from young men, particularly, but also women, that they believe they have to cut off their dreads in order to get a job in corporate America.” She adds that “It’s ridiculous that we need a law like this in 2019, but our kids and [other] folks are still being discriminated against.”

California is at the top of the list of progressive states, so it makes sense that it is the first state to pass this type of legislation. However, New York approved a similar bill earlier this year, which protects black people’s right to wear natural hairstyles.

Many nonprofits support the CROWN Act, and state and national organizations, including the California Employment Lawyers Association, California School Board Association, and the California Teachers Association. According to RadioFacts: “SB 188 will ensure protection against discrimination based on hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and protective styles in the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and the California Education Code.”

California School Discipline Attorney

Please contact The Law Office of Katie Walsh if your child is being discriminated against because of their hairstyle, and may be facing suspension or expulsion. Attorney Walsh has the experience to advocate for your loved one effectively.

The Bureau of Children’s Justice, a division of the state Attorney General’s Office, is tasked with protecting at-risk children. There are laws which are meant to protect vulnerable young people; it’s the Bureau’s job to enforce such protections. However, children fall through the cracks time and time again.

California school districts have a long history of suspending and expelling minorities and intellectually disabled children. Despite recent efforts to work with children who are having problems in school before resorting to punitive measures, many youths are suspended at alarming rates.

Black and Latino children are suspended and expelled at exceedingly higher rates than white kids in many school districts. This is true even when children of color make up only a slight fraction of the student body. Whether we are looking at high school or elementary school, the data does not lie—minorities bear the brunt of the discipline meted out by faculty.

An investigation is underway to determine why a rural California school district is suspending students at an exponentially higher rate than the statewide average, EdSource reports. A report shows that Butte County’s Oroville City Elementary School District’s suspension rate is three times higher than average in California.

Alarming Suspension Rates in California

Oroville City (pop. 229,294), just north of Sacramento, is the seat of Butte County. Oroville City Elementary suspended 12 percent of its students during the 2017-18 school year, according to the article. However, only four (4) percent of students in public schools were suspended, at least once, across the entire state.

Although black students make up only three percent of the district’s enrollment, they are suspended far more often than their white classmates. An EdSource analysis of the data shows that black students were suspended 70 percent more often than their white students at Oroville City Elementary. Moreover, black kids were suspended two times more often as white children at Ishi Hills Middle School.

During the 2016-17 school year, students in the district were out of school more often due to suspension than virtually all other students in the state, according to the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies.

“I’m glad the attorney general is paying attention to both the high rates and large racial disparities,” said Daniel Losen, the director of the UCLA center and author of the organization’s suspension report. “There is a lot districts can do to lower suspension rates without jeopardizing the learning environment.”

The statistics are troubling for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that laws prohibit suspending K-3 students for being disruptive. Senate Bill 419 was introduced this year to expand those protections to grades 4 to 8. Whenever young people are not in a classroom, they are put at significant risk of getting into more trouble. The school-to-prison pipeline begins with suspension and expulsion.

Orange County School Discipline Attorney

If your child is facing expulsion from his or her school, then it is vital that you turn to an expert for guidance. Former prosecutor Katie Walsh has an extensive amount of experience advocating for young people who face problems at school. Please contact us today to learn how Attorney Walsh can help your child with their school expulsion hearing.

Last week, the State of California released school suspension data and takeaways are, at best, concerning. At The Law Offices of Katie Walsh school suspension and expulsion is a topic of vital importance; much of the work we do is representing juveniles who have had problems in the classroom. We follow the data carefully to serve our clients better; we have covered the topic of student suspensions on our blog on numerous occasions, please click here for further reading.

It will probably come as little surprise for some to discover that there are glaring disparities in school suspension and expulsion rates in the ‘Golden State.’ For others, what follows may come as a shock. While suspension rates in San Diego County are down from 4.5 percent in 2011-2012 to 2.8 percent for 2017-2018, minorities and foster children are at a much higher risk of being barred from attending class, The San Diego Tribune reports. Overall, black students in San Diego County are more than two times as likely to face suspension. What’s more, foster kids are nearly five times more likely to get suspended from school.

“The very students who do need that additional time and supports, like foster youth, are the ones who are being sent out of the classroom,” said Carrie Hahnel, interim co-executive director of Ed Trust-West.

Disparities In Suspension Rates

The trend researchers are witnessing is not unique to California; one need look no further than the United States Government Accountability Office’s report on K–12 education to find evidence. Across the country, school discipline disparities for black students and young people with disabilities is alarming. Here in California, more than 15,000 students in San Diego County were suspended at least once, according to the article.

Even though suspension involves older students more often, about 1,500 students of the overall tally were in grades K–3. While African American students make up only 5 percent of those attending class in San Diego County, they make-up 7% of suspensions for students suspended at least once in the school year. The California Department of Education tracks suspension rates across the state, the data for San Diego County is as follows:

• Foster Youth: 13.5 percent
• African-American: 6.9 percent
• Disabled Students: 5.7 percent
• Homeless: 5.5 percent
• Socioeconomically Disadvantaged: 3.8 percent
• Hispanic or Latino: 3.2 percent
• English Learners: 2.8 percent
• White: 2.1 percent
• Asian: 1 percent

“Studies we reviewed suggest that implicit bias — stereotypes or unconscious associations about people — on the part of teachers and staff may cause them to judge students’ behaviors differently based on the students’ race and sex,” the GAO writes.

School suspension data is of the utmost importance for several reasons, most notably, the impact missing class can have on a student’s life trajectory. Those who miss school are at far higher risk of dropping out, getting in more severe forms of trouble, and ending up in jail or prison. Supporting students rather than relying on suspension and expulsion as the go-to form of discipline, isn’t just right for the student, it’s good for society.

Orange County Juvenile Defense

A minor infraction in school can have a lasting effect on a person’s life. If your child is facing expulsion, then we implore you to contact The Law Offices of Katie Walsh. Attorney Walsh will work tirelessly to safeguard your child’s rights and negotiate alternatives to expulsion.