(Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, 05/14/13) In ground-breaking action, the Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to ban suspensions of defiant students, directing officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead. The packed board room erupted in cheers after the 5-2 vote to approve the proposal, which made L.A. Unified the first school district in the state to ban defiance as grounds for suspension. The action comes amid mounting national concern that removing students from school is imperiling their academic achievement and disproportionately harming minority students, particularly African Americans.

(Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post, 05/08/13) Anthony Weiner may not be an official candidate in the New York City mayoral race, but the policies he would hypothetically enact are already drawing opposition. Members of the Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) and New Yorkers for Great Public Schools protested outside of Weiner’s Park Avenue South apartment Monday afternoon in response to a position he described in his “Keys To The City” policy paper, The New York Times reports.

(Sally Lee (Teachers Unite), Huffington Post, 4/24/13) Not long ago a New Haven, Conn., high school with a predominantly African-American student body had an annex for students with chronic absences and those labeled as having behavioral issues. The annex was located in the New Haven Armory, which was a functioning military armory used to store vehicles, weapons and live ammunition. From this location students would look out a window and have a close-up view of the jail and juvenile court next door. Sometimes they would see friends or neighbors there. Students and teachers alike hated the school's location and the stigma they felt because of it. In 2006 the New Haven School District conceded to youth demands to relocate the school.

(Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, Gotham Schools, 04/16/2013) After years of pressing Mayor Bloomberg to make school discipline fairer, students and advocates are turning their attention to the candidates seeking to replace him. At a rally outside City Hall just before a City Council hearing on school climate Monday, students and advocates the Dignity in Schools Campaign called on the next mayor to take a different approach to school discipline. They want a model that relies less on suspensions and other punitive measures, and also ensures that black and Latino students are not disproportionately affected by school discipline.

(Annie Gowen, Washington Post, 4/4/2013) The small band of guerrilla photographers spread out in schools across the District, snapping photos of metal detectors, police pat-downs, and scuffles between security guards and students. The dozen or so teens, who hail from some of the area’s most troubled neighborhoods, are trying to document the kind of school security issues that have taken center stage in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings.

(Lanetra Bennett, WCTV-TV, 04/01/2013) Community leaders across the country are saying "NO" to guns in schools. The groups say arming teachers or staff does not mean school safety.Civil rights and education groups in Florida say something needs to be done to keep school kids safe. But, they say legislation (HB 1097) to allow designated school employees to carry guns is not the answer. "That indeed is a bad idea." Says, Shirley Johnson with the Florida State Conference of the NAACP. During a teleconference Monday, Johnson, along with members of Advancement Project, and Dream Defenders, rejected House Bill 1097. They say it could lead to unintended consequences.

(Craig D. Frazier, Amsterdam News, 2/15/2013) Controversy regarding the high number of children suspended in New York City schools continues. Since 2009, the Dignity in Schools Campaign-New York (DSC-NY), a coalition of educators, advocacy and parent groups, have led a campaign pushing for funding and implementation of positive, school-wide approaches to discipline that improves school climate, reduces conflict and increases learning in city schools.

(James Cersonsky, AlterNet, 1/25/2013) In the wake of the Newtown massacre, municipalities far away, and far different, from Newtown are now ramping up their school police forces and security checks. They have an ally in President Obama, whose 23 gun control proposals include added funding for “school resource officers”—that is, police. As a result, students of color across the country are bracing for the dependably discriminatory impact of heightened school security. Since the advent of zero-tolerance policies during the Reagan-era war on drugs, suspension rates have gone up disproportionately for blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Black students are now three times as likely as white students to get suspended, despite scant evidence of greater suspension-worthy infraction. The policies undergirding this discrimination are twofold: first, codes of conduct with heavy penalties for nonviolent incidents like being late, talking back, violating dress codes, or, as Daniel Denvir writes at Vice, farting; second, more school police to enforce them—a 38 percent national increase from 1997 to 2007.

(John Kelly, Chronicle of Social Change, 01/23/13) Some congressional leaders and juvenile advocates are trying to include community-based youth programs in the public dialogue about gun rights and control, while also pushing back against the concept of placing police in schools. Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) held a summit on Capitol Hill yesterday to promote the Youth Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education Act (the Youth PROMISE Act), Scott’s bill to fund community-developed action plans to reduce violence in high-crime areas. Meanwhile, a slate of organizations have circulated statements and held conference calls with the media to voice opposition to the prospect of stationing police at every school.

(Julianne Hing, Colorlines, 1/10/13) It wasn’t just students who returned to school this week after their holiday break. In school districts around the country, extra police officers are being deployed to provide a sense of security while policymakers weigh legislation in response to the massacre in Newtown, Conn.—proposals that could make police in schools an increased and permanent fixture in kids’ lives. Politicians’ response to the deadly attack unleashed on Sandy Hook Elementary in December has been swift. This week, Vice President Joe Biden convened meetings for a White House task force to address gun access and mental health issues, and has promised to deliver a legislative proposal to the president by month’s end.

By Julianne Hing, ColorLines, 12/13/12

By Donna St. George, Washington Post, 12/13/12

At a congressional hearing billed as the first-ever focused on ending the “school-to-prison pipeline,” Edward Ward emerged as a voice of experience.

(By Lennin Reyes, The Bronx Journal Reporter, 10/16/12) On a crisp Friday evening in October, pedestrians enjoying a stroll along the Brooklyn Bridge heard the chanting of hundreds of youths in green shirts: “Solutions not suspensions!” It was New York City students, marching against “pushouts” as part of a nationwide Dignity in Schools campaign.

(News 14 Carolina, 10/07/2012) A group of Triangle students spoke out about issues impacting young people at a rally on Saturday.
N.C. HEAT, or Heroes Emerging Among Teens marched as part of Dignity in School's National Week of Action Against School Pushout. Organizers said they're shedding light on suspensions among minorities and policies that lead to high dropout rates.

(Joe Malinconico, Paterson Press, 10/04/2012) Thirty-seven percent of the students at School 11 were suspended during the 2010-11 academic year, according to data on the state education department’s website. At School 10, the number was 28 percent and at School 6 it was 25 percent. The state average for elementary schools was four percent, according to the education department.

(Mary Frost, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10/04/2012) Roughly a thousand kids are suspended every week in New York City schools and advocacy groups say these suspensions are unnecessarily harsh, especially for black and Latino students.This Friday night, members of the Dignity in Schools Campaign New York (DSC-NY) will hold a candlelight vigil and march across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the suspensions. About a dozen groups are involved, including Advocates for Children of New York, American Friends Service Committee, Children's Defense Fund and Make the Road New York.

(The Skanner News, October 02, 2012) The Portland Parents Union, a member of the Dignity in Schools coalition, is observing the National Week of Action on School Push-out with  a “restorative listening” event on disproportionate suspensions and expulsions of students, Saturday, Oct. 6, 4 p.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1624 NE Hancock. The event starts with a news and informational session, and continues through the evening with students and families sharing their stories and participating in a facilitated restorative listening process designed to speed up the healing process for students, families and the community at large.

(Brandon Campbell, Progress Illinois, 10/01/2012) A group of student activists and their advocates marched from Crane High School to a nearby Cook County Juvenile Detention Center to protest student suspensions and pushouts on Saturday. The activists are targeting schools that indefinitely suspend, or pushout, chronically truant or low-performing students, sometimes in a effort to raise overall school performance.

(Michael Holzman‚ BeyondChron, 9/25/2012) A new report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education finds that only 52 percent of Black male and 58 percent of Latino male ninth-graders graduate from high school four years later, while 78 percent of White, on-Latino male ninth-graders graduate four years later. The report suggests that without a policy framework that creates opportunity for all students, strengthens supports for the teaching profession and strikes the ight balance between support-based reforms and standards-driven reforms, the U.S. will become increasingly unequal and less competitive in the global economy.

(Marisa Treviño, LatinaLista, 09/04/12) The school year is just getting underway and two education groups are hoping that this school year will be different for those Latino, African American and disabled children for whom out-of-school suspension has become the norm rather than the exception. The Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) and the Opportunity to Learn Campaign have joined forces launching a grassroots initiative calling for a national moratorium on out-of-school suspensions.

(Tim Walker, NEAToday, 8/27/2012) The Solutions Not Suspensions initiative, announced last Tuesday at an event led by the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) and the Opportunity to Learn Campaign in Los Angeles, comes on the heels of a series of reports exposing the dramatic racial disparities in school suspensions. Earlier this year, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ survey found that Black students are more than three-and-a-half times as likely as white students to be suspended or expelled, In addition, more than 70 percent of students arrested in school were Black or Hispanic. Civil rights advocates have long argued that these punitive actions only exacerbate the achievement gap, contribute to high dropout rates and increase the likelihood of student arrests and referrals to the juvenile justice system.

(Esmeralda Fabián, Diario La Opinion, 08/21/2012 ) Son más de 3 millones de estudiantes los que, de acuerdo con recientes estudios, son suspendidos de la escuela cada año en el país; la mayoría de ellos son estudiantes latinos y afroamericanos. Esto ha provocado que pierdan días de instrucción y que algunos nunca lleguen a graduarse.

(Kaile Shilling,  Los Angeles Magazine, 7/30/2012) Here in Los Angeles, we’re certainly no stranger to tension between local communities and law enforcement (see: MacArthur Park, 2007; South Los Angeles, 1992; Watts 1965), but things have been getting better. Crime has plummeted in recent years, and relations between the police and the public—especially in minority communities—are warmer than they have been in decades. The Violence Protection Coalition of Greater L.A.’s Community Safety Scorecard, which measures neighborhood safety, gives a picture of where we are today. Below are some things that have worked here and could help Anaheim.

(Fix School Discipline, 07/06/2012 ) If given final approval by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, the bills will lead to positive discipline accountability alternatives for students in schools with the most out-of-school suspensions, better data for communities and policy makers working to keep students on track to graduate, and a much-needed change to “willful defiance,” one of more than 24 school removal categories that accounts for more than 40% of all school suspensions and as much as 12% of all expulsions. 

(League of Education Voters, The Sacramento Bee, 06/26/2012)  A bold new approach to discipline at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, Washington, has revolutionized the lives of its students. The film Resilient: The School Discipline Revolution in Walla Walla, WA, tells the story of how Lincoln High School, a small alternative school in Walla Walla, was able to reduce its suspension rates by 85 percent, almost entirely eliminate expulsions, and increase graduation rates.

(Theodoric Meyer, Schoolbook/New York Times, 06/06/2012) About 100 parents, teachers, students and advocates turned out for a hearing at Stuyvesant High School on Tuesday evening on proposed changes to the city’s discipline code, which would, among other things, lessen the number of offenses for which students could be suspended.

(Kamelia Kilawan, Gotham Gazette,  06/05/2012) “Changes made are minor and won’t provide systemic change,” said Sarah Landes, a member of the Dignity in Schools Campaign, a collection of teachers, students and youth organizations working to reduce suspension and mandate alternative discipline methods. Shoshi Chowdhury, coordinator for the Dignity in Schools Campaign, said the punishment of suspension should end for the first three levels of school misconduct, including insubordination, pushing and shoving. Suspension should be a last resort as it allows many students to fall behind in schools, she said. In cases of level 4 and 5 fighting in schools, positive alternatives should be offered.

(Corinne Lestch, New York Daily News, 05/31/2012) Most of the students arrested or ticketed by police are in Bronx schools, according to a new analysis of NYPD school safety data released by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The report, released Wednesday, shows that 33% of arrests were made and nearly 55% of summonses were given in the Bronx. Citywide, police arrested 327 students and handed out 555 summonses in schools from January through March.

(Dinu Ahmed, Huffington Post, 3/13/2012) On March 8, 2012, the New Settlement Parent Action Committee gathered 100 parents, students, educators, and elected officials on the steps of the Bronx Borough President's office to express their outrage over the Bronx's shocking rates of school-based arrests and student summonses, and to demand positive disciplinary alternatives. Recent data released under the Student Safety Act -- new legislation that disaggregates statistics on arrests and summonses by race, age, and gender -- shows the disproportionate impact that harsh punitive measures in New York City schools have had on the Bronx, particularly on youth of color. Out of a whopping 532 summonses issued to New York City students to appear in court during the last three months of 2011, the Bronx alone accounted for nearly half of all cases. 63% of those summonses were for charges of "disorderly conduct." Unbelievably, 93.5% of the nearly 300 students arrested in the same time period were either Black or Latino - and here too, the Bronx topped the list as the borough with the highest percentage of school-based arrests.

(Gail Robinson, Huffington Post, 03/01/2012) As they have sought to remake the nation's largest public school system, New York City officials have portrayed their efforts as a civil rights struggle. But despite such rhetoric, the city has created an obstacle course for its students, especially black and Latino boys, and the barriers these young men must navigate have little or nothing to do with academics. The record offers a sharp counterpoint to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's launching last summer of a wide-ranging initiative to "tackle the broad disparities slowing the advancement of black and Latino young men." Under his administration the city has stepped up policies that many believe have increased those disparities, suspending or even jailing black and Latino students for transgressions that a generation ago might have ended with a sharp talk in the dean's office. Last week provided still more evidence of this as advocacy groups released figures from the New York City Police Department on the numbers of arrests in city public schools for the last three months of 2011.

(By Linda Paul, WBEZ, 01/25/2012) If you look at all Chicago arrests of juveniles in 2010, a fifth occurred on Chicago Public Schools property. That’s way too many arrests, according to a report out from Project NIA, a Chicago-based advocacy group that works against incarceration of kids. The Chicago police department data that NIA crunched found 5,574 juvenile arrests on CPS property in 2010. Of those arrests, about three-quarters involved African-American youth, even though black students comprise 45 percent of the school population.

(Kathy Mulady, Equal Voice Newspaper, 11/23/2011) At a time when competition for jobs is fierce and even entry-level positions require a high school or college degree, anyone without a high school diploma need not apply. Yet, each year, more than a million students in the United States leave high school without graduating. Once assumed to be dropouts, many who leave are, in reality, pushed out.

(Jenifer Carnig, NYCLU, 11/03/2011) The New York Civil Liberties Union today called on NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to stop delaying and comply with the Student Safety Act, a law that requires the Police Department to release quarterly reports detailing its activity in city schools. The NYPD has missed two consecutive reporting deadline.

(Jorge Rivas, Color Lines, 10/12/2011) School suspensions for non-white students in grades K-12 have increased by more than 100 percent since 1970. That’s according to a recent report highlighted by TheRoot.com. The report, "Discipline policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice" was conducted by the National Education Policy Center. The report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office, along with figures collected under No Child Left Behind and a sampling of state education agencies to illustrate the widening disciplinary gap between students of color and their white counterparts.

(AustinTalks, 10/10/2011) About 50 Latino and African American parent activists from POWER-PAC (Parents Organized to Win, Educate and Renew – Policy Action Council) were joined by Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) at a bilingual rally and press conference Friday at Wells Community Academy High School, 936 N. Ashland Ave. Parents called on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to reduce suspensions and expulsions in favor of positive alternatives, such as the parent-run Peace Center, a restorative justice program currently operating at Wells School.

(Kait Richmond, Pavement Pieces, 10/06/2011) Nilesh Vishwasrao should be a freshman in college, making new friends and studying English literature. Instead, he is nearly six months behind after being what he calls “pushed out” of high school. Vishwasrao, 18, of Jackson Heights, Queens, was suspended several times in high school for minor offenses, such as chewing gum or wearing a hat. But when they added up, the guidance counselor called in Vishwasrao’s father.

(Claudia Gomez and Leslie Mendoza, The Eastside Sun, 10/06/2011) Graduating from high school is the dream of most L.A. students. We understand that education and a diploma can make the difference between a healthy, successful future and a dead-end job, or worse, the criminal justice system. But just getting to and staying in school can be a daily struggle, especially for those of us coming from the poorest communities. And when we arrive at campus, we often feel unwelcome and unmotivated in a climate where police and parole officers may outnumber counselors, and teacher layoffs create overcrowded classes.

(Erica Green, Baltimore Sun, 10/05/2011) A national report released today underscores the widely-known disparity in suspensions of minority students and their non-minority counterparts.In the report, Maryland is highlighted for its efforts to curb punitive suspensions and expulsions, and Baltimore is highlighted for its effort of significantly reducing its suspension rate in recent years--though the number of suspensions in the district is up this year, including those for "soft offenses" like disrespect and insubordination.

(Huffington Post, 10/05/11)Black and Latino students are disproportionately more likely to experience harsher punishments by schools for infractions and misbehaviors, according to a new report by the National Education Policy Center.

(Emily Shaw, Liz Sullivan, and Refat Shoshi Chowdhury, Op-Ed, Gotham Gazette, 09/28/2011) Luke was supposed to receive his high school diploma this year, but, like many others, he did not. A 16-year-old black student, he was placed in special education with a label of "emotional disturbance." Luke was attending a high school in District 75, the citywide district for special education, where students with disabilities are isolated from their peers without disabilities. It was not where Luke was supposed to be.