Case Study: A Fairness Committee Model in a New York City School
Hantzopoulos, Maria, "Deepening Democracy: How one school's fairness committee offers an alternative to discipline," Rethinking Schools, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Fall 2006).
In this article a teacher at Humanities Preparatory Academy, a small public high school in New York City, describes how students participate in a Fairness Committee when they have violated the school community norms. The Fairness Committee is based on a restorative justice model of discipline in which all members of the school community come together to determine a response to an incident. The article provides examples of how the Fairness Committee works. The teacher said that the process allows the school community to brainstorm creative solutions to problems facing students. The teacher also said that most importantly the process “validates students as thinkers and decision–makers, and reinforces the idea that they have a stake and voice in their communities.”
Relevant Link: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_01/demo211.shtml