Athena, Ben, Nyckole.
Increase of Police Presence in Black & Brown Schools
The School to Prison Pipeline is a growing issue, particularly as the police presence within lower-income schools increases, disproportionately affecting Black and Latino students. Over-policing is resulting in Black students’ absence from school, lower testing scores, and extremely harsh punishments. This often culminates in juvenile detention, expulsion, and/or incarceration. The response to lower-income students’ difficulties and struggles should not be police presence, threats of incarceration, or exclusionary discipline. The response should be compassionate and supportive—replacing cops with counselors.
Over-policing often stems from in-school discipline—particularly exclusionary discipline. “Exclusionary discipline” is a response to student misbehavior that involves removing them from the school environment completely, whether it be out-of-school suspension or expulsion. In school districts with higher enrollments of non-white students, the use of such discipline and “zero-tolerance” expulsion policies is far more likely (Weisburst). These disciplinary methods are found to be used “most commonly” for day-to-day disruptions, especially with defiance and non-compliance, and aren’t restricted to serious or dangerous behavior (Skiba, et. al.).
However, there isn’t any evidence that racial disciplinary disparities can be explained by “higher rates of disruptive behavior” among Black and Latino students (Skiba, et. al.). Nationally, a third of all Black male high school and middle school students receive a suspension in a given year (Skiba, et. al.) and during a six year study period, one in five Latino students were disciplined 11 or more times, a comparatively “harsh disciplinary measure” (Center for American Progress).
In many cases, disciplinary action doesn’t stop with suspensions and expulsions. School Resource Officers (SROs) are tasked with “assisting with student discipline” and “mentoring students” (Theriot, et. al.), but despite comprising only 3% of national student enrollment, Black and Latino boys make up 12% of all student arrests (ACLU). Black girls are four times as likely to be arrested in school than white girls, and for Black boys with disabilities, that rate increases to five times higher than the rate for all other students (ACLU).
These actions aren’t without consequences. Children of color who become involved with law enforcement have “higher rates of subsequent arrest and conviction” (Turner, et. al.). Black students reported a greater probability of feeling unsafe at school and staying home (Lacoe); Students who are less likely to show up for school or class are four times more likely to be incarcerated at ages 19-22 (Merlo, et. al.), and more than a third of males who received exclusionary discipline for ten or more days by age 12 had been in a correctional facility by the time they were in their late 20s (Skiba, et. al.).
While this is a fundamentally large and complex issue that extends across the nation, Texas has as recently as March 18, 2021, proposed bills to its state legislature to begin correcting disparities in public schooling. SB 178 Lucio would require funds to be prioritized for “school districts with the highest concentration of students at risk of dropping out of school,” as well as requiring schools with over 500 students to “employ one counselor per every 500 students” and those with fewer than 500 to “provide guidance and counseling services by employing a part-time counselor.”
A current policy in place that has assisted with a new solution is Bill SB 179. This policy requires a school board to “adopt a policy that requires a school counselor to spend at least 80% of the counselor’s work time on duties that are components of a school counseling program.” Although this does not remove police presence in schools, it does represent a step toward that direction as the necessity of resources and mental health accessibility is not only acknowledged, but also acted upon.
Ideally, schools would train their staff to ensure “safe and positive school environments.” As the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) recommends: “community intervention workers, peacebuilders, behavior interventionists…counselors and other support staff” would handle and intercept conflict. This model is a proactive one that addresses “root causes of conflict and disruptive behaviors” to replace the reactionary and overly-harsh policing model in practice today.
These solutions—SB 179, SB 178, and DSC’s model policies—are part of an answer to the problem of over-policing, which is merely a contributing factor of the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Neither does this response to a single facet of a complex problem represent a complete “fix”—the School-to-Prison Pipeline is a result of a broken system, and addressing issues individually as they arise will create a perpetual cycle to replace the previous one. In order for the School-to-Prison Pipeline to be completely abolished, true reform needs to occur at many levels. Until that happens, protecting Black and Latino children, removing police from schools, and demanding policy overhauls to the public education system is imperative.
Resources:
“Bills on the Senate Ed Agenda March 18, 2021.” Texas Association of School Administrators, 16 Mar. 2021. https://tasanet.org/bills-on-the-senate-ed-agenda-march-18-2021/
“Counselors Not Cops: Ending the Regular Presence of Law Enforcement in Schools.” Dignity in Schools. Dignity in Schools Campaign. October 2018. https://dignityinschools.org/take-action/counselors-not-cops/
“Disparities in School Discipline Move Students of Color Toward Prison.” Center for American Progress, 13 Mar. 2012, www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11350/disparities-in-school-discipline-move-students-of-color-toward-prison.
Lacoe, J. R. (2014). Unequally Safe. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 13(2), 143–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204014532659
Staff, ACLU. “Cops and No Counselors.” American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union, 27 Feb. 2019, www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors.
Skiba, R. J., Mediratta, K., & Rausch, M. K. (2016). Inequality in School Discipline Research and Practice to Reduce Disparities. Palgrave Macmillan US :Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, E., & Beneke, A. (2020). “Softening” school resource officers: the extension of police presence in schools in an era of Black Lives Matter, school shootings, and rising inequality. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), 221–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1679753
Theriot, M., & Orme, J. (2016). School Resource Officers and Students’ Feelings of Safety at School. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 14(2), 130–146.