Voices: School discipline and race in Denver

Padres y Jóvenes Unidos organizer Sarah Brown recaps results of a recent meeting with Denver Public Schools officials about continuing racial disparities in school discipline. Nearly 100 students, parents and community leaders came together Dec. 17 to hold Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg accountable for racial disparities and to ask him to limit the role of police in school discipline.

Marco Nunez of Padres y Jovenes Unidos and Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, appeared at a March 8, 2011, rally promoting a bill to study school discipline policies. (File photo)

Students representing Padres y Jóvenes Unidos, a multi-issue organization led by people of color who work for educational excellence, racial justice for youth, immigrant rights and quality healthcare for all, presented a report card to the district on its progress with discipline reform.

Padres & Jóvenes Unidos secured a promise from Boasberg that Denver Public Schools would implement the report’s Accountability Action Platform: A Community Call for DPS Action, which contains seven key steps that DPS must take in order to fully and faithfully implement the 2008 Discipline Policy.

Padres volunteer Dionna Hudson, alumna of South High School and political science major at University of California, Riverside, said that Denver Public Schools has made “impressive progress” reducing out-of-school suspension and expulsion rates as well as referrals to law enforcement. Hudson said the goal for next school year is to decrease out-of-school suspensions by 70 percent by eliminating out-of-school suspensions for disruption.

Throughout the meeting, students were adamant that the district stop criminalizing students for minor misbehavior. The district received a B+ in the areas of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions because of its progress in these areas over the past school year. The category of “referrals to law enforcement” received a D from Jóvenes Unidos students.

Tori Ortiz, a senior at CEC Middle College and Padres activist, pointed out that although the district did reduce the overall rates of referrals, this only brings these numbers back to the same rates they were before the passage of the 2008 discipline policy. She and other students urged the district not to push students out of school for subjective infractions, such as “disorderly conduct,” “disobedience” and “defiance.”

John Riley with the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition echoed the student’s sentiments, saying, “Scared straight doesn’t work, boot camp doesn’t work, incarceration doesn’t work.”

Riley advocated the use of meaningful alternatives such as restorative justice, school psychologists and relevant curriculum that can address the root cause of student misbehavior.

Racial disparities remain biggest failure

At Padres, we believe racial disparities continue to be the most significant failure of the district. Black students represent only 15 percent of the student population yet make up 32 percent of all out-of-school suspensions, expulsions and arrests. Latino students make up half of all suspensions, expulsions and arrests. The community was pleased with Boasberg’s enthusiastic response that DPS will commit to eliminating racial disparities within discipline by the end of this school year.

In the category of restorative justice DPS received a C-. Padres students asked Boasberg to commit to hiring a restorative justice coordinator for each high school. District officials said they didn’t have the money to do that. Yet DPS pays for 16 full-time school resource officers at a cost of $1.3 million and only has 4.5 full-time employees with restorative justice responsibilities for the entire district.

Students also demanded that the district require mandatory training on cultural competency, implicit bias and racial discrimination. Although Boasberg said these trainings were necessary to eliminate racial disparities he did not commit to holding these district-wide trainings. Furthermore, the district received a C in data collection. Although the district has made more consistent changes in data collection there is still much more to be done to make discipline data more publically available and disaggregated by race and school. Boasberg agreed to look into the possibility of improving data collection in discipline cases.

Ricardo Martinez, co-director of Padres y Jóvenes Unidos, closed the meeting with a powerful message of community voice. He called for everyone in the room to continue to work with the district to hold them accountable to these goals and thanked the district for meeting with Padres Unidos in a principled way.

In light of the tragedy in Connecticut, Padres Unidos urges the district to continue to utilize restorative justice, which is proven to make schools safer.

DPS Discipline Statistics 2011-2012

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