California is cutting back on disciplinary school suspensions, but African-American students remain the highest number removed from classrooms, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.
Statewide, suspensions were cut by 15.2 percent during the 2013-2014 school year, state data showed.
In Los Angeles, AfricanAmerican students received 32.3 percent suspensions last year, but make up only 9.16 percent of the entire student body, according to data released by the California Department of Education.
“The litmus test for this is not just whether it’s on a downward trend, but more specifically, how the discrimination playing out for Black youths,” said Manuel Criollo of the Community Rights Campaign. “That has to be one of the main goals in all of this work to end the school-to-prison pipeline.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District banned suspensions for willful defiance in May 2013. The reforms for disciplinary policies and restorative justice were presented by Criollo’s group and a coalition of other community groups.
The district issued 2,061 fewer suspensions for behavior such as being out of uniform or refusing to take off a hat.
Public Counsel attorney Ruth Cusick said, the board action, which made national headlines when it passed, should have banned suspensions for both willful defiance and disruptions.
Cusick added that district administrators and LAUSD’s charter schools still suspended 1,628 students through their own interpretation of the policy’s wording.
Isabel Villalobos, the district’s discipline coordinator, said, the policy, as passed, has been correctly enforced. Suspensions for disruptive behavior can only be issued by an administrator for actions that affect an entire campus, such as a bomb threat.
Cusick said the district-wide data mask even more disturbing disparities at individual schools, where African-Americans students miss a great deal of class time due to suspensions.
Assistant Superintendent Earl Perkins adds that the district African-American Students Still Highest in School Suspension cannot make its 231 independent charter schools end suspensions for willful defiance.
The district only has the authority to ensure compliance with discipline policies at 54 so-called “affiliated charters.” The district found 25 campuses with the most disproportionate suspension rates involving African-American students and the disabled.
Perkins said support staff was hired and stationed at each campus to enforce restorative justice policies.
Out of 947 schools, 150 campuses receive restorative justice training each year consisting of intervention methods less severe than suspension through counseling and other tactics before suspensions.
The district said it will train the additional campuses each year until all schools’ staff are in compliance with the discipline policies.
Targeting individual campuses is key, said Cusick. “It’s definitely important to make decreases in suspensions, overall, but in terms of addressing the racial harm being done to students, we need targeted support at our schools.”
