Plugging the 'school-to-prison pipeline'

Detroit attorney Rodd Monts stood before a group of about70 students from the Black Student Union at East Lansing High School inSeptember and asked for a show of hands: How many of you have beensuspended?

“I was shocked at the number of hands that went up,” hesaid. “Most of the kids had been suspended, many of them more thanonce.”

Monts, the field director of the American Civil LibertiesUnion’s Michigan chapter, was peeking down the hatch of a big piece ofinfrastructure nobody wanted to build, but that has managed to snakeacross Michigan anyway. A school-to-prison pipeline is sucking adisproportionate number of minority students out of school, viasuspension or expulsion, and dropping them in the state’s juvenilejustice system, courtrooms and jails.

Students, activists and parents will get together andstrategize ways to plug the pipe at the Foster Community CenterTuesday. Monts is one of the speakers at the forum, sponsored by theACLU and the East Lansing Black Parents Union. 

Attorney Stacy Hickox got a good look at the other end ofthe pipeline during her four years with Michigan Protection andAdvocacy Service, where she represented younger people in the juvenilejustice system or in prison. Hickox chairs the ACLU’s branch committeeworking on the issue. “I’d say 99 percent of them had been expelled orsuspended from school, and that got them started along the path,”Hickox said.

Monts said no less than a child’s right to education is at stake.

“It’s one of the most important civil rights issues ofour time,” he declared. “Once you suspend a student, the likelihood ofbeing suspended again increases. Multiple suspensions increase thelikelihood of dropping out.”

“Push-out” might be a more accurate term than “drop-out,”according to the ACLU’s 73-page 2009 report documenting “thedisproportionate suspensions of public students of African descentthroughout Michigan.”

Monts said there is no comprehensive statewide data forMichigan, but he pointed to national data compiled by the ACLU fromstate agencies and school districts. Of about 3.25 million kidssuspended every year and over a hundred thousand expelled, blackstudents are three times more likely to be suspended and three and ahalf times more likely to be expelled than white students; Latinostudents are 50 percent more likely to be suspended and twice as likelyto be expelled.

Cultural misunderstandings — harmless gesturesinterpreted as threats — and flat-out fear of young black males areamong the causes for the disproportion cited in the ACLU report. 

“These populations of students are frequently suspended for things white students aren’t suspended for,” Monts said.

The situation is made worse by rigid application of“zero-tolerance” rules that dole out suspensions for vague infractionslike verbal assault or insolence.

The disparity is not just between blackand white. Nationally, special education students are twice as likelyto be expelled and suspended, Monts said. LGBT students and pregnantand parenting teens are also suspended disproportionately, the latterbecause of overly harsh tardiness rules.

The ACLU looked at 40 Michigan districts in 2009 and found the state to be roughly in line with national trends.

The most glaring disparities were found in the Ann ArborSchool District in 2006-2007, where black students comprised 18 percentof the secondary school population but got 58 percent of 817suspensions. Jackson and Kalamazoo also fared poorly in the study.

Monts singled out Lansing as a districtthat has reduced suspensions and “associated administrative costs” byfinding alternative ways to resolve disciplinary flare-ups.

Lansing schools began a pilot program in 2005 thatintroduced or stepped up disciplinary tools designed to avoidsuspension, including positive behavior support, peer mediation, teencourts, and “restorative practices” where students, parents andteachers get in a circle to hash out what happened and how amends canbe made.

When the pilot school, Pattengill Middle School, reporteda 15 percent drop in suspensions, with two avoided expulsions, theprogram was expanded to four more Lansing schools in 2006-2007. 

Diana Rouse, director of elementary education and schoolservices in Lansing, said the district is compiling current records onsuspension and expulsion rates and the effects of restorative justiceprograms.

Monts said Lansing has kept the program staffed with thehelp of “really creative” funding, mixing federal Title 1 funds withoutside grants. 

“These are things other districts could do, provided theyare motivated,” he said. An administrator from Lansing Eastern HighSchool is scheduled to speak on the district’s restorative justiceprogram at Tuesday’s forum. 

“On Track — Out of Trouble — In School”

7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25

Foster Community Center, 200 N. Foster St., Lansing