Restoring Justice: Community Organizing to Transform School Discipline Policies

Abstract

Although public education activism is hardly new, the emergence of community organizing as a strategy to reform and challenge punitive school discipline policies is a more recent phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, dozens of community organizations across the country have launched campaigns to improve public schools. Prompted by the persistent breakdowns and inequities of the public education system, parents, students, and community leaders organized themselves and targeted administrators, district officials, and local politicians with a wide range of demands. School reform organizing has developed most rapidly in low-income neighborhoods and districts where communities of color have long suffered from poor performing schools, shortages of qualified teachers, low academic achievement, high dropout rates, and the devastating impact of intertwined punitive policies leading students into the juvenile justice system. As the number and intensity of organizing efforts has grown, communities have begun to transform the nature of school discipline in increasingly visible ways. These campaigns are not traditional education reform efforts, but rather are propelled by forces outside the school system, like the traditionally disenfranchised communities underserved by public schools. Through local community organizing, a number of alternative prevention and intervention strategies have been implemented across the country. The scope of this Article is twofold: first, to broadly consider community organizing for school discipline policy reform and second, to highlight the specific impact of an organizing campaign that led to the implementation of a restorative justice program and adoption of a new school discipline policy in Denver, Colorado. This multifaceted strategy for education reform, restorative justice program implementation and district-wide discipline policy change, not only focuses on eliminating unnecessary suspensions, expulsions and ticketing of students, but promotes healthier school communities while positively impacting larger issues of school safety, high dropout and low graduation rates. Part I provides an introduction to and context for community organizing for school discipline policy reform. Part II outlines the negative impacts of punitive school discipline policies. Part III presents a broad foundation for understanding community organizing for school discipline policy reform. Part IV discusses the multi-year organizing campaign of Padres y Jovenes Unidos for school discipline policy reform in Denver, Colorado. Part V explores the impact of the restorative justice program and the new discipline policy in Denver Public Schools District. Part VI considers the role that community organizing for school discipline policy reform will play in creating a sustainable solution to restoring justice in public schools.