Gwinnett SToPP Hosts Workshop on Black Boys, Special Education and the School-to-Prison Pipeline by Clay Voytek The GIVE Center East sits directly across from the Gwinnett County Department of Corrections.
After a pattern of behavioral misconduct, students in the Gwinnett County Public Schools system are often sent to the Gwinnett Intervention Education (GIVE) Center East. Located on Hi Hope Road just off State Route 316, the alternative school sits directly across from the Gwinnett County Department of Corrections. Students enter through a metal detector with clear backpacks, the bell rings at 7:05 a.m. and they are dismissed at the end of the day one-by-one. Black boys with developmental disabilities are disproportionately represented in the center’s enrollment data. A growing group of parents, advocates and students in Gwinnett say that the center is teaching kids how to go to prison. The center is part of the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) system. The 24 psychoeducational programs – or GNETS – serve more than 3,000 students with behavioral, intellectual and neurological disorders. An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that Georgia schools also send disproportionate numbers of African American students, especially those with behavior problems, to the programs.
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In 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court alleging that the State of Georgia has discriminated against thousands of public school students with disabilities by providing them with a separate and unequal education via GNETS. The lawsuit stated that the schools were denying GNETS students the opportunity to be educated with students without disabilities, thus violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to a fact sheet provided by the Center for Public Representation, students in the GNETS program cannot access the basic credits they need to earn a diploma, resulting in a high school graduation rate of only 10% (compared to a statewide rate of 80%). On a rainy Saturday in October, the Gwinnett Parent Coalition to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Gwinnett SToPP) hosted an interactive awareness
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workshop at Georgia Gwinnett College as part of the National Week of Action Against School Pushout. A group of over 30 community members, including high school students, a state house candidate for District 106, Rebecca Mitchell, and a former EMT training to become a special educator, spent the morning reckoning with schools’ discipline policies and the inequity that has become a clear national trend.
Gwinnett SToPP looks at the issue through a racial lens, including the way students with disabilities are singularly impacted. Gwinnett SToPP formed in 2007 to lead a parent-driven, community-centered partnership approach to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline in Gwinnett County. Its mission is to build and strengthen relationships with the community in two constructive ways – parent/
Attendees asked questions and heard answers from youth and experts at the workshop, which was part of a series of events called “From Lockers to Lockdown.”