Pushing Out the ‘School Pushout’

and had fewer absences.

Here in Fresno, we don’t try to take enough action when it comes to disciplining our students the right way; so that they learn from their mistakes instead of being sent away from schools for periods of time. Our systems leads to students basically enjoying themselves while suspended, only to return to their place of schooling with no lessons learned - except that if they act out, they may get to stay home for a few days.

Mentorship programs could go a long way. I am someone who, at one point, considered myself a troubled youth with no sense of direction. Life really took a turn for the better when I came across a few strong and patient mentors that have helped me learn to see the bigger picture in society, and life in general.

Throughout my life I’ve been suspended more times than I can count. Many times, I was suspended over something as simple as carrying markers and writing in books, or getting smart with teachers, trying to justify my actions or prove my point.

Herein Fresno, CA, things can get pretty tough. Many young people of color are living in poverty, their parents are being forced to work multiple jobs and they seem to be getting suspended and expelled from schools in every direction you look. Many people, myself included, believe that this is the product of something called the “School Pushout”. This is what occurs when students are held back from receiving the education and opportunities that all of our young men and women deserve.

Now many people may ask, “How can you possibly hold back an entire generation of young people from receiving their education?”

Well, that’s easy when there are situations like the constant overuse of suspensions, improper funding going to schools in “underserved areas”, and a huge lack of counselors and health services. One can’t help but wonder if our youth are being stopped from reaping the full benefts this country has to ofer and are truly experiencing institutional bias as well as being pushed out of schools.

If we were to look at the facts and statistics of these occurrences, we would see that the use of suspension starts as early as preschool, and that African American preschoolers are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than their caucasian classmates.

In the last year alone, the state of California has suspended over 240,000 students. That’s nearly a quarter million young people in just this state being taken out of school and away from their education. The most common causes cited for these suspensions are minor misbehaviors, like “willful defance” or acting out.

I feel that, as part of our community and school district, we can fnd a better approach to questions of discipline for our growing young people.

For instance, if we were to introduce more programs that try to mentor these students instead of trying to eliminate the problem as a whole, I believe school test scores, graduation rates and overall school ratings would improve massively. An example of this would be to look at the way Garfeld High School in East Los Angeles approached this situation.

After introducing their positive behavior program, suspensions went from 510 to just one in 2010-11 and just one again the following year in 2011-12. Though the planning process took a few years, the outcome was outstanding, and students’ test scores improved greatly.

Schools in Oakland also found alternate ways to handle suspension and expulsion by participating in restorative justice programs, and they also saw an increase in graduation rates, reading scores

Now granted, I wasn’t the best kid in school and my behavior was probably that of a mischievous rebel. I believe that kicking me out of these schools and sending me home for days at a time, more times than they should have, afected who and where I am today. I also strongly feel that if a young person truly has positive role models or teachers who reach out and help them, that it could really make all the diference.

Instead of predisposing our young people to the criminal justice system and setting them up for failure, we should come together to fnd better solutions to how we treat them. It’s estimated that one in every 11 children have a parent in the correctional system. There is also the wall that is placed in front of employment that people who were locked up must face. Studies show that postincarceration, family income drops by as much as 15 percent, sometimes greater.

The criminalization of our youth and demonization of their actions is something that desperately needs to be addressed, we can no longer push them to the side as if they were someone else’s problem. Though most have parents of their own, it takes so much more than a parent to show a young person what their full potential in life could be if they just search and dig deeper in themselves. After all, it is said that it takes an entire village to raise a child, and we have a lot of young, growing students in this country.