User:Cgwilliams327/School-to-prison pipeline

Events affecting school to prison pipeline

 * 1) A large factor of the school to prison pipeline is the disproportionate disciplinary actions taken against students of color. In recent years, the media has reported about some of these experiences.
 * 2) Examples of zero tolerance policies and its role in school-to-prison pipeline statistics.

In Spring 2018, a 14-year-old black boy came to school with a new haircut. The haircut featured a design made with a razor. The student was pulled out of class one day at Tenaya Middle School in Fresno, California, because of his haircut, which the school claimed violated their dress code. The child's mother claimed, "The vice principal told my son that he needed to cut his hair because it was distracting and violated the dress code". The child's mother claims she agreed to get her son a new haircut; she also said she was unable to immediately get an appointment due to a lack of black barbers in her area. When her son arrived at school the next day, according to the child's mother, the school explained to her that he would face in-school suspension after returning with his haircut. The mother claims, "I requested that my son is issued a warning, to allow time to grow out his hair."

In Spring 2018, a black male student at Apache Junction High School in Arizona wore a blue bandana to school, which violated the dress code. His teacher called the police on him for not removing his bandana. He was then arrested and suspended for nine days.

In the summer of 2018, an 11-year-old black girl, Faith Fennidy, was sent home from a private Roman Catholic school in Louisiana because she had hair extensions. The young girl had been wearing extensions to school for two years before a new policy was added. The policy prohibits extensions, clip-ins, and/or weaves. The child would have to adhere to the policy to attend school. The family chose to withdraw the student from the school; the student was not suspended or expelled.

In 2012, at Creekside Elementary School in Milledgeville, Georgia, a six-year-old student, Salecia Johnson, was crying and flailing on the floor of her principal's office. The principal said she was inconsolable, had thrown various items, and had damaged school property during a tantrum. Salecia was handcuffed and transported to a police station. The child was initially charged as a juvenile with simple battery of a school teacher and criminal damage to property, but it was later decided the girl would not be charged because of her age.Events affecting school to prison pipeline

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic (My Draft)
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 disease a global pandemic, resulting in school shut-downs across multiple countries, including the United States. Based on a report by UNICEF, approximately 94% of all countries enacted forms of remote learning to continue education for children in response to government closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, as a result of the pandemic, in the United States, state and federal legislation either closed public schools and transferred to virtual instruction or offered hybrid learning, a mixture of face-to-face instruction and online learning. As school districts in the US encountered difficulty navigating requirements to provide education in remote settings, disciplinary practices continued to reflect aspects of the school-to-prison pipeline with zero-tolerance policies just as harmful as those before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the nation's transition to remote learning, punishments including out-of-school suspension, juvenile detention, and police involvement have been enacted for minor infractions that have occurred in virtual learning environments.


 * In May 2020, a fifteen-year-old Black female student with ADHD in Michigan was sent to a juvenile detention center for not turning in her online homework. The juvenile court concluded that her failure to submit her homework violated her probation and sentenced her to seventy-eight days in juvenile detention. She was later released after an adverse reaction from the public.


 * In August 2020, Isaiah Elliot, a twelve-year-old Black student with ADHD attending virtual school in Colorado was punished after being seen on his computer camera picking up a toy NERF gun. Isaiah was suspended for five days by the school, which later contacted police to conduct a welfare check before notifying his parents.

As before the pandemic, the "virtual" school-to-prison pipeline continues to disproportionately impact racial minorities, predominantly African American and Hispanic students from low-income backgrounds, and students with disabilities. There are more than 48,000 youth confined in facilities in the United States on any given day. According to a report by the NAACP, since 2020, "African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, 42% of children who are detained, and 52% of children whose cases are judicially waived to criminal court." Additionally, students with disabilities account for 8.6% of the student population in the United States but represent 36% of incarcerated youth. Because students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately incarcerated, they represent a large number of youth at risk for contracting COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. On that note, infectious diseases are severely concentrated in both adult and juvenile correctional facilities. The Marshall Project reported that most juvenile prison facilities have more than 80% infection rates. Moreover, approximately "15% of jail inmates and 22% of prisoners – compared to 5% of the general population – are reported having tuberculosis, Hepatitis B and C, HIV/AIDS, or other STDs."