Mohammed Khaku
STPP refers to policies and practices that push children, especially minorities, out of schools, and into the juvenile, and criminal justice system.This is the issue that continues to affect our future generation and communities of color. Join us on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, @ 7:00 pm to hear stories from former students, educators, and community leaders who have come to address this issue.#SchoolToPrisonPipeline #share #like #promoteThis forum will provide an opportunity for lawmakers, social workers, and activists to understand more about the School-To-Prison Pipeline and learn about its history and evolution. Please share the below flyer with all lawmakers, family, friends, place of worship, and on social media. Please register with the below link: https://www.lvji.org/ The STTP is the most misunderstood issue and fervently denied that the school-to-prison pipeline exists.And elected officials should stop gaslighting by denying STPP exists. We can’t change what we won’t accept.The critics of STPP understand as they directly go to jail like on a monopoly board game.STPP is the result of over-disciplined and over-policed schools that disproportionately harm Black and Brown children.STPP is a tapestry of school policies on discipline that drive many of our children in the criminal justice system.School discipline of minor infractions exists disproportionally in schools of Black and Brown which results in mass incarceration. STPP is due to the policies and practices that funnel out the most at-risk children from the classroom into the juvenile criminal justice system. There are many tools that school districts can use to help students, rather than punish them which have proven effective to interrupt STPP.STPP has taken roots in our schooling systems due to economics and inequalities face by people of color. The unjustified “zero tolerance” policies and disparities in School Discipline.Zero-tolerance policies with police presence in schools have blurred the lines between school safety, and punishment.Despite the lack of evidence supporting the use of zero-tolerance policies as effective, researchers estimate that at least 75 percent of schools have zero-tolerance policies. For many African American children, experience exclusionary discipline and aggressive policing practices which are not new in schools in minority areas.The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) has found that disproportionate discipline practices disrupt learning, increase absenteeism, and failure to graduate.The “zero-tolerance” policies are the most dangerous form of punishment originally written in 1980 for the “war of drugs” and “law and order.” 2014 Department of Education (DOE) study found that “Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students.”Policies like “zero-tolerance” with criminalizing minor violations of school rules, especially against students of color are unwarranted.Children are incarcerated at ever-younger ages rather given an opportunity to continue their education because of the prison industrial complex.We have to fight the zero-tolerance policies by dismantling zero-tolerance laws, hire more mental health specialists and counselors than police officers. Police officers are not trained in empathy and compassion, which is exactly what developing children need.The lawmaker should provide special funding formula to address inequalities by providing more resources to districts with more high-need students. School districts have to adapt their disciplinary policies away from suspensions and one towards compassion and academics.Schools district must be supportive of those who have been historically under-supported by schools and their systems.Many studies have shown that suspension without offering guidance does more harm than good to the students, families and society.The old-style, ineffective, and harmful disciplinary approach does not work. We have to devise alternative approaches to restorative justice, For every child that drops out there in a spiral effect on the increased risk of retention, poverty, and crimes. Mass Incarceration and STPP: A Civil Rights Crisis Mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline are civil rights as well as Human Rights issues in form of racial oppression.This subject deserved as a history lesson on the school curriculum. We need to make it visible in the curriculum.The Critical race theory is an academic concept of education inequalities that have existed more than fifty years old because of the sin of slavery.Since 1970, the U.S. prison population has exploded from about 325,000 people to more than 2 million today. More than 7 million children have at least family members incarcerated, on probation, or on parole.Since the Nixon era, our society has accelerated punishment as a role model—from death penalty executions to incarceration. No wonder the prison population has ballooned.We cannot build safe, and high-class schools and criminalize our children at the same time.Due to Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), the law enforcement department places a high priority on incarceration than education.The US spends seventy billion dollars annually on incarceration, parole, and probation.Don’t get me wrong we need to separate the bad apples, and fighting crime should be our first priority.However, an increase in the budget of district attorneys does not justify the decrease in crime rate, especially in Lehigh County.
