Solutions Not Suspensions: This is How We Close the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Jul. 18 3:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Jul. 18 4:15 PM (Eastern)
Across the country students, parents, and educators are organizing to change their school districts’ zero tolerance policies. And they’re winning. Misguided discipline policies like zero tolerance push children out of school and into the criminal justice system. These policies also disproportionately hurt our most underserved children: black, Latino, poor, LGBT, and disabled students. How does the fight for fair discipline tie into other fights for justice? With major wins in cities and states across America (and now the attention of the DOJ and DOE), the movement for discipline reform is a bright spot on a sometimes bleak political landscape and a case study in successful movement building from which all progressives can learn.
Moderator
Nakisha Lewis
A long time advocate for race and gender justice, Nakisha has spent the last decade supporting youth and parent grassroots organizing across movements. As the former Program Manager at the Schott Foundation for Public Education, she managed the state-based Opportunity to Learn Campaign in Massachusetts and established the foundation’s Gender Equity portfolio.
Nakisha’s current work focuses on centering Black women and girls in philanthropic dialogue and developing a roadmap for investment in Black and Brown girls. At present she is working with the African American Policy Forum to organize women of color around the country in calling for inclusion in President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative.
Panelists
Maisie Chin
Maisie Chin is Executive Director/Co-Founder of CADRE – Community Asset Development Redefining Education, a community-based parent membership organization in South Los Angeles, led by African American and Latino parents. CADRE’s mission is to solidify and advance parent leadership to ensure that all children are rightfully educated regardless of where they live. A child of immigrants, Maisie has been in the social justice movement for 21 years, dedicated to fighting structural racism. Since 2001, CADRE parent leaders have been leading the fight to end the pushout of low-income families of color into the school-to-prison pipeline. CADRE has changed school discipline policy in Los Angeles and California, and is a founding member of the Dignity in Schools Campaign. Maisie sits on the board of the Schott Foundation for Public Education and is twice a UCLA Bruin – with a B.A. in History and a M.A. in Urban Planning.
Harold Jordan
Harold Jordan is a Coordinating Committee member of the Dignity in Schools Campaign and an Organizer at the ACLU of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discipline and Policing in Pennsylvania Schools, and editor of Know Your Rights: A Handbook for Public School Students in Pennsylvania.
Harold chairs the board of The Philadelphia Public School Notebook, and works with two local coalitions combating the school to prison pipeline in Pennsylvania.
Harold has a long history of activism on education issues. He was a student participant in school desegregation struggles in his Georgia home town. He coordinated a national youth program at the American Friends Service Committee for 17 years, and was the director of the National Coalition of Education Activists. He was also an administrator in the School District of Philadelphia.
He holds a degree in Social Thought and Analysis from Washington University in St. Louis.
Harry Lawson
Harry Lawson, Jr., MSW is the Associate Director of the NEA Human and Civil Rights Department, where he manages programs related to leadership and professional development and other programs in support of social justice issues. During his 9 years at NEA he has served as organizational specialist and as the Regional Director for NEA’s Southeast Region Office.
Harry came to NEA from the National Low Income Housing Coalition where he served as an organizer and Field Director for the National Housing Trust Fund Campaign. Harry has also served as a classroom teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland and the District of Columbia Public Schools. Harry holds a master of social work degree with a focus on community organizing and systems analysis from Howard University.
Harry is an avid photographer and pool player and enjoys spending time with his 2 year old daughter, Zora.
Toni Raines
My name is Toni D. Raines I am Seventeen and a Rising Senior. I attend Renaissance High School C/O 2015 located in Detroit, MI.
I am a member of the NAACP youth chapter as well at a recipient of a Spirit of Detroit Award. I have worked with MCHR. ( Michigan Coalition for Human Rights) on various issues such a future planning, youth development and much more.
I participated in a Freedom Tour last summer funded by MCHR which took a group of over 30 youth to seven southern states for us to learn about the impact of the civil rights movement, food security, and so forth.
There I learned and became an ambassador for Kingian Nonviolence.
I am currently the sergeant at arms for my graduating class.
I hope to attend Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA in the fall of 2015. To major in Mass Communications with concentration in Public Relations.