Why Education Sector Philanthropy Must Embrace a Racial Justice Lens + Worcester Residents Push for School Police Removal | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Why Education Sector Philanthropy Must Embrace a Racial Justice Lens | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Why Education Sector Philanthropy Must Embrace a Racial Justice Lens

A defining theme of 2020 was the nationwide increase in grassroots activism. Across the country, people young and old took to the streets to challenge racial injustice. Whether it was in action on the climate crisis, or in demonstrations in response to fatal police shootings, communities have proven time and again that they care, they are connected, and they are a driving force for change. In the movement to ensure a future and nation that works for all, community organizers have emerged as the real MVPs.

While Black and Brown organizers have modeled extreme heroism and dedication, much of their work has occurred with limited or nonexistent financial support. They are fighting for justice, yet they do so without significant philanthropic investment.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education’s new research with Candid shows that in education, philanthropy drastically underfunds both racial equity and racial justice. In the three-year period from 2017 through 2019, education philanthropy—the second most popular issue for foundations—disbursed $14 billion, but just ten percent of that ($1.4 billion) went to racial equity, and less than one percent ($109 million) went to racial justice. There are 56.6 million K–12 students nationwide, which means the philanthropic investment in racial justice works out to less than $2 per student.

Racial equity and racial justice grants may look similar on their face, but they are different. Racial equity refers to grants designed to close the achievement gap that persists between racial groups. This includes support for programs like racial bias trainings for teachers or mentorship programs for Black and Brown students.

Racial justice refers to addressing the underlying systemic injustices that create these achievement gaps in the first place. Racial justice grants focus explicitly on empowering the people closest to the problem (families and students) as they organize in their communities to change the systems and structures that generate and reinforce racial injustice. Racial justice CONTINUE READING: Why Education Sector Philanthropy Must Embrace a Racial Justice Lens | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Worcester Residents Push for School Police Removal, Call for Faster Timelines and Community Input

Community members in Worcester, Massachusetts, including our grantee partner Worcester Interfaith and Schott's Programs & Advocacy Director Marianna Islam, are helping push city officials to take stronger steps against structural racism in the city. At the most recent city council meeting, residents voiced support for a report that recommends removing school resource officers from Worcester public schools, but urged a faster timeline and greater community oversight. This comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by a coalition including Worcester Interfaith claiming the city's school committee elections system discriminates against communities of color.

The Telegram & Gazette reports:

WORCESTER—The City Council Tuesday bumped to next week discussion of City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr.'s executive order on structural and institutional racism and accompanying recommendations, but that didn't stop many community members who called in to the virtual meeting from making their voices heard. 

Mayor Joseph M. Petty announced at the beginning of the meeting that the manager's report, which includes an executive order acknowledging the role structural and institutional racism have played and continues to play in the city, would be taken up at next week's meeting. 

The report includes recommendations to remove resource officers from schools and restructure how police interact with schools; to implement some form of alternative deployment that sends mental health and social workers on calls with police; and to establish a new investigations division at City Hall that would address both employee and resident complaints. 

Residents reacted to the executive order and the slate of recommendations with cautious optimism in some areas and CONTINUE READING: Worcester Residents Push for School Police Removal, Call for Faster Timelines and Community Input

Another School District Ends Contract with City Police for Security Guards: Will Improve Counseling and School Climate | janresseger

Another School District Ends Contract with City Police for Security Guards: Will Improve Counseling and School Climate | janresseger

Another School District Ends Contract with City Police for Security Guards: Will Improve Counseling and School Climate

Last June, after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the Washington Post reported that school districts across the United States suddenly felt obligated to take seriously the warnings from civil rights organizations about problems when school districts hire armed police as so-called “Student Resource Officers”:

“For years, civil rights activists have worked to remove police officers from the nation’s public schools, arguing that they pose a greater risk to students of color than the intruders they’re supposed to guard against. But in the wake of George Floyd’s death, a shift that seemed impossible only a few weeks ago is underway: Several major school systems have canceled their contracts with police, and others are mounting pressure to do the same.” School districts named by the Post last June included: Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, Oakland, and West Contra Costa Unified School District in California.

Now, the New York Times reports that last week another large school district, the Los Angeles Unified School District, approved a plan to eliminate a third of the armed police guards in the city’s public schools: “After a months-long push by students in the nation’s second-largest public school system, leaders in Los Angeles approved a plan on Tuesday to cut the district’s security force by a third, joining a growing number of cities that have reduced the presence of police officers in school hallways… The vote on Tuesday… would also ban the use of pepper spray on students and divert $25 million to programs supporting students of color. It was the result of months of meetings on how best to reconfigure public safety in the district, which serves about 650,000 students… The plan… eliminates 70 sworn officers, who have arrest CONTINUE READING: Another School District Ends Contract with City Police for Security Guards: Will Improve Counseling and School Climate | janresseger

Shanker Blog: Re-Imagining School Discipline: A Plea To Education Leaders | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Re-Imagining School Discipline: A Plea To Education Leaders | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Re-Imagining School Discipline: A Plea To Education Leaders

In many large urban school districts, there are more security employees than counselors. In the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) system, for example there is one security guard for every 147 students, while the counselor-to-student ratio is 1:217. In addition, based on 2015-16 data, Groeger et al. (2018) found that Black students in DCPS were 15 times more likely to be suspended than their white peers (nationally, Black students were four times more likely to be suspended). In short, many students are not getting the emotional and mental support they need as they go through our schools. Instead, as exemplified by these staffing ratios, too many students are affected by punitive, militaristic methods of discipline, which may not only have negative consequences for the students who are disciplined, but for their peers as well (Perry and Morris 2014).  

A commonly used discipline approach, which used to be known as “zero tolerance,” was to discipline all students who didn’t follow the expected “rules.” Zero tolerance policies proliferated in public schools as a reform to help manage student behavior, using a “quick fix” method. Weaver and Swank (2020) define zero tolerance as “policies…[that] include exclusionary practices (i.e., office referral, suspension, expulsion) that involve the removal of the offender from the context of the incident and isolating the student from others involved and their school community.”

Unfortunately, as Skiba et al. (2011) show, these policies have created negative experiences for students and have disproportionately affected Black and brown students. Because they are CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: Re-Imagining School Discipline: A Plea To Education Leaders | National Education Policy Center

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’

As districts across the country cut their school resource officers, advocates warn it won’t be enough to end overly harsh discipline of Black students.

Shyra Adams vividly remembers the days after the death of Tony Robinson, an unarmed Black teenager killed in 2015 by police in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. 

Angry and distraught over the injustice, Adams, then a high school sophomore, staged a walkout with hundreds of other students, who filled the state Capitol to protest Robinson’s death. She joined weekly protests and helped organize sit-ins at her school. Then, she cried quietly in class as she watched the Dane County district attorney announce on TV that no charges would be filed against the officer who shot and killed Robinson.

“It felt kind of hopeless at that point,” Adams, now 21, said. 

But this summer, after five years of testifying at nearly every Madison school board meeting about the importance of removing police from schools, Adams found herself crying for a different reason. This time, she said, the tears came from her renewed hope that fighting for young people of color could lead to change. In June, she and other members of the Freedom Youth Squad, a group of Black and Southeast Asian activists, gathered to watch the Madison school board’s unanimous vote to cancel its contract with municipal police and remove all officers stationed at its high schools.

“A lot of people in different states were winning, but I thought, ‘In Madison? No way. They’ve been ignoring us for years,’” Adams said. “But that’s changing now. We finally got CONTINUE READING: If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

Going “Black to School” With Counselors Not Cops!: An interview on the victory for #PoliceFreeSchools with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Going “Black to School” With Counselors Not Cops!: An interview on the victory for #PoliceFreeSchools with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Going “Black to School” With Counselors Not Cops!: 

An interview on the victory for #PoliceFreeSchools with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene

Minneapolis students demonstrate the day before Superbowl 2018 for cops out of the schools. (Photo: Unicorn Riot)

An interview with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene about the uprising for Black lives, the victory of removing police from public schools, and the need to rethink what school looks like.

By Jesse Hagopian

On June 2, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, the Minneapolis Public Schools school board voted to terminate the Minneapolis Police Department’s contract, removing all police from their schools. The board also directed Superintendent Ed Graff to come up with a new plan for school safety by August 18, the date of the board’s next meeting.

While the uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd was the immediate catalyst to the removal of police from MPS, many youth had been working toward this goal for years. A 2018–19 survey by Minneapolis Public Schools survey showed that school cops had more interactions with black students than with their peers. MPS will save $1.1 million annually by not contracting with the police department.

On June 7, Seattle high school teacher and author Jesse Hagopian interviewed Minneapolis Public School student Nathaniel Genene about the uprising in Minneapolis against police violence and the movement to remove police from the schools. Nathaniel is the current student representative on the Minneapolis Board of Education and an officer on the citywide Youth Leadership Council for the Minneapolis public schools.

A version of this interview was originally published in The Nation magazine.

Minneapolis Public Schools Expel the Police!

Jesse Hagopian: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Nathaniel. I know with the uprising at your doorstep, you have a lot going on. I want to talk with you about the dramatic victory to remove police from the Minneapolis schools. But before we get there, let’s start with your experience as a black student in the school system. Can CONTINUE READING: Going “Black to School” With Counselors Not Cops!: An interview on the victory for #PoliceFreeSchools with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene – I AM AN EDUCATOR