By Sikivu Hutchinson
Recently, in a class discussion about youth not having a
voice at school, my students gave me an earful about racially disparate
discipline policies. They pointed to a
culture of disrespect that they believe marginalizes and disfavors outspoken African
American students. For many, this
culture is rooted in a policing regime that kicks in before they even get to
school, buttressed by criminalizing truancy policies that disproportionately
target black and Latino youth. Over the
past several years Los Angeles Unified School Police and the LAPD have handed
out 88% of $250 truancy tickets to black and Latino students. Blacks and Latinos constitute 74% of the
student population. Moreover, a significant
number of youth of color in South L.A. schools such as Gardena and Washington
Prep High Schools are homeless, in foster care and/or indigent. So in what parallel universe does a low
income student, a homeless student or a student in foster care afford a $250
ticket? Clearly doling out tickets to
students who are already faced with deep educational challenges is a recipe for
disaster. But the city’s current daytime
curfew policy bolsters a culture of suppression and enforcement that further
exacerbates the yawning achievement gap and feeds the school-to-prison pipeline.
It sends students the insidious message that being late for school is a
criminal act, rather than a social issue which caring adult providers,
families, and communities must actively redress in order to serve the needs of
struggling young people.
Towards this end, Los Angeles City Councilmember Tony
Cardenas introduced a Council motion that would revise daytime curfew laws to
make them more culturally responsive to the needs of working class transit
dependent students of color. The motion
was passed by the City Council’s Safety Committee on February 13th
and will go to the full Council for a vote on February 21st. It calls on the LAPD and School Police to end
the practice of issuing citations with fines for truancy when minors are within
range of their school sites. It also
requires that the LAPD and School Police collect demographic data on the
population of minors cited for truancy infractions. The Community Rights Campaign and allies such
as Public Counsel and the ACLU are spearheading the effort to decriminalize
truancy. In addition to the City Council
motion, the coalition is urging law enforcement and school officials to
consider programs that emphasize restorative justice and non-punitive conflict mediation
approaches to addressing truancy. It is
also recommending that school officials work with the MTA to develop policies
that ease the burden on transit dependent youth who are often at the mercy of
erratic bus schedules. By framing
truancy as a systemic issue informed by multiple social, economic, and
educational factors, the Community Rights Campaign is part of a growing
movement that has emerged to challenge long-standing institutionally racist and
classist discipline policies that disenfranchise youth of color in the LAUSD. Despite the 2008 implementation of the
district’s so-called School Wide Positive Behavior Support System, egregious
racial disparities in discipline are still rampant in the LAUSD. The entire City Council should get behind
this motion and send a strong message to LAUSD that its culture of youth
disenfranchisement will not be legitimized by law enforcement’s suppression
tactics on the streets.
Sikivu Hutchinson is the founder of the Women’s
Leadership Project, which is based at Gardena and Washington Prep High Schools. She is also the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars and the forthcoming Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels.
