I found this fact to be astounding though sadly unsurprising:

Of African-American men born since the mid-1970s and who dropped out of school, 68 percent have prison records (Source: Social Inequality in Prisons).

People often ask me why our organization runs a “peace room” in our local elementary school. My answer is always that it is because we are interested in interrupting the school to prison pipeline. This pipeline is real and we see it in operation every day. Young black males at our local school are quick to be suspended or even expelled for the slightest misbehavior. Sometimes they are even arrested directly from school. This situation has been going on for years and just last September we decided that establishing a peace room that would serve as an alternative to suspension, expulsion, and arrest was a potential solution to the problem.

Part of our job in the peace room is to do what one of my staff calls “emotional triage.” Many urban schools are now akin to war zones and students and teachers are suffering from battle wounds (both visible and invisible). Sometimes our role is to take a couple of students out of class because the teacher is at her wits end. Sometimes we are an ear for a teacher who wants to quit that day. Sometimes we are there to calm a parent down who has been told that her child needs to be in special education. When we get around to it, we are able to run peacemaking circles. That comes last. Our first and most important role is to be present in the lives of everyone in that school community and to have compassion for all stakeholders. There need to be “peace rooms” in all 550 elementary schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. Community members need to step up and step back into the life of their neighborhood public schools.

When I write about the school to prison pipeline, it is not from a place that is unsympathetic to the administrators and teachers in local schools. It is precisely because I understand the challenges and am in my way trying to help address them that I am so passionate about the fact that we need to limit the numbers of suspensions and expulsions in schools. These serve as ways to “push out” the students who often most need to be in school.

Recently, the NAACP took on a campaign to address the disproportionate rate of suspensions among black students (particularly males) in Nashville schools. To watch a television report on their efforts, click here WZTV FOX 17 :: Newsroom – Top Stories – NAACP Sees Problems with School Suspensions in Metro Schools.

Columnist Dwight Lewis wrote about their efforts:

They were tired of see­ing black kids sus­pended at a higher rate than white kids. So black lead­ers came together last week in a call to action about high sus­pen­sion rates for African-American boys in Met­ro­pol­i­tan Nashville Pub­lic Schools.

“We have gath­ered today to bring atten­tion to an issue that we feel directly impacts the edu­ca­tion and the very lives of the African-American com­mu­nity, espe­cially the lives of young, African-American males,’’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives from about a dozen orga­ni­za­tions here said in a press release. “The issue that we want to bring atten­tion to is that of increased sus­pen­sions of black males in pub­lic schools.…

“The Depart­ment of Education’s Office of Civil Rights released a study stat­ing that black stu­dents are four times more likely to be sus­pended than other stu­dents. The report stated that nine mid­dle schools in Nashville have sus­pended more than half of their black stu­dents dur­ing the course of the school year. The report fur­ther stated that six ele­men­tary schools sus­pended only black students.’’

Wednesday’s meet­ing included rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the NAACP’s Nashville branch; the Inter­de­nom­i­na­tional Min­is­ters Fellowship’s Peniel pro­gram; Urban League of Mid­dle Ten­nessee; the Cen­ter for Com­mu­nity Change; Urban Epi­cen­ter; Ten­nessee Black Children’s Insti­tute; the Dis­pro­por­tion­ate Minor­ity Con­tact and Con­fine­ment; 100 Black Women; the Ten­nessee Immi­gra­tion and Refugee Rights Coali­tion; Gideon’s Grass­roots Army for Chil­dren; and Nashville city council’s Black Caucus.

The Nashiville story is being repeated in communities across the U.S. Just last week, I read an article highlighting instances of disproportionate minority school suspensions in Wake County, North Carolina.

We are going to need an entire community of people in order to address the issue of harsh disciplinary policies in schools and to interrupt the school to prison pipeline. I hope that efforts like the ones in Nashville and our small contribution in Chicago are replicated in cities and towns across the U.S.