Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 68
Under the new policy, for Oakland Police
Department officials operating under the COPS
grant, schools will not request a police response to
disciplinary issues such as trespassing, loitering, or
defiance, data on police contacts and arrests must
be collected, and parents must notify parents or
guardians immediately after an arrest is made or
when an officer wants to question a student.
“The MOU was a great victory. Not just for the school
board, not just for the community, not even just for
BOP. This was a victory for the youth who have been
victims of police misco nduct and who thanks to this
policy, now have a voice,” said Sema’J Wyatt, BOP
organizer.
In addition, the school district in partnership with the
same organizations developed district policies for its
school police officers and administrators to ensure
that school discipline is handled by school officials
and to monitor and address police contacts and
arrests that lead to the school-prison-pipeline. The
policies were approved by the School Board at the
end of the 2013-14 school year.
Read From Report Card to Criminal Record, the
report by the groups that led to the reforms, and
more at BlackOrganizingProject.org
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How we can fix school discipline
Pasadena Unified Takes Action to Keep
Students in School and Off the Jailhouse
Track
The Pasadena Unified School District and Pasadena
Police Department, in partnership with the ACLU
of Southern California, also put in place a strong
Memorandum of Understanding and policies to
address the school-to-prison pipeline and limit
referrals to police to only those incidents for which
mandatory police notification is required. These
policies also identify that the school district has a
role in protecting the rights of students who may be
subject to police questioning during school hours.
After passage of the MOU, School Board Vice
President Tyrone Hamilton noted that: “It brings a
dialogue between the police and students, because
oftentimes there’s not that dialogue and students feel
that police are out to get them. . . It holds our youth
a little more accountable and lets Pasadena police
know that these are kids.”77
77 See full story at: http://www.pasadenanow.com/main/pasadenaunfied-agrees-to-police-on-campus#.VFuLJ0fTk1I (August 2013).