Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 73

HIGHLIGHT: SUCCESS
(STUDENTS UNITED TO CREATE A CLIMATE OF ENGAGEMENT, SUPPORT AND SAFETY)

A project of the Youth Engagement Team Fresno, led by a coalition including the Youth Leadership
Institute, Californians for Justice, The Center for Multicultural Cooperation, The Know Youth Media, Boys
and Girls Clubs of Fresno County and Fresno Pacific University
Interview with MaryJane Skjellerup (MaryJane),
Former Senior Director of Programs, YLI and
SUCCESS youth members Brooklyn Taylor (Brooklyn)
and Miriam Hernandez (Miriam)

How did you start organizing around the drop out
and school climate issues in your community?
Brooklyn: Two years ago, several organizations were
looking at different issues related to school climate
and drop out rates. For instance, Miriam and I also
belong to Californians for Justice (CFJ), and we
were starting to talk about these problems. Youth
Leadership Institute (YLI) had conducted over 100
surveys with community members to understand
the issues with school climate and drop out and find
alternatives.
MaryJane: Concerns about what was happening in
our schools started bubbling up from the community.
The California Endowment (the Endowment) had
just identified Fresno as one of their communities
for their Building Healthy Communities initiative
(BHC). During the BHC planning process, the
Endowment was looking at student attendance
data. In the fall of 2010, our organization received
funding from BHC to do research with a deliberate
focus on what our young people were concerned
about, namely the extraordinary amount of time
that students were spending outside of school. For
instance, we found that students had missed 32,180
school days because of suspension.
Miriam: To deal with the school climate problems,
SUCCESS was created from the membership and
different groups that involved youth: YLI, Boys and
Girls Club of Fresno County, The Know Youth Media
Magazine, Fresno Pacific University Center for Peace

and Conflict Studies and the Center for Multicultural
Cooperation.

How did you learn more about school discipline
issues in Fresno?
MaryJane: We gathered data about Fresno Unified
School District from California Healthy Kids
Survey, California School Climate Survey, California
Department of Education Dataquest and the Office
of Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, all
of which can be searched online. We found that
students missed 32, 180 days because of suspensions,
that only 42% of students felt like they are a part of
their school, and that only 22% of teachers strongly
feel that discipline is handled effectively. From the
surveys and data, we figured out what we wanted to
know more about.
Using this information, we created focus groups by
engaging our different partners that worked with
the students, such as the Boys and Girls Club. We
asked them to get involved and send us students,
parents and community members to participate in
our focus groups. We asked the focus groups, “Why
is this happening, why are so many students being
suspended and dropping out of school?”
Brooklyn: We learned that a lot of students didn’t
feel like there was an adult who cares about them at
school and that they don’t feel safe at school. That
was a big pattern; students always got bad feedback
from their teachers and a lot of teachers and staff
would belittle them and treat them like they were
lesser.
Miriam: Students said that they felt like they were
just going to school and that’s all that mattered. No
one cared what they were going through at home.

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