 Okay, we're going to get started. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Shayna Cook, an education policy analyst here at New America. Thank you all for joining us today for an important conversation. Today's event entitled The School to Prison Pipeline, Decriminalizing Public Education, is co-sponsored by the National Black Child Development Institute and the Greater Washington Urban League. I'd like to give a special thanks to the W. Clement and Jesse V. Stone Foundation and the Alliance for Early Success for supporting today's event. I'd also like to recognize the Washington Teachers Union and the District of Columbia Association for the Education of Young Children for helping us to promote this event. First, though, for those of you who are watching online and those who would like to participate in the conversation via Twitter, please use the hashtags RethinkDiscipline and N-B-C-D-W-18. For those of you—and those hashtags are also on your program, so you can easily find them— for those of you who are not familiar with New America, our organization strives to explain and uncover the implications, the challenges, and opportunities inherent in a time of tremendous technological and social change. In our education program, we focus on equity for underserved students while also taking a broad view. We examine learning environments and public education systems of all kinds, starting with our littlest ones and continuing up through adulthood. For today's event, we are here to discuss how students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by exclusionary discipline practices. New data from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights reveal that Black and Latino students are twice as likely to be pushed out of school. During the 2015-16 school year, Black students represented 15% of the total student enrollment and 31% of the students who were referred to law enforcement or arrested. And students with disabilities represented 12% of the overall student enrollment and 28% of the students referred to law enforcement or arrested. These disparities in school discipline practices start early. A 2014 Office for Civil Rights report found that Black children make up 18% of pre-K enrollment and they represent 48% of pre-K students receiving more than one out-of-school suspension. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education and Justice released guidance to help states, districts, and schools address their use of exclusionary discipline and begin to implement research-based practices to promote positive school climate with a focus on civil rights. The Trump administration has floated the idea of revoking this guidance what will that mean for our students of color and for those with disabilities? How can advocates continue to shine a light on the disparate impact of exclusionary discipline practices? Finally, it is important to note that the school-to-prison pipeline is larger than school-discipline issues. In order for us to end this pipeline, we will need to think about school climate and our institutional structures more broadly. We need to create equitable policies, practices, and systems that will support all of our children. And then I'd like to also take a moment to thank our partner in this work, Amisha Cross. She's also the moderator for today's panel, and she is the Director of Policy and External Relations at the National Black Child Development Institute. And she's also the Civic Engagement Chair of Thursday Network at the Greater Washington Urban League. And so please join me in welcoming Amisha to the stage. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're extremely excited today at the National Black Child Development Institute, particularly to talk about the school-to-prison pipeline. We're looking at an issue that not only affects black students at a rate that is up to eight times higher than any other population of students, but we're also looking at one that most people don't recognize actually affects black students as young as three years old. So one of the things that we definitely want to ensure that we talk about during this discussion with our esteemed panel is how we actually address this issue. At the end of the day, there have been several studies that have pointed to the fact that a lot of the discrepancies in discipline are largely due to implicit bias and quite frankly racism. No one has actually tried to alleviate that. We've seen states that have enacted laws to end suspensions and expulsions, but we know that even in those states suspensions and expulsions are still occurring. Connecticut, for example, just two years ago passed legislation to end suspensions and expulsions in grades six and below. A year later, over 3,000 suspensions and expulsions occurred within those age groups. So we definitely want to ensure that we impress upon you that you not only need to be advocating at the state and local level for this legislation that actually pushes towards suspensions and expulsions, but you're also thinking about the wraparound services and social support that are necessary for a lot of our students of color so that we address a lot of the underlying causes that lead teachers to suspend and expel in addition to the teacher trainings necessary so that teachers aren't looking towards black students and targeting those students specifically. I wanted to definitely take a moment to thank our panelists before actually introducing them. We have a esteemed group of panelists who have worked on this issue as well as several other education reform issues over the past decade or so, and we definitely want to give them credit where credit is due for the hard work that they do every day in this field, particularly on behalf of students of color, but also recognizing everything that they are up against as well. This week, you guys should know that we are also celebrating and should be celebrating the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But with that, we also recognize that today's public schools have more segregation than was exhibited in the 1960s. With that, we also have schools today that have less African-American teachers than we have historically ever seen. However, we have classrooms that have more black and brown students than we have ever seen in this country. So while we coax this conversation around the preschool to prison pipeline, we also want you to have those things in mind. Without further ado, I want to introduce our panel. First, we have Ms. Tyra Mariani. She's the Executive Vice President of New America, the place that you all happen to be sitting in right now. Previously, Mariani was co-founder and managing partner of Opportunity at Work, a civic enterprise launched in New America, which aims to rewire the U.S. labor market. Prior to New America, Mariani was appointed Chief of Staff to the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education and Deputy Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of Education under the Obama Administration. Please join me in welcoming Ms. Tyra Mariani. We also have with us Dr. Andre Perry. Dr. Perry is a David M Rubenstein fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on race and structural inequality, education, and economic inclusion. A particular note, Dr. Perry's recent scholarship at Brookings has analyzed majority black places and institutions in America focusing on highlighting valuable assets worthy of increased investment. Join me in welcoming Dr. Andre Perry. We also have with us Dr. Ivory Tolson. Dr. Tolson is a professor at Howard University, president and CEO of the QEM Network, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education. Dr. Tolson has written more than 60 publications and presented his work in 32 states and around the world. He is a contributing editor for The Root and former executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs. Welcome, Dr. Ivory Tolson. We have one more panelist joining us shortly. I'm getting the cue that she may not be here just yet, but before we actually go into... Anise is here. Anise, could you come a little bit closer to the front? So Anise Walker is the school climate specialist and restorative justice coordinator at the District of Columbia Public Schools. She's spent the past 21 years in education, counseling and behavioral health, parent engagement and training. She received a bachelor's degree in education for the hearing impaired and a master's degree in guidance counseling from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Throughout her professional career, Walker has provided services in a variety of settings including public schools, public charter schools, outpatient mental health centers, nonprofit organizations, special education placements and the juvenile justice system. Please join me in welcoming Anise Walker. So before we get started, go into depth in a lot of the questions that we have. And again, we're going to leave a considerable amount of time at the end because we definitely want to have audience questions as well. I wanted to take a moment to give you all about two minutes each to discuss what this topic means to you and the work that you've done in preschool to prison pipeline. And I will start with Anise. Good evening, everyone. For me, this means a lot. I have a 15-year-old daughter and I grew up with all brothers. So this means a lot to me, particularly because we have our brown or black and brown boys who are a victim of this pipeline. And actually, two of my brothers have also been in prison. So this means a lot to me when I think back to how they were educated, how they were raised because they were raised with my father and not with me. So when I think back to all of the issues that they had to deal with in regards to special education, in regards to behavior, and some of those other kind of things, this really means a lot to me to reach out to what I call ankle biters, the little people. Because we're starting to see them in an alarming rate to be suspended or put out of class or identified in a way that doesn't really look to support them. Dr. Perry? Yeah, this is important to me because suspension and expulsion, special ed issues are a reflection of how we see black folk and it's also a reflection of the resources we commit to them. When we expel or suspend, it's basically saying that we've given up on certain children. It's also important to me because I'm a father of a son that's in a school in which teachers have the same perceptions of him as they have of other black boys in the data. And as you know that black children are disproportionately expelled, suspended, disciplined. And so this is very real for me. It is when my son has an interaction with a gym teacher or a science teacher, they carry expectations. And I get to really see the limitations of my power as a parent and as a black parent. And so this is something I deal with every day so I'm happy to be a part of this conversation. Dr. Toulsen. All right, greetings all of my fellow Wakandans and Colonials too. I've always considered my work to be to reveal the genius that's in plain sight among African-Americans and that's why I made the Wakandan reference. When I started research about 10 years ago on black males, most of the research that was out there was from a deficit perspective. Most of it centered around comparing black males outside of the race looking at what's called this achievement gap, which was always poorly defined but overly used. And so a lot of the research that was out there basically pathologized black children. And I heard a lot of people who work with black children repeating these pathologies. So they would make certain assumptions about the abilities of black students based on the composition of their household or based on the probability that they thought they would go into the criminal justice system. So a lot of our expectations were creating these biases. And one of the things that I did with my research was I de-emphasized the achievement gap research. I surmised that it wasn't as important to compare black students to students from other races. It was more important to compare the highest-achieving black students, the middle-achieving black students, the low-achieving black students. So we can really reveal whether some of the factors that's associated with black students doing their best. And I think that's connected to the issues that we're having with the school-to-prison pipeline. A lot of times when we look at what black students need to form from this deficit perspective and to form from the perspective that in order to make sure black students are on the right path, we have to borrow some techniques from the most aggressive and the most restrictive ways of dealing with students. But really what my research has always shown going back to my breaking barriers research to the current research that I do is that black students need to be cared for. They need people that believe in them. They need to be in an environment that's nurturing. They need to have respect from the people who are working with them. And until we emphasize these types of things and de-emphasize, like the panel suggests, this criminalization and this borrowing of concepts from the criminal justice system, until we emphasize the caring, we're going to continue to see these problems. So look forward to the dialogue. So like the other panelists for me, it is deeply personal as well. As a woman of color, I too have family members who have had interactions with the criminal justice system, including my brother when he was a young adult. And so when I think about the things that get in the way for people of color to really live productive lives and contribute in ways that, to be successful in ways that we want of our family members that we want for everyone in society, this is low level stuff. It's almost like first line, which is when you think about what I think is some of the systemic racism that exists, it really gets in the way. Because if you're not in the room to learn and have the conversation, then you're out of the game from the start, right? If you're locked in a room and you're given games to play with and nothing meaningful or engaging, you're not even in the game. You're not on the field to compete in our society. And so I dedicated most of my career to change those outcomes, whether it's thinking about resource allocation at Chicago Public Schools or training leaders in New Orleans or working on My Brother's Keeper under the Obama administration. What really is about the system and how we can change the system so that all of our children can be given a fair chance to succeed in life and to date that is not the case of the system that we have set up in America. Absolutely. We know that school climate and culture play a major role in the productivity of students, parent engagement, as well as community influence and community respect. When we talk about discipline and discipline practices, specifically how they are used and who they are used on, how can teachers and parents be equipped to better inform school culture? We'll start with you, Dr. Toulson. So the resource strategy that I've always taken was to look at the students who are performing the best and try to replicate their experiences or try to better understand their experiences. And doing some analyses of various datasets, like the crime victimization survey, school crime supplement. What we find is that all of the more popular methods of enforcing discipline and order, like metal detector, security officers, locking down schools, all of these things are statistically correlated with everything bad in your school from higher dropout rates, lower rates of achievement, less participation in extracurricular activities. And student satisfaction surveys that generally show students don't like being a part of those environments. So the strategy should be to replicate the things that have a negative association with some of those bad academic outcomes. So if there are metal detectors at the school, there should be policies to try to remove the metal detectors and there should be some sort of a plan. There should be an aspirational goal to reach the point where the school no longer needs metal detectors. But yet when I talk to people who have that type of authority, there's never a plan in place. And they don't even really have clear cut policies on when to put them up. So just to sum up, we have to do things that's consistent with what research says will produce the highest levels of academic success. And right now, all of the strict disciplinary measures that we're using are working against that objective, not towards it. I would love to build on a couple of pieces that I think you are critical, and I know you agree, given your background, but I think you've been skipped over, is when I think about equipped, I think about what tools and knowledge do people need in order to be successful. And my first thought is data, data, data. Because you can't develop a plan unless you have the data that tells you what you're trying to address. So A, how many, let's start with how many suspensions and expulsions are we actually doing? What students are being suspended and expelled? Sometimes we think of it as a teacher issue. This teacher has a problem. When in fact, if you look at the student level data, you find that there are certain students. Maybe there's something happening with this particular set of students. So I think if we want to start with equipping them, we have to start by looking at the data that helps us look for trends and opportunities for what we're trying to address. And then look at and say how are we treating certain groups of students? How are we treating certain infractions that are existing in the school? And then think about the interventions and supports that are necessary that allow you to avoid both escalation or over-treatment for you didn't wear your uniform yet today. You shouldn't have to go home for that. But let's think about interventions once we start to understand both what the problem is and then we can start to build a knowledge base about how we treat the problems and the trends and the data that we're seeing. Building off Tyra's point is around data. I really do believe that parents should have climate survey information in hand. Parents do not know what's going on in these schools in terms of school climate. How students are treated. And there are a lot of instruments out there, federal government created one not that long ago and there's other instruments used in different cities. But by and large school leaders and teachers don't want these instruments because it will tell the public how they are treated in school. And I want to be clear about this. This is something that's implicit in our statement. There's this belief that in order for black children to learn, they must be punished. And it's probably the lowest form of learning and teaching that we can offer families and children. But you get it from teachers, parents, leaders, that this idea if a child is not compliant, you punish them to make them so. And it goes even deeper than that. I've seen teachers and leaders encourage punishment for not getting basic lessons. Remember the video that went viral of the teacher in Evo Moskowitz School, a little one that didn't get the math problem right. She was chastised, harshly sent away. This was a baby because she didn't get a math problem right. And one more thing around this punishment. Behavior is just like any other skill. There's students with low levels of skill in certain areas. But if you didn't get a certain math problem correct, we don't say go home. We give another problem to help the child develop that skill. The same thing is true for behavior. If you're sending a kid home and telling her to mention this, you're not giving that kid an opportunity to develop. And it's hard. This is hard stuff. Kids can fight, they can hurt, they can throw things. Still, folks have got to practice the behavior. And so if you take them out of a situation, you're just not ever going to get the ideal behavior. But all of this is still predicated on this notion that black children need to be punished to learn. It's the most ridiculous notion, but it's deeply rooted in our perceptions and our beliefs about what black people deserve. Anise, as a practitioner with a specialization in school climate and culture, we know that DC has recently come under fire for its elevated suspensions and expulsions of black females, black girls in school. What is it that, one, what do you think is driving that, but also what level of support in terms of school climate and culture have you been able to provide or have come out of your office in regards to this issue for parents and community? So my primary role for the last several years has been to help develop climate and culture in buildings. So one of the pieces that we've been doing is we've had schools develop plans around, do you have behaviors like listed in the room? Because again, if I don't understand what my expectations are for my behavior, then how can I possibly follow it to be successful? So we're looking at do you have rules? Do you have guidelines? Do you have procedures on how to move through the building? How to transition from task to task? How do you interact with people? But the biggest piece that I feel like that we are also trying to deal with is creating community in our buildings. I'm a child of the 70s, so I grew up in a neighborhood school. Now school choice, parent engagement is also one of my wheel houses and I've noticed that now because of parent voice and choice that we don't have neighborhood schools necessarily anymore. So how do I feel comfortable and safe in the building that I'm going to for six to eight or nine hours a day? And who is there to nurture me and support me and make me feel as if I belong there? So in regards to the piece with more suspensions for young ladies, how are we setting up the expectations for all of our students, girls, boys, whatever? But particularly for our brown and black children who have issues with trauma. How are we supporting that trauma-infused type of support for our students to help them really be clear of this is a safe space for me. I am around people that care about me and want the best for me and how can I then try to then be my best self? Absolutely. I like to underscore the expectations point because I think often parents and teachers think students should just know how to act, right? Like you should learn that at home but in fact there are very different definitions of how to behave at home and so to establish those expectations of in this community, this is what you're expected to do, I think we skip over that and go to like you just need to know how to act. So I just wanted to underscore I think that setting, making clear those expectations for a particular community is part of the Paramount Foundation building by which the intervention supports need to happen. And noting that behavior is not the primary reason for suspensions and expulsions. So when we look at D.C. for instance and we're talking about these issues of suspensions and expulsions for black girls this has largely been a codification of respectability politics. What you look like in a certain outfit. Body is being developed in a way that is not typical of what the grander scale of whiteness tells people is acceptable. So in issues like that where behavior is not the issue at all it is literally what you look like. How is it that you have worked through those and this is a question for anyone on the panel but I do want to lean towards those issues as well because we do recognize that in many cases it is an image or the idea of what you should look like that is causing a lot of disruption in schools. I think that's a very important point and just last weekend I was in a training in Broward County and I showed data that showed that the majority of the teaching force is white female and that doesn't match the demographics of the student population and I also showed data that white girl students were the least likely to be suspended the most likely to be assigned to honors classes. In fact, every single indicator of doing well in school white females have it except for standardized tests and so I posed the question do you think that's related and there was a lot of white teachers in the room that became a little bit red but one of them said it's probably because the white female students they communicate more they're the ones that are talking to us after class they're the ones that are being more engaging and one of the things I explained to her was that they probably talked to you after class because they feel some sort of agency because they feel like their parents can have your position if they wanted it and a lot of the immigrant students they are taught to be respectful they are taught to stay in a certain lane to give a certain type of deference so you do have these cultural differences so that's what and I think it's a good suggestion to have behavioral expectations but we also have to make sure that the teachers are trained in cultural awareness first because they don't want to have behavioral expectations and like you said personality and more nuanced expectations that's not associated or that's restricted by a certain race or ignores the cultural context for the students also on this issue of how students present themselves we still have school districts in places that punish kids for their black hair you know that the things that are natural to them in addition we can't lose sight of that many school your high performing schools get there in the meanest ways possible they ask you to perform almost militaristically in terms of uniforms and in terms of I mean your shoes your socks have to match but yet it's funny because a lot of schools that promote this also promote choice and I'm always like where's the choice in uniform it makes no sense but it's it's sort of an adopted version of what we think Catholic schools used to do but it's more about control of black people that we see these very structured we call it structured but in middle class schools kids can go outside and read and they can wear different clothes a lot of all this control of how we look is predicated we don't trust black children and we ask them to be middle class without giving them middle class money which I mean is exactly and so I'm always like man we've got to allow kids to have freedom in school if we truly want to develop autonomous beings afterwards and because the irony is all this control is actually contributing to the school to prison pipeline it's ruining our chances at going to college starting a business getting a job these things aren't helping black folk and when we really look at especially for DCPS when we're looking at our former chancellor his big heavy lift was SEL and equity so we're now really looking at are we tapping into the people that look different from us are we tapping into the people who make different amounts of money than us and we're also really being careful with addressing those issues with implicit bias and those initial professional developments that we offered earlier the school year was you know you start to get really uncomfortable with that particularly when you're looking at the difference between the schools that are east of the river versus those that are closer to Georgetown so we're really starting to we really have to start paying attention to our own stuff and our own invisible backpacks with how I feel about black and brown students and how I feel about our Caucasian students or whatever just in regards to how differently do I treat them how how equally do I treat them and then also what am I taking away from that child when I do what I do with implicit bias being cited as one of the causes for increased rates of suspensions and expulsions of minority youth do you believe teachers are being trained in a way that respects the cultural experiences and backgrounds of the students they serve and if not what can be done to curb implicit bias into manifestation in school discipline practices I think the first thing we have to do is to stop calling racism implicit bias so you know implicit bias is something that is hidden from your conscious awareness it's an action that you take that you don't think about but a lot of people are thinking these students come from households that are poorly structured and they're not going to do well in school they're thinking she's wearing this so you know she's going to come in with this attitude or you know these are things that they are thinking and these are racist thoughts they're racist they're classes and so I think the first thing that has to be done is there needs to be a challenging of the types of attitudes and types of things that people explicitly think that are misinformed they're wrong and they're out of whack with where we need to go as a culturally diverse society that's the first thing and I'll let the panelists talk about the true implicit bias I really think to get at biases the first thing you got to do is ban suspension expulsion for 3k to third grade it makes no sense to suspend and expel you know it just doesn't make any sense and as you know that the babies are put out more than the older children and so it starts there but I also know that many of our classrooms do not have enough human power in it so I would also say that the lack of resources in schools is primarily reflected in a lack of teachers in schools a lot of our classrooms need more than one teacher it becomes impossible to differentiate instruction to monitor individual behaviors to do all these things without the adequate resources so it's two things I do want to end suspension expulsion and dramatically reduce it but at the same time I also want to say that in order to get there we need to have enough people in a classroom to manage it well I think in addition to the training itself you really need dialogue and you have to build trust at the community level or the school level because it's one thing to be aware of my bias but it's another thing to be able to engage in dialogue with other people around how those biases play out because you may not be fully aware maybe there are unintended consequences that I know this bias but I didn't realize I was saying this or I was doing this and I think if you're able to build relationships with people that create the context for us to have dialogue and call you out in a loving way and change the practice then you start to shift the tide for people that are well-intentioned but don't understand and then I agree with Ivory in the sense of if you do have low expectations if you are not expecting more of your students or think that they're capable of more then you're really in the wrong seat to be in front of kids on a daily basis and yes we need more teachers but we also need more mental health specialists we also need like we need lots more in terms of systems of support and we also need to bring the community in a way that says it's not on you teacher A responsible for your 20 or 34th graders it's the community within the school and the community outside of the school where we can get the kids what they need in order to be successful and those are pieces that we're lacking aside from attitudes and expectations and of themselves because I Tyra made a great point we don't need more racist teachers in school but it gets to this point of training and I do believe that there needs to be fundamental shifts in our colleges of education teacher prep program one there was always a structural problem and where we deployed teachers for a long time it was we will deploy teachers or student teachers to the quote-unquote best districts which meant the wider ones and we would deploy low performing teachers in places we felt that it didn't matter where they went but there needs to just be more time to practice the craft of teaching before you become a teacher a certified teacher I do side somewhat with the more practitioner based programs that shed some of the theoretical work the philosophy of ed the sociology of ed so that they can spend more time in an actual classroom talking to people getting to know communities so that when they get in the classroom they have some familiarity with the communities they are supposed to serve but with that said there needs to be a lot of shifting in how we prepare teachers but I still believe that part of the reason teachers give up on students is because they start to throw up their hands and say I don't know what to do with little Jamal I can't handle this space and there's some questions there but I think we can alleviate some of that by bringing more people into the school building itself but when we also look at that too we have to look at the community so as a trained restorative justice trainer one of the tier one is getting to know your community who is in my classroom who are all of the students and what do they know and what do they like and what don't they like and what's going on in their homes and what's going on in their lives so that it makes it a little bit easier to then support and not punish that child all the time and then the other piece too and I'm going to push back with this a little bit is I get the idea and I have a very long history of dealing with students who have been put out of their classrooms or put out of their schools but if we think about the city council bill that just went through my office is very involved in that exact thing so okay so the new discipline bill that was developed was basically to restrict and almost pull away the idea of suspensions in schools so right now schools have about they have a max of 90 days if they choose to to remove a child from a building as with this new legislation the max would be 10 days so I get the idea I don't think the students need to be out of their buildings or out of their classrooms they need to be in their buildings and learning but where are the resources that come from that where is the mental health where are the additional support and I'm not just talking about large brown men that can kind of handle these children I'm talking about people again who are looking at trauma informed supports who are literally talking to these students and saying what is it that's going on that's causing you to act out and throw chairs and spit and do some of these other types of things that students do before I left my office today I got an email from in regards to a parent that contacted Central Office saying their kindergarten was bitten twice by a pier and now they want this child thrown out of the building and I'm like where you're going but again this is what kindergartens do because until we teach them something else or until we give them give them something that looks different than that and our models are housewives and somebody said I'm not hating on trash TV at all but what I'm saying is that a lot of your models are showing that when you throw drinks on people or when you start fighting or when you start throwing things this is what it looks like in order for me to make a difference in someone's behavior so we really need to be looking at those pieces if I may I completely agree with you that we don't think about the system in a strip away without adding that we want to say don't do it and then nothing comes out as an alternative and then what happens is people learn to game the system and maybe they are expelling as suspending kids but they're not reporting the numbers and so we also I think have to move away from making it punitive to making it problem solving because when it's problem solving outcomes change when it's punitive and you can't make progress and you're giving up your hands you're gaming the system and kids lose every time in that instance so it is a collective of how do we help Jamal that doesn't just sort of take away or slap down the rule without thinking about the system of supports and alternatives that exist I just want to add one more thing the reason why I'm at the place where I want to ban suspension expulsion because I don't think a lot of teachers can see an alternative we've been down this road this is not a recent phenomenon folks have been talking about the disproportionate suspension and it has improved some but it's nowhere near what it should be I think you're forced in a position where you have to find solutions you start to do and there's one more thing I don't want to miss this thought there's a lot of kids in high performing schools that are punished on the daily that we don't see and so you can be suspended and expelled and put out or you can go through chaos while you're in school and one final point and the other reason why I'd like to ban suspension expulsion the consequences of it on society it does help the school it might even help that teacher it's horrible for a city it's horrible for a community so the trade off yeah you have a little jamal we've beaten up a jamal today but jamal jamal it might be disruptive violent when we start putting him in the street oh it takes him to a whole another level so I've said hey this is a trade off I want him in school that's gonna be a real-life example of that there were students that were suspended from middle school and they showed up in my daughter's elementary school playground they wanted to use a basketball court so right here in DC these are types of things that's happening and I agree and I think as a school leadership issue and I had a chance to talk to a group of school leaders who were complaining about having regulations imposed upon them for suspensions but what I asked them was when did you use your own problems and submit a plan to the district to resolve those problems so just like Dr. Perry said for all these years and decades you have had these disproportionalities you have talked about the children that bring weapons to school and all those types of things but anybody who looks at your books see that you're suspending kids for chewing gum and dress code violations and things like that and you did absolutely nothing you didn't put forth a plan and now the district is imposing something on you so if you don't want these types of impositions you have to control your own data just like Tyra talked about earlier and you have to come up with a plan in order to resolve the issues before somebody who doesn't understand your environment as well as you should will impose these restrictions on you the last thing I was going to say is to even slightly push back on that it helps the school because I would say it helps the school today because when those academic outcomes come and Jamal's not there and Carol's not there and Terry's not there that stuff adds up over time because those children are not successful on our assessments so it's that very short term view which I get when you have that happening right in front of you you don't know when you just want to like move on and pay attention to the rest of the class but it is keeping that long term view or even midterm view of outcomes and success for kids that where the school does lose out and this is something that occurred while you were you guys were in the administration you know we really didn't have a concrete way of looking at dropout rates and things like that it wasn't consistent there were schools and we know who they are charter and charter who suspended kids to get higher performance school you know and I mean we're no longer in that place where it's rampant anymore but that was the culture to get rid to improve by deletion essentially and so we still have that culture even though you can now be punished from in terms of school performance perspective but we still have that culture and in threatening the principal with I will fire you if you don't fix it and which is again we're having a lot of media and stuff in DC around exactly these issues that we knew have been rampant for years but now that it's hitting the papers and now that it's an election year we're looking at different types of things that we need to and again I'm not saying it doesn't need to happen but it's I am I keep going back to the resources I am all about trying to fix the issue but we need the resources to also support the legislation and DC has produced an equity report right as a way to bring transparency we we've created a lot of reports there so but literally right now it's boots to the ground because I was working up until the time that I came here today around some of these things that we're trying to create social emotional academic development social emotional learning all these other kinds of pieces and it's all great but where are the boots on the ground where are the people and where are the funding to support the pieces. When we talk about trauma which I think each of you have brought up in your comments one of the things that America knows as a whole particularly when we're working with populations who grow up in underprivileged under resource areas trauma at home trauma in the community is something that they experience on a regular basis how do you advocate for that from your platforms in order to ensure that they are getting the resources they need in schools. For me for me I'm also again a parent engagement I'm a parent advocate so a lot of the organizations that I belong to also support parent voice so we're talking to our local leaders and saying we want funding for out of school time we want funding for we want we want to see that the table when we decide who's going to who our new deputy mayor is going to be and who our new chancellor is going to be we want to be able to have our voice heard so that we can make sure that that we even have a piece of the past so to speak that we really have an opportunity to say this is what I want to see this is what I need in order for my children and children that look like my child to be successful. You know I I always promote quality teaching because great teachers know how to use their lesson to assuage the trauma in students they can a great English teacher or language arts teacher can use poetry to get things out a great math teacher can use symbols to allow students to express art programs clearly can be used music athletics but if you don't have a quality instructor none of those things work the other thing that I I don't want to put too much on schools that at some point we need to shut down bad policing we need better housing we need families to earn a certain wage if the overall ecosystem is violent towards family it will always be hard for schools to deal with the trauma that students inhibit schools and this is not giving up on schools and power schools schools can only do so much and so we've got to address all these other areas that are traumatic in students life to address your question and build on your point storytelling is just powerful and so when we think about trauma we need both understanding it as well as opportunities to treat it whether it be mental health or engaged teaching and learning I think we need to use those opportunities to tell stories about both the kind of trauma that is experienced that we don't think about and we can't see and isn't evident but also the solutions to that trauma that allows for replication of things that work we haven't talked about as much and Andre just touched on it is the power of quality teaching and engagement in the classroom if you want to address discipline let's start with having engaged schools and I don't know if any of you have walked through schools lately but you go in and you would fall asleep too you know you'd start dueling too but sometimes the I used to do school walkthroughs in New Orleans and you know the teacher didn't know you were coming and they were on their phone or sitting in the back of their desk and so we're expecting students to have outsized performance when we're not creating engaging classrooms and that you know I can't tell you the number of friends that tell stories that when they were young they were being referred for special education when in fact they were gifted and they were just bored in the classroom we have so many behavior things that come up that really are about the lack of engaged teaching and learning in classrooms that that is some of again more foundational pieces that are necessary in order for us to build the kind of culture that we want to have in schools and you need less around punishment if kids want to be there they want to be in conversation they want to dig into the content so we can't lose sight of the quality of learning as part of this conversation we have time for a couple of more questions quick responses before we turn it over to the audience for your questions in America today over 250 preschoolers are suspended or expelled every day what do you think is the underlying cause and why aren't more parents speaking out about it I think a lot of it has to do with the rigid standards that we have and our expectations that four-year-olds perform like six-year-olds there's a developmental process you know the development of the brain from birth to five-years-old is the greatest development is the most rapid development that you'll see in your lifetime and so you have huge variance during that time you'll have students who can read at three-years-old and other students that can't read at the same rate until two years later when they're five-years-old you'll see the same thing with some of the motor skills too but really on these cognitive levels where you look at a four-year-old classroom you have huge variations of how well students speak and you know typically if they're all in the correct nurturing environment then by five-years-old and when they're going to their first grade they're all around the same stage if they're getting the same thing but I think that you know with us having all of these unrealistic expectations on what students should do I was in a meeting with some district leaders in Memphis and one of them was talking about how their assessment showed that half of their students or half of their black students was behind but by the time they reached five-years-old and everybody was admonishing this and I asked the question I said well how many of you all took the test before you turned five-years-old or when you turned five-years-old and what makes you think that your results would have been any different than the results that you see right here but we started discounting students so early and I think that has a lot to do with the impatience that teachers will have for any type of delay in any type of functioning I must add so I have to disagree with you on that because I don't think it's about the standards I think it is about many of the things that we've talked about in terms of low expectations for early learning students which isn't a standard but whether or not we expect students to be able to contribute and be bright learners and those sorts of things but then I also think it's about a lack of knowledge and skills of our workforce it's no secret that the expectation for the workforce in early learning for early learning teachers isn't where it should be the kind of behaviors that may cause a teacher or a leader to suspend or expel a student I don't think it's because the standards are necessarily too high I think it's because they don't think about getting the necessary supports and doing the necessary assessment to understand why that student is behaving the way is there trauma do they need glasses or having trouble hearing let's start with some of the basics I'll wrap in together I'm having a preschooler myself I do see that I see that a whole attitude has changed and it's not just the cognitive development, it's behavioral too it's what they expect out of four-year-olds now I remember walking through one school and they were showing off their four-year-olds that were behaving in this real docile way and we can call it a standard expectation of whatever it is but there is something different about what we expect children to do now versus what they were expected in later years and we definitely have to incorporate cultural bias in this too because you can have a sassy girl or a fast boy in one complexion and it seems completely different in another complexion so all of those things are wrapped in together there was a Yale study that came out I want to see the last year and I'll try to find it but you can always look on my twitter feed and go to heckingerreport.com where I have a weekly column shameless plug Andre Perry, EDU no but there was a recent study and it confirmed a lot of what we've always known that preschool teachers literally follow black children looking for behavior problem but I also just want to throw something out there it's also about teachers' perceptions of parents I mean I can't tell you we punish kids to get at parents all the time their attention we think that the parent doesn't come in they're not attentive they're teaching the kids this and that I'll show you by punishing a child you know so I just think that's part of it it goes back to black people in general are treated meanly and you really see it with the least amount of power and that's the children kind of question as it relates to one of our most recent I think phenomenons in terms of gun violence in schools we look at the we look at the marches and the protests that happened after the Stoneman Douglas shooting in Florida one of the sad offshoots of that was that the current administration is using it as a platform to continue to push towards more suspensions and expulsions how do you feel that this is going to one play out post the November election but also does it make the work of reduction harder in terms of to your point Dr. Perry getting rid of them entirely but also looking towards the fact that we know that they are extricably pushing more in African-American and Latino communities than anywhere else we don't I think everything is going to be hard for the next three years look I'm not claiming politics but let's be real when we're looking at models and we're looking at the expectations of the when we're looking at expectations I don't think that we were really seeing what equates to some of the pieces that we're talking about about understanding diversity and being understanding of it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me so my concern to me is really looking at the idea of what are we teaching and what are our expectations you can't rise to anything that you don't know is there so yes it's regressive that's not a short answer or a short answer but it is certainly regressive no doubt I think the thing that gives me hope is if we do our collective work where we educate the community around their rights and their responsibilities and what's available to them like did you know the civil rights data collection exists that tells you at a school level what AP classes exist and the demographics of your school what the discipline and rate is how do we educate our parents and our NGOs and others within the community to get the data about what's happening in schools and districts and then how do we then use that to push on the system because the federal has a lot of levers that can be used and I am biased because I work for the administration I think one of the things we did is we gave cover and we gave incentives for the kind of behavior that we wanted to see this administration of course to have things to be lax but if we can shift to because education is still so very local we can continue to put pressure on the system we can continue to provide resources to the system both within the system itself in terms of how it's funded but philanthropic dollars and so forth we can still have the kind of change and maintain the momentum that we started to have and I think Glamour of Hope in a context that does not give cover for good things to happen and to prevent bad actions from happening but it's still possible for us to move forward if there's the will and the way from a leadership level you look like you had something Dr. Towson I like the way you say I work for the administration I work for this administration the one that ended but I would say there's no simple way to answer the question we don't want to repeat the mistakes of Columbine and we see the writing on the wall that it could happen but I think in general as advocates everyone in this room are people who cares about the issue and I think that it's easier to promote a vision of what you want than to stop a behavior that you don't want so we say we don't want the school to prison pipeline but what's the opposite of the school to prison pipeline we say we don't want implicit bias what's the opposite of implicit bias and so we need to start saying things like we want to have teachers that care about students we want every school to prepare their students for life inside and outside of the school in an environment where they feel nurtured and where they're getting all the tools that they need and I think that the community of advocates has not done the best job of selling a good vision we've done a good job of beating the drums about the things that are bad so I think the way for us to circumvent some of these things that can happen when we have this violence and you have people that are rigidly focused on something bad it's to really focus on the good and the things that we want not the things that we don't want but the things that we want and now it is time for audience questions this is extremely exciting if you have a question please raise your hand and you will be recognized by one of the standing mics good evening thank you for a really inspiring panel I'm truly enjoyed everything that was said tonight the title of this panel was the school to prison pipeline so I have a direct question related to that and a lot was said about suspensions here and I have to say a total agreement with the panel on the overuse of suspensions but do we have good data on the connection between suspension and the probability that a young person will be imprisoned later is there a correlation between that and another follow up question are there other things that happen to students in school that we know seem to be correlated with their ending up in the prison environment thank you I mean I know that there's data that's showing basically they're building prisons based upon the number of students that are suspended at a certain grade and the same for reading actually so I don't know the numbers off hand but there is corollary data that both so A there's a little bit of the logic that says if you're not in school you're not learning and then what do you do how can you contribute how do you work because you don't have the knowledge and skills that you need to be successful in careers and in jobs in terms of how to relate to other people or how to add how to read all those things that you need to be in order to be successful and productive in job and career and the same thing is related to reading I've heard it based on reading which is they predict the number of prisons that need to be built based on the number of kids that are successful in reading so there are both academic outcomes early as well as information that just says is detrimental that if you're not in school in class learning then you're just set up to not be successful but I don't have the numbers off hand. But we do know that there's a high percentage of folks in jails and prisons who had we're getting special special supports in school we also know that it's the reason why a lot of folks are concerned about the suspension rates is because the frequency of number of time you're suspended as a child increases your chances of not graduating which increases your chances dropping out increases your chances of going to some kind of incarcerated situation. So there's a lot of things at play and there's a lot of correlation in terms of poverty and suspension and what happens in race. But for the most part we can say that suspension is part of a series of events a significant part of a series of events that leads to increased incarceration. And I do actually have those percentages. So students with two or more out of school suspensions particularly black males have a 60% higher likelihood of entering the criminal justice system when they are teenagers. Hi, my name is Amy Lee Walton. I'm the Vice President of Thursday Network and actually work with Amisha and you guys spoke a lot about a seat at the table and being able to be present to kind of like help with these decisions. We do a lot of speaking with people about voting and about the census and a lot of times the feedback we get is the system is broken and it doesn't matter if I vote, there's nothing I can do. What do you say to people that say that and also is the system broken? Does voting help? Does voting help? Yeah. So just given a vote without knowing the issues doesn't really help a whole lot. Tara and Andrea and myself were talking back in the green room sparkling water. We were talking about the funding disparity in schools and how it's connected to property taxes and the way that systems are set up to give this advantage to schools that are in districts that have a higher household income. So public schools that more wealthy students go to nationally typically have more resources and some of it is from the way that money is assigned. Other things are you have these fundraising things that happen and all these types of things but unless that rises to the level of the campaign issue then just having a vote is not going to move that. And so if everybody in the Thursday network and everybody who cared about these issues was informed about certain things and instead of just voting they're saying these are types of people who I want to vote for. Whether it's your stance on this issue then it would mean a whole lot more than just finding the D and just casting a vote. You know I've thought about a couple things. One, we have ample evidence that black folks actually are voting at phenomenal rates that shows you something's going right in terms of their civic participation. I mean we don't have to talk about during the Obama years but I mean just last a few months ago in Alabama folks showing up Virginia folks showing up I'm more worried about in terms of voting I'm more worried about white folk who vote for pedophiles and races you know what's broken about them that allows them to make such horrible voting decisions you know we talk about the education is that people vote on single issues right but how I frame it now is that it's also a reflection of another kind of achievement that racism should count just like math just like and it's arbitrary how we determine what gaps we want to you know but I see white voting behavior as problematic in terms of their social emotional development I really do and so I don't see a problem with black voting as much because you're right we come out of a vote when we're knowledgeable of the issues and there's issues that we would vote for but I see a whole lot of folks voting for people and for issues that are backwards and mean and ugly and everything else and I want people start flipping and say what's wrong with that voter and that behavior and that activity I believe in the idea of the vote and having a teenager who's getting very close to being a voting age I can now have really good conversations with her around my daughter and I we had a little picnic and we were all ready for the most recent election and then it was when we woke up and she was like mom how can people let that happen to have Trump voted into office and I get it but I also have to kind of backtrack her to when she was much smaller and didn't understand this that we had our first black president so there are possibilities in the idea of voting and there are some things that we need to come out to be very ugly and very nasty like that but there is still power in the vote it just depends on what you believe, what that person believes in and kind of what they want to see reflected in the person that's in that office. So I agree with everything that's been said a couple of things I'd add is one, yes the system is broken and so what now what then becomes the question and I think the other piece that we can't lose sight of is to ever think there is a panacea so for example as if the vote in and of itself is sufficient yes voting matters and so does you know protesting and writing and meeting and policy advancement and resources like we cannot think that one thing in and of itself I know I'm preaching to the quiet on this but I think we've got to have a more expansive conversation that says this is one lever that you as an individual you as an engaged citizen can and should and must exercise but there are multiple levers that you also must exercise in order for us to see change and change the system. Any other audience questions? I think you already have a microphone. My name is Thornell Jones, I'm from Annapolis I think the system is not broken it's the way it was designed sure that's the alternative and I also it's broken by our standard that is correct I also think that dealing with unconscious bias is an absolute necessity otherwise we forget that the majority of the teachers are white and we're all in this water of bias and so everything that we read and every picture that we see down through the ages has continued this bias so the question is even if we fix the K through 12 schools what are we going to do about the colleges so the next generation of teachers come with less bias? That's a good question. I think that we focus on the cognitive skills of teachers too much and I think that with technology advancing the way it is we have an opportunity to have to envision teachers as people beyond the ones that just have the best memory the ones that are typically the ones that do well in school and can memorize facts and can demonstrate on a practice examination or some certification examination that they know the lessons well with a computer in every classroom we really don't need that everybody's getting access to the same types of information they're automating the process of getting their lessons planned and all those types of things so we have this new opportunity to say we want a new type of teacher and I think it has to go beyond just saying we want more culturally relevant classes and things like that we need to say that the ways in which we train teachers the ways in which we take them through pre-service and evaluate whether they're going to be a good teacher and the way that we evaluate them needs to change and now what we need are teachers who care teachers who have certain interpersonal skills teachers who have a level of empathy and compassion to work with a diverse set of children teachers who have verbal skills that we haven't really focused on before that have social acuity and emotional understanding so I think that's what we need to do and we also need teachers that work that serve children from communities outside of their own to go into those communities and understand those communities if you had a teacher who got assigned to Paris they would learn everything there is about Parisian culture they would learn the national artifacts what they found offensive what they celebrated but you have teachers that come in the black neighborhoods they would learn anything about the black community in fact they think that their community is working against them their objectives is to separate them from their culture as opposed to re-inferming their culture so all those things need to happen I also think we need to really look at for those teacher education programs something that kind of in its castle I can't remember the acronym right now but when we're looking at competencies we're looking at self-awareness we're looking at really trying to get tapped into the idea of empathy and how we those social emotional learning competencies because it's one thing to how can I teach this child to read or how can I teach this child to do math but how can I also connect with myself and with other people in order to build their social emotional skills again child of the 70s I learned by playing outside with my friends and having people that told me what you do this is not what you do but when we look at our neighborhoods now we're looking at neighbors where it's not safe for our children to play outside one of my daughters one of the young men that my daughter knew in her school was killed because he was walking home another child had tennis shoes that another child wanted and that child a friend of my daughter was then killed because he was just in the wrong place in the wrong time we don't have that same type of skill development that we had in schools a long time ago where you were taught how to play fair and how to take turns and all these other kind of things so I think there needs to be a very specific track of social emotional learning that needs to be developed or created for teacher education programs we have time for about one more question hi my name is Kathy Makle and I am a DCPS teacher and I have to admit I'm feeling a little bit up here tonight so and I have two questions one for Dr. Holson and one for Dr. Perry teachers don't suspend or expel kids principals do that's the first one and in that do you mean the referral that teachers make to principals are the issues that are going on in the classrooms is that the issue it's the referral that a teacher make because you said that you were in favor of ridding expulsion and suspensions in school discipline so you're talking about the referral okay I just wanted to get the clarification because I didn't want people who are not school based to get the impression that teachers are expelling they make the referral for the behavior or the out of compliance so that was the clarifying question the second question I have is for Dr. Holson we agree with you our expectations and our standards for pre-k3 and pre-k4 are out of the water and I think we're seeing a lot of the inappropriate behavior because we're not practicing developmentally appropriate practice among 3 and 4 year olds and I've been around 20 years I know I look 25 but I've been around 20 years yes right and I know that there's a direct correlation between no child left behind what happened with no child left behind in that legislation and that pushing down of the expectations so we expected a lot more of 3 and 4 year olds once their high state testings came in place so my question I said all I have to say my question is is there any correlation between the lack of play or the amount of play that 3, 4, 5 and 6 year olds are getting and school discipline that's a good question I'll investigate that we can exchange information I think I can find answers to that pretty easily I think overall we don't focus on the happiness of children in nothing school and yeah and Andre alluded to this earlier and I think everyone on the panel talked about the type of nurturing that children need and in fact private schools are pretty good at not to generalize but a lot of private schools are good at doing things like extending playtime or having a lot of outdoor time gardening and they also tap into those emotional aspects of learning they're real big on getting people who used to go to the school to come back to the school I remember when I was working for the administration I went to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and I spoke at University of Alabama that was a very difficult thing to do I graduated from LSU and also Shelton State University a community college and still I'm in an HBCU and there was an elementary school that wanted to add me to their schedule and I told my team let's try to make it happen they gave me a time slot when I got to Tuscaloosa the elementary school contacted us and said that I wasn't able to come that day because they were preparing for test so in their minds it was more important for these little black children to have test prep rather than see a black person working for the first black president which is completely out of whack and we're not even talking about the test we're talking about practice not the game practice not the game so I'm agreeing with what you're saying and I appreciate the fact that you want more research evidence and I'm willing to help you find that but we do need to move it in the right direction of doing the things that we know matters for their growth and development you know I just want to there's a good distinction in saying that the teachers refer and school leaders ultimately suspend and that's why it's incumbent upon a good school leader to see the four of the three that a good school leader will say well let's have an alternative to this and as someone who I was a school leader or I ran four charter schools in New Orleans I put myself on one of these disciplinary here and it is hard when you have parents who will come and say Jamal punched my child in the face I expect that child to leave I expect Jamal to leave and you've got to compel that parent to say you know what your child down the road may make a mistake and I want to give the benefit out to your child as well but it is extremely hard but I do think I'm glad you made that distinction because that's the burden should be on the leader to make those decisions not to teach I don't believe in making that a teacher choice so I'm glad you've made that distinction well we're going to get ready for our closing statements and for this we'll start with Tyra oh um so I think closing statement are leadership matters if we are going to change the system or improve the system leadership matters at all levels from the school level to to the district level and state and federal we also need to think about all adults and all of the community as part of the solution so this is not a teacher problem or simply a school leader problem but all adults in the building are responsible for the outcomes of kids and we must have that mentality you see successful schools they typically have that mindset and then we also need to pay attention to the data and look at the disproportionate treatment of students of color as it relates to discipline because it's one thing to think about consequences and consequences are important but when we are disproportionately treating and disciplining students of color then we have a real balance in the system and I do believe it's possible and we can get there and change the pipeline or stop the pipeline quite frankly but it takes thinking, planning and actually the thing I do want to close with is I was looking at PBIS's website and prep for this conversation and PBIS stands for positive behavioral interventions and supports and the first step in their implementation guidelines reads, readiness and commitment agreements precede any implementation activity and I thought that was powerful you can't start until you are ready and committed to start and so that's the piece that I leave you with that if we're going to do something we have to start with the readiness and commitment and I think we can get there if we start there the most important thing that schools can do is to reveal to students what they can do well not cast a spotlight on the things that they don't do well too many students leave school learning everything that they can't do well they learn that they're not a math person they learn that they don't read fast they learn that they can't pay attention but it's those teachers and school leaders in the entire system that helps to bring out the best of them that helps them to get on to the right you can reach me on Twitter at Tolson at TOLDSON and you can follow me on Facebook Ivory Tolson Plugs, got plugs all night long No, but that's He's the highest Twitter and now we know what No, first I want to thank you for having me and Tyra for hosting me It's the first time you invited me. Actually, someone else invited me, but I'll take it. I'll take it the back door. I don't want to do in schools for suspension and expulsion. But we've got to stop suspending our babies. If Black lives are to matter, suspension and expulsion must cease. It doesn't work. It just does not work. And we keep going down this route. I don't have the perfect solution. We can talk about restorative justice practices, which show some promise. But the research is not fully out on that. But I know it doesn't work. And it's kicking out, baby. The other thing is I really do believe let's have students evaluate their environment. Not in a punitive way where we're a way we use test score data to fire people and to do that. But parents have a right to know how their students feel. They get all this information about their quote unquote academic performance. But parents don't get information about how they feel about their school. And finally, I really do believe that when we see more Black teachers in classrooms, we will see your disciplinary issues. But for a different reason, who cares? But for a different reason. I mean, not for the benefit of Black children, but for the benefit of White children and White teachers. That we keep talking about the benefits of training in these Black teachers for Black kids. But I want to see some exposure to Black teachers, to White students who later become teachers, to current White teachers. That's where I would like to see some change. For me, what I think is important is, again, building community in your classrooms and in your buildings. That top-down leadership of we are going to be a family. We are going to be a community. And getting to know the students and the families and the people that interact within those buildings is the start of some of these other pieces that we've been talking about. I'm also, I think the last piece that I really want to look into is self-care for the educators and the people who are in charge of these buildings. Because, again, with my background, being both in education and in mental health, even in supporting the schools that I support around buildings that are sometimes somewhat out of control, that takes a lot out of me. And in coming home and being a parent and a mom, I then have to shake that off and be able to support my own family. So that self-care and that idea of dealing with my own stuff, whether it's an invisible backpack or whatever it is, that's very essential to then not pushing that on to the students that are in your buildings and making sure that you are healthy in order for your students to be healthy and engaged and being able to be successful. Can we hear it for our panel? You guys are amazing. Before we officially close, and I know that she's not expecting this, I'm going to ask Shayna to come up as well. We were thinking about hosting an event probably three months ago. The idea came to us both around suspensions and expulsions and the preschool to prison pipeline for many reasons. One, because it's a criminal justice issue that is not talked about as often as it should be, also because there are more advocates that are needed on the ground. People really need to understand why this issue is important, what you can do, in addition to ways that we can actually support teachers. We are not here to beat up on teachers. Teachers are one of the most precious commodities that we have in this country, and we want to ensure that our teachers have everything that they need. Being at the National Black Child Development Institute, one of the things I've spent the past few months doing is traveling the country, leading focus groups with teachers, with parents, hearing from teachers what they need in the classroom to be able to support those students. And a lot of what was said here resonates completely. They need more support in the classroom. They need teachers' assistance. They need trauma support and funding to be able to ensure that the kids who they know are going through really hard circumstances are able to get that help. I was at Seattle Public School District a couple of months ago for a school district that has nearly 400,000 students. They have seven counselors across the entire school district. When you have issues like that, it's not only a funding issue. It's one where you are placing the wrong things as priorities. We know that trauma-informed care matters. We know that psychology matters. We know that brain development matters. But what we're seeing is a lack of investment on the part of school districts, on the part of legislators, on the part of communities to actually ensure that these things are happening. So it's more than just eradicating suspensions and expulsions. It's paying attention to the fact that with those things, we also have to have these other supports. Because as was mentioned earlier by Dr. Perry, housing issues and instability are still going to be there. Economic issues and instability are still going to be there. Communities that are suffering from major crises of gun and gang violence and these other issues are still going to be there. We expect our schools and our teachers to play 500 different roles other than what their primary role is. And with that, we have to understand that we have to give them those supports necessary to be able to not only do their jobs, but the supports necessary to ensure that our communities grow and are sustainable. So I thank everyone on this panel, one for accepting the invitation, for New America, for hosting us, in addition to providing some very valuable insights for everyone in this room. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.