 This forum is, cabinet's forum, is on the School to Prison Pipeline. It's being sponsored by Racial Justice Now, which is an organization headed by myself, and this is me, Maria Holt. My name is Amelia Randall, I'm Professor Randall from the University of Dayton School of Law. And it's also being, we also are part of the Dignity in Schools 2013 National Week of Action. In fact, we're the only parent heritage group in Ohio that is a part of that action, and there's only two groups in Ohio that are doing anything. So I think that we appreciate all the support that Dignity in Schools have given us. To start off, what we would like to do is ask everyone to cut off their cell phones. And so I'm going to give you 30 seconds for you to reach in and make sure your cell phone is cut off, and I think I got to do that too. We also are handing out contact forms, and we ask you to please complete the contact form and turn it in when you leave. Oh, excuse me. As Professor Randall said, I'm Maria Holt, Co-Founder for Dignity in Schools Campaign, and I am a parent of a student in Dayton Public Schools. I'm also a community activist, and this issue is especially dear to my heart. I have a son, and he attends the All-Boys School. So this is a passion of mine. I'd like to see our school district use some more restorative justice and positive behavioral discipline techniques instead of strictly punitive techniques when discipline children. So I'm excited about the candidates being here, running for office to answer some of the questions that are concerned to us as an organization and also to the community. I want to just, we'll let the candidates introduce themselves when we go through the first questions. One of the things I want to do is identify the rules. We will ask the question, we'll give a little bit of information, ask the question. We use, I read the candidates for each question has been put in a random order, and we will say who is supposed to speak first, second, third. And the candidate will have two minutes to talk. When we are in the last 30 seconds, my student, Alan, Alan, you want to show the 32nd side and to the candidate? Yes. That's what you show it to the candidate. As a stop sign, when you're two minutes over, Rodney will hold up the stop sign because we really want to stay on time. I'm giving four warning people that if you don't stop, I'll just have to interrupt you. And so I'm not being rude, I'm just keeping it moving. Okay, so having said that, we'll ask the general question. We've told the candidates that to the extent that they answer questions about their platform, they should relate it back to the School to Prison Pipeline. But essentially this first question is intended to give them an opportunity to talk somewhat about themselves and also about the School to Prison Pipeline. So the first question is, the School to Prison is a definition. The School to Prison Pipeline is one of the most important human rights challenges for our nation today. The School to Prison Pipeline refers to a national trend of criminalizing rather than educating our nation's children. And the first person that... So we'll ask Mr. Hickman to answer first, please. What is your opinion about mass incarceration and how the School to Prison Pipeline contributes to it? Generally, what do you think needs to be done? My name is Walter Hickman. I'm a newbie. My history in this town is that I'm a lifelong residence and I'm an retired firefighter and a deputy sheriff. To answer the question, I think that some issues in the School are more of a problem now than what they were before. The punishment for kids now is no longer like throwing a rock or having a little fight out on the street or anything else like that. The ante has been up and I think it's going to be very difficult unless we get parents involved, community involved. One issue we have with the School right now where someone played a prank and sent in a message about a bomb in the School. The ante is up on that and parents need and teachers to inform the children of that ante because they got a computer and the things they can do with it, they have to understand there's a price to pay. The other thing on that is that I think that fights in the School right now, as many cameras that the School has got, they should have, they should monitor them because an individual who's trying to defend themselves should not get the same punishment as the person that's starting a fight. My name is Hazel Roundtree. I'm a candidate for the Davis School Board. I've been an educator for over 30 years, both as a classroom teacher, a school counselor and currently I'm an administrator. I work directly for the President of Wright State University and I work in the area of civility. One of the things that I focus on is how to ensure that we establish civility on our campus and we ensure positive campus relations. I think that's an issue that will address the School to pipeline of issues. One of the things that I want to underscore is that it's not, the criminalization is not just for serious crimes. It's just for any crimes. There's a zero tolerance policy that says, if they say you can't shout and you raise your voice, then you're going not to be sent to a counselor's office as maybe people would do in the past, but you're going to be directly interviewed by the law enforcement and that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. What we need for this situation are several steps. First, we have to create a culture of civility. We expect students to come into campus or come into the classroom, come into the school building and know about math. It's this basic good math. It starts with preschool. Please and thank you. We can't ignore that anymore. That's the first book I bought my granddaughter. Please and thank you. Spike Lee wrote a book called Please, Baby, Please. That's the first book I bought my granddaughter and that's what I tell students. When they come on our campus and they try to talk about my progressions being racial, when you walk into the classroom, you're allowed to bump everybody's lips out the way, show some respect. So I think when we teach children respect, then we're going to reduce the amount of violence and we're going to create a greater culture of civility and I really believe that's what's needed. But training for teachers is the first step. Teachers are the most important people and the students' lives and they're not trained in civility. They're not trained in helping the students to solve problems. My name is Joe Lacy. I'm currently on the Board of Education. I'm currently the Board of Education president. I have a daughter at Ruskin Elementary School. She's in kindergarten there. For me, actually, having a daughter, she's in kindergarten there. This is her third year there. So really my experience with Ruskin was colored a lot of my experience with the schools. Ruskin and Belmont currently are the two schools in the system that use restorative justice. So not only do I have a daughter at Ruskin, I sit on the board for Ruskin. So I see how restorative justice works and I see the success that we get with restorative justice and I do want to expand that beyond the two schools that we have. To your question, the extent to which the school discipline system contributes to the class of the prison pipeline, I tend to believe yes it does, especially I'm sure that there are districts, especially in the South, that are particularly unitive. I do think it needs, before I come to that conclusion about our own system, I think we could use some more study about our system. But I mean, I've gotten away with your study. I really do believe that the restorative justice system works and I would, my thinking is expanding that makes more sense for our district anyway and for our community. Thank you, candidates. With only 5% of the world's population, the United States have 25% of the world's prison population. Nearly 50% of all state prisoners are locked up for nonviolent crimes. Blacks, particularly young black males, make up the disproportionate share of U.S. prison population. And in 2008, young black men ages 18 to 34 were at least six times more likely to be incarcerated than young white men. Young black males without high school diploma were more likely to be in prison or in jail. And on any given day, 2008, then to be working. The pipeline encompasses the growing use of zero-tolerance discipline school-based arrest, disciplinary alternative schools, and secured detention to marginalize our most at-risk youth and deny them access to education. Zero-tolerance disciplinary policies are often the first steps in a child's journey through the pipeline. And basically zero-tolerance in Ohio, we unfortunately have a law that requires zero-tolerance to some extent. Generally, zero-tolerance imposed a severe discipline on students without regard to the individual's circumstances. Senate Bill 167, which is going to go through the legislature, would eliminate the state law requiring zero-tolerance. Would you support that bill? Would you support a moratorium in date in regardless of the bill on suspensions? Under what circumstances would you support that? And instead substitute a restorative justice, which is another form of discipline that Mr. Lacey talked a little bit about, and positive behavior change, which is another form of discipline, both of which are known to reduce suspensions. Mr. Lacey, you actually go first. I am familiar with House Bill 176. Senate Bill 176, I believe. Senate Bill 167. Senate Bill 167. It isn't. But it's sponsored by Charlietta Taveras. It's my understanding, and I have great respect for Representative Taveras. Or does she now stay senator? She stays senator. She stays senator in Taveras in Columbus. And I do support that bill. But as far as suspending all, or stopping all suspensions, I'm not sure that I would go that far to support that at this point. I mean, I think we do, even though we do have a zero-tolerance policy, and we have a system, I mean, the zero-tolerance policy is not that clearly defined, and I would have to be shown within our system, within the day of public school system, how zero-tolerance it is in practice, because it's not being so clearly defined. I do believe even in schools that do not have this sort of justice, I believe there is a lot of intervention going on. Although in many cases, I think there is extension involved, too. I mean, there are political ramifications, too, for this. In 2001, when I first ran for school board, I ran against a group of four women who basically spent $250,000 on a campaign that, that big part of that campaign was more disciplined, more disciplined. You couldn't turn the TV on without saying our school, without seeing one of their commercials saying, our schools need more discipline. More discipline sells. In addition to being a classroom teacher, I'm also trained as a maternity. I graduated with a law degree from the University State School of Law. I haven't had consultants in the state similar to ours on this particular bill to stop the zero-tolerance, so I'm a strong proponent of eliminating that particular form of punishment. As a law student, I worked with an attorney, James Green, on a case for a student who was in the school nurses office and she took an aspirin without the nurse's permission because she had cramps. She was a very young girl, had menstrual cramps, very unfamiliar with the kind of pain associated with it, and she took an available over-the-counter aspirin because she thought that would bring her some relief and she was expelled from school because they had zero-tolerance policy of no drug use. An aspirin isn't drug. And here's a student in excruciating pain. She takes an aspirin from the school nurse's office. It was unattended if you want to note that. It was unattended medicine available to anyone. And the student was expelled. That's what a zero-tolerance policy, that's how zero-tolerance policy operates. There's no analysis into the situation. There's no reviewing the circumstances. It's just zero. You did it, boom, you're out. And I think that's the type of reasoning that we don't want in the school. If we require educators to have college degrees, if we require principals to have master's degrees, then we should expect them to make some good decisions. And I'm saying that children who misbehave need to be addressed. I believe we're more disciplined, but I think teachers have to be trained to be disciplinarians. And that will avoid some of the conflicts that occur in the classroom. We have to teach teachers how to be managers, how to control, how to have presence in the classroom. You can have a straight A teaching with beautiful bulletin boards, but if they don't know how to command the attention of their students, they will be in trouble. Thank you. Mr. Hickman. I'm a little bit old-school. Due to crime, due to time. But what I think they should do is that you've got a lot of things that a lot of things that are done in the school, that are nonviolent. But do you want to tolerate drugs? Do you want to tolerate guns? If they haven't shot the gun, it's a nonviolent crime. This has to be put in perspective. It's not a subject that's lightly that's thrown around and say, oh, we don't want our kids that get in trouble. But at some point in time, the community, the parents are going to teach these kids. They're going to have to tell the kids that this is the way it has to be. These are the rules we'll have to follow. There's no ear fans and butts about it. Thank you. One last comment on zero-tolerance policies. The research shows that there is no evidence that zero-tolerance policy makes schools safer or improves student behavior. In fact, most of the research suggests that the overuse of suspension and exclusion actually increase the likelihood of later miscriminal conduct, largely because these kids are home for school unsupervised because parents would have to work. Schools today rely on law enforcement rather than teachers and administrators to handle minor school misconduct. What role should police officers play in the safety and security of schools? Should there be police officers in schools? Should school resource officers carry guns? Should they have authority to arrest even when there is detention without arrest is possible? Ms. Rountree, you're first to answer this question. I guess my first response is that training needs to happen. We need to educate. We need to educate teachers, principals, parents, and students on what our expectations are. We have to establish a culture of civility. So police officers have a role with that, but the role should be that as a trainer. They should come to the schools and be a part of any curriculum that will help the teachers and administrators learn how to keep the law in order into the classroom. I think that it starts with the teacher empowering the teacher, not empowering just a police officer or a resource person. Do I think that there may be some circumstances where the halls might be safer with hall monitors? I do, because I believe in adult supervision. I think one of the worst travesties is kicking kids out of school, sending them to the streets, and then they're out on their own being raised by their peers, being raised by the streets. I would rather have them in the school, in the in-school suspension type program, and if the police officers could do community policing where they're educating, where they're establishing relationships, where they're sharing their resources and to help make the place a safer place where they're practicing prevention. I think that's what's needed and the police officers do have a role in that. Parents need to be trained on what the expectations of the school are. The church has a role, community members have a role, police officers have a role, but it's in education and prevention. It's perfectly clear, no guns in our schools, nothing. I was in the training police officer at the time. Now, what I understand about police officers coming in, I try to get a statistics on the dating school system, but it hasn't arrived to me yet, so I have to kind of skip around a little bit. But we got kids in here in the school that have behavioral problems, that the educators shouldn't have to be involved in, being trained. I feel it's enough that they got to teach 35 students or less in the classroom, let alone have to deal with one individual that's going to take away from the rest of the class. So, the way I feel that I think that police officers should be involved for the safety of everyone. You don't know what kind of situations are going to come up. You don't know who they called before or who they were directly confronting. So, I think it's safe for all that way. Thank you. My experience with dating public schools is that we do use in school suspensions. Actually, it's a great week and I guess I'm not familiar with the aftermath of them, but I'm not aware that if that happened at dating public schools. As far as the police officers, I don't believe that we have any regular police officers that are assigned to a dating public school. And that's probably more than the dating public schools could not afford to pay the city to have a regular assignment there. But I don't think, but I also agree with the sort of justice that it's probably not useful to have a police officer there unless the situation is out of hand. So... Just as a follow-up, there are actually police, retired police officers that are the head of dating public school safety security. They were just hired this year. And it was managed with both of them, a retired police officer from dating and a retired police officer who felt the need to hire two police officers. Growing numbers of school districts employed full-time police officers or school resource officers to patrol middle and high school colleges with little or no training in working with youth. These officers approach youth as if they are adult perps on the street ravaging children in school. The explosion of school-based arrest cannot be attributed to an increase in youth violence. In 2002, school violence actually dropped by about half. Despite the fear generated by handful of highly-publicized school shootings, schools remain the safest places for young people. Resources that could be put towards improving under-resourced schools are at stand-us for security and police. School districts spend millions of dollars for police officers and security officers. I just want to note that dating public school employs police officers. You can call them school resource officers but they are licensed under the state and trained under the state as police officers. We actually met they have 37, 31 police officers. Now there is a hierarchy of police officers so they are trying to like, we are at this level of police officers but they are trained they have arrest powers they have been trained to use guns and while dating doesn't authorize their police officers to use guns they have been trained to do so. So these are not school resource people who are in a safety position these are police officers who work as school resource people. The rise in suspension and expulsion in school based risk may be due in part to the rise in high state testing. In dating in 2012 and I don't think dating does in school suspension at least they are not calling it in school suspension and now they are not reporting it to the state as in school suspension. In 2012 dating had 406 out of school suspensions for African Americans 5,426 and 69 of those were still called disruptive or disobedient behavior not for violence not for drug use or any of those things. So in high states testing domestic programs such as the No Child Left Behind Act have led to incentivizing school to push out low performance students and attempts to increase overall school tests. Do you support eliminating high states testing to the extent that we can? I know that is dictated to some extent by federal government but what kind of emphasis should we be putting in our teaching on high states testing and how can we implement programs on a local level to ensure that all students regardless of high or low performance receive the same opportunity to succeed educationally. Mr. Lacey. Well I mean if you're just going to say that I'm lying to you and that we do not have in-school suspension when I know we do have in-school suspension I mean what doesn't matter what I say to you if you're going to tell me that I'm not really telling you the truth. Well all I can say to you is I know children that have been all I can say to you is we had a series of meetings with the school board staff and when we asked them and there were several of us there who said how many in-school we don't do in-school suspension and then when you go to the state website and you pull down the data on the state website which we did and you have how many in-school suspension they reported zero. So I don't know what they're calling in-school suspension but maybe there's an informed term they're using for in-school suspension reporting it to the state as in-school suspension. And we also have and what do you call restorative justice if we have that in two of our schools are you going to say we don't have that? The question is do you support high-stakes testing? Do I think that do you support eliminating high-stakes testing? The system of testing under the performance index scores I think it could be improved I agree that it should not be so high-stakes and I think that that is the state law that basically we just have to deal with but I agree that yeah as I said high-stakes testing to the degree that it is such high-stakes yeah I think that it does need to be improved and it could be revamped and I mean basically the grading system is not fair to urban deserts I think as long as there is an educational system run by the state and that's our form of government that the state owns education we're going to have some form of education whether high-stakes or not I don't know I think we have to look at the legislation because they're the individuals that have the most influence on how and when and where students are testing so I think that it does need to be revisited as new and it's something that we just have to kind of to disaggregate we have to study that test and we have to have a better understanding of it when the district has 24 performance indexes and only receives two passing scores we need to find out why I mean that intrigues me why what is the problem you know we just can't take for granted that we have a school district that receives two out of 24 but it's a complex issue but it doesn't start with the district it starts at the state level so we have to be investigators and go to the legislators and ask them to help us better understand that test and the index you can't win what you don't know I'm not going to play any game if I don't know the rules so we have got to have a better understanding of that test whether we like it or not until it changes and ask them to revamp it until we understand it so we have got to understand that test to make recommendations to the legislators on how to change and in the meantime we have got to do a better job in preparing our children to pass the test some schools do Saturday boot camps why aren't all schools doing Saturday boot camps if the test is here to stay or even for a little while let's do a better job in preparing our children to pass that test I do not support it but we all know who is benefitting from it lobbies are going to Washington they're going up to the state house and saying let's find out how many prisons we got to build it's a corporation those numbers about those kids don't mean a thing to none of us kids don't benefit from it the school district don't benefit from it just those corporations so as far as I'm concerned it's a dead issue because it doesn't mean to do about it there is something to do about it but our community you don't have to get off there behind they go out to step up stand up and speak I don't care if you belong to one organization that moves you or whatever we got to come together with a common goal and speak up as long as you sit around quiet in the corner and say well there's nothing I can do about it nothing's going to be done thank you thank you as a result of tests faced accountability regimes such as the no child left behind schools have incentives now to push out both performing students to boost overall test scores and I'm in no way saying Dayton is doing that that's something we have to look at there have been studies in other places that showed that students who were low performing got needed out longer disciplinary actions than students who were not than the high performing students for similar offenses this punishment gap grew substantially over the time when the tests were being administered at least in one study so it would be interesting for us to do a study in Dayton to see if that kind of punishment gap is being used within the city of Dayton black students are disproportionately represented at every stage of the school to prison pipeline African American students are far more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled or arrested for the same kind of conduct at school in 2012 African American youth made a 64% of Dayton public school population however they accounted for 80% of out of school suspensions there is no evidence that black misbehaved to a greater degree than white students they are however punished more severely often for behaviors that are less serious minority students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable since many schools regard jail as a default for special education placement for poor minority children African American students with disabilities are three times more than likely to receive a short term suspension than their white counterparts and are more than four times as likely to end up in correctional facilities the question is in recent years statistics have indicated a racial disparity in disciplinary actions towards minority students particularly black students what is your explanation of these statistics and what do you believe the solution to remedy this issue is Joe Lacey are those national statistics? the statistics I read was particularly for Dayton public schools in 2012 and the statistics are African American youth made a 64% public school population but accounted for over 80% of the out of school suspensions and your question is do you feel that so the question is in recent years the statistics have indicated a substantial racial disparity in disciplinary actions towards minority students and particularly black students so what is your explanation for these statistics and what do you believe the solution is to remedy the issue well I mean as I've said before I think restorative justice as a system is the best solution do I feel that within a system that has as many African American administrators as the Dayton public schools has and the many the number of African American staff I don't think there is this systemic racial discrimination in Dayton public schools I'm not familiar with these statistics but let's go out and start at home in the community you can't start anywhere else and then you gotta think about the X-Factor it hasn't been in our schools for a while I'm pretty sure most of you know what that is we gotta do better this lady over here you gotta know this man over here this lady sitting back here with the glasses she gotta know the lady back there now pink star get to know each other get to know each other's kids talk to the kids that's one thing I don't see I don't see you talking to these kids you walk past them like they weren't there and when you talk to these kids they want to know why take time to talk to them you don't have to be a parent you see the kids walking out in the middle of the street what do you do? drive by when you get out of the street before you get hurt and majority of them get out of the street so this is the community's job nobody else's when I think about some of the issues that are going on in the public schools I understand that it's very complex but the superintendent this past Saturday and President Joe Wessie at the retreat addressed these very same issues and one of the factors that the superintendent mentioned was that the schools in West Dayton perform significantly lower than the schools in East Dayton and you ask yourself why is that well someone is assigning the least experienced teachers in West Dayton we know that someone that has to do with the experience of the educators you know that if it's a young inexperienced teacher and an African-American male is considered aggressive or threatening they're going to be said to the principal's office for a more experienced teacher someone's been teaching like myself for 30 years I'm going to say hold it so we have to make sure that our teachers are culturally competent that they know how to deal with the population that they're assigned goes back to training that's the bottom line for me we can't work on the assumption that teachers are prepared to deal with the students that they're assigned we have to start with square one there should be an orientation on the first day of school at every single year and the orientation ought to start being able to set the standards the standards of expectation and the standards of conduct both inside the classroom I've been in schools where you can walk down the hallway and hear a bedrock and I've been in cafeterias where the principal screams and howls for 20 minutes I want to get up and tell the kids to be quiet children will behave if you train them to behave so it comes from top down the administrators and the teachers must receive the proper training in order to deal with the students that they have to serve thank you we appreciate all of the comments that you've given and the questions that you've answered and we're coming to the end of our program and we said that each person was given two minutes to kind of give a closing comment and Mr. Hickman we're going to start with you I'd like to thank everyone for this opportunity today such as this organization but I'd like to instill in everyone that the board cannot do their job if no one comes to the meeting if no one shows any interest we have to what we do is reflect the interest of the community what the community wants you don't come that means you don't want anything and everything is kosher you show up and voice your opinion and then we've got to get busy well I ain't got there yet but still the board's got to get busy so until our community understands the importance of being involved in the education of these children and I'm talking about church I'm talking about neighborhood organizations fraternities everyone there will be a long time for this to get done so we need your help thank you I've been on the board eight years now and I'm currently the board president and as I said my daughters were in the car and this district has been quite a bit to me and if there are some perceptions some perceptions that I think that aren't particularly accurate then maybe this district doesn't need to work on this so that we can go forward as a community I am ready to serve this community I'm ready to make our district better I'm willing to accept an F on a report card when it comes to education I grew up right here in the inner west and the hood for people who had low expectations and didn't think that anyone from the neighborhood could ever amount to anything but I proved them wrong I went to Sinclair community college and walked most days to get there I went to Central State to earn the bachelor's degree I went to the University of Dayton and earned a master's degree in education and then I went back and earned a law degree I want to set an example for the young people in our community so they know that they can do it but it takes hard work it took a community it took neighbors caring it took teachers caring it took hard work we have to have high standards I will never be associated with a losing district I will not accept an F on a report card I will find out what it takes to get that F to a better grade because we're a better community and it's not going to happen by screaming and hollering and being upset we have to have deep analysis of the issue and figure out what we did right we have an A school Stuyves got an A we have a B school Decker got a B why don't we sit down and figure out what are they doing right and emulate that in some of the other schools but it will take all of us it will take volunteers to come out on Saturday to help them with their boot camps but that's what it takes to get these kids the test means that they don't have money to hire people so some of you all have to volunteer like we do I'm not on the board but the thing that I do right now is train tutors for the board so come October the 19th at the YWCA come pick up one of my cards I'll be happy to give it to you we offer free tutoring to community members to go into the day public schools and to be a volunteer tutor to help children learn to breathe you don't have to have a college degree all you have to have is compassion thank you let's give everybody a turnout I want to thank all of you all for turning out I think this has been a valuable time I want to remind people to please complete the contact cards and turn them back in I would be remissed I'm sorry I'm a teacher and I teach racism and I have my students in the audience so I cannot I have to deal with one of the things we deal with that when you deal with systems and structures that the race of the people running the system and structure doesn't change unless the system and structure change so you can get black people running something and have systemic racism you can get black people administrating stuff because if all they do is continue the same system that system may have embedded racism so those are things I teach my student and I couldn't let the comment pass without reinforcing the idea that systems that the race of the person doesn't affect the whether or not systemic racism is there I want to thank the many organizations that have been leaders in this community for a very, very long time on the issues of mass incarceration on the issues of violence in our community obviously the Adams project that has been at the forefront of this these problems the black men's think tank I want to thank the students for my race and racism in the law class and the black law students who came out to help us today I want to thank the Dakota center and I especially want to thank the nation of Islam the nation of Islam has sat at the table with us from the beginning that we start organizing and every single meeting they had someone there helping us and so a special thing to the nation of Islam and to Wesley center as well I want to the mayor and commissioners are going to be tomorrow night at the Wesley center I really encourage you to turn out and it'll be the same format and hopefully as informative we have a little snack out in the hallway you can talk with the candidates and meet them thank you everybody