It’s a good start. Next: stop locking so many people up in general.
It costs

far less to educate than to incarcerate,
and educated children can contribute to society, instead of being
a drain on resources.

Brentin Mock wrote for ColorLines Friday,

Good News in Mississippi: School-To-Prison Pipeline Closes,

The sealing of the school-to-prison pipeline in Meridian, Miss. has
officially started after a U.S. District Court judge approved what
the Department of Justice is calling “a landmark consent
decree” that features a “far-reaching plan to reform
discipline practices … that unlawfully channel black students out
of their classrooms and, too often, into the criminal justice
system.

In March, the Justice Department reached agreement with the Meridian
Public School District to decrease excessive suspensions and
expulsions of mostly young black students for trivial infractions
like wearing the wrong colored socks. Kids were lucky if they were
only suspended — in many of these cases, schools called the
police to arrest the students, as young as 10 years old, and send
them to juvenile facilities, as reporter Julianne Hing found last
November.

This consent decree essentially cancels most, if not all, police
intervention for any issues that ca be “safely and
appropriately handled under school disciplinary procedures.”
This includes: disorderly conduct, school disturbances and
disruptions, loitering, trespassing, profanity, dress code
violations, and fighting that doesn’t include physical injury or
weapons. Further, the school district can not share any information
on students’ discipline records with any law enforcement agency
unless court-ordered. It also requires schools to track discipline
data, including by race, and then take corrective action if they
find racial disparities.

There’s more

in the article.

-jsq