Tag Archives: School to Prison Pipeline

Watkins family on other cases

It’s not so much what you know as what you can prove,
says a concerned father, and the mother wants better representation
for others whose children like her daughter have gotten caught

in a felony with little if any evidence at school.

Mrs. Watkins said after her daughter was
tackled at school be a deputy,
she found “there are a lot of children in the judicial system
that may not have good representation.”
She and Mr. Watkins and George Boston Rhynes
are starting an organization to at least show concern.
George said in one visit to juvenile court
he encountered two families with problems with
probation and law enforcement knocking down doors and searching without
search warrants.

Mr. Watkins wants to help people know their rights.
Things we older folk may have done as children now there
are laws against, and the children and their families
need to know things like the difference between a felony
and a misdemeanor, and the importance of writing things down.
“Details is all that matters.”
Later he noted that Continue reading →

Mrs. Watkins says her 14-year-old daughter was charged with a felony at Pine Grove Middle School despite no evidence

Mrs. Watkins said a sheriff’s deputy used excessive force against her
daughter and despite no evidence her daughter was charged with a felony.
George Boston Rhynes asked:

If your child would have been been caught with what her child have experienced,
wouldn’t you want
somebody in Valdosta and Lowndes County
and the state of Georgia
and the state and the nation
to know what had happened to your child?

According to Mrs. Watkins,
between 11AM and noon on 14 May 2013 she
Watkins was called by the principal of Pine Grove Middle School
saying her daughter had assaulted her.
When Mrs. Watkins got there Deputy Robert Adkins
told her he was going to charge her daughter with several charges,
even though he had no statement from anyone.
When she got home, she found a facebook video of two children
attacking her daughter, who wasn’t attacking anyone, and the teacher
was never struck, which the deputy also confirmed he had not heard happened.
Yet Mrs. Watkins said none of the other children were charged
and her daughter was charged with a felony.
See for yourself what she said, in a lot more detail:

Here’s

the video:

Continue reading →

Judge rules against school-to-prison pipeline in Mississippi

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 Continue reading →

AZ invites CCA to help get more customers in School to Prison Pipepline

We could have slipped down this slippery slope with

that proposed CCA private prison,
down to where Casa Grande Arizona is, inviting CCA’s
guards and dogs into our schools to collect our children as
private prison customers.

Sadhbh Walshe wrote for the Guardian 13 December 2012,

Arizona funnels business to CCA through its school-to-prison pipeline:
Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest?

Drug sweeps of schools are not uncommon occurrences in the recent

past in America, much to the chagrin of civil rights advocates, who
see such sweeps as an efficient means of diverting certain kids to
prison — in some cases, even before they make it to
adolescence, via the much-criticized

“school-to-prison pipeline”.
What was unusual about this particular raid, however, is that, among
the team of law enforcement personnel and canines put together by
the local Casa Grande police department, there were prison guards
employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the
country’s largest for-profit prison company, which owns and operates
several prisons in the area. CCA was also kind enough to provide
their sniffer dogs for the raid.

What’s even more unusual about this is that pretty much nobody in a
position of authority in and around Casa Grande seems to think
there’s anything wrong with that.

That’s where “jobs, jobs, jobs” with no consideration of the consequences
leads you.
Some jobs are not worth having.
Private prison jobs are among them.

The state of Georgia spends a billion dollars a year locking people up,
many of them for minor drug offenses, and around 85% of them for
drug-related offenses.
What if instead we spent a fraction of that money on drug counselling
and mental health care, and the rest on public education?
Then we’d have healthier people more prepared for real jobs.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Dante Acevedo.

Three things to actually improve education —John S. Quarterman

People ask me why I oppose CUEE.
It’s because I’d rather actually improve education instead.

It seems to me the burden of proof is on the people proposing
to make massive changes in the local education system.
And CUEE has not provided any evidence for their position.
Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS)

pithily sums up CUEE:

“It’s not about the children. It’s about somebody’s ego.”

I don’t think the children should have to suffer for somebody’s ego.

CUEE’s unification push isn’t about education.
It’s about

a “unified platform” to attract industry.
That alone is enough reason to oppose “unification”.
It’s not about education!

As former Industrial Authority Chair Jerome Tucker has been
heard to remark on numerous occassions, “nobody ever asked me how
many school systems we had!”
The only example in Georgia CUEE points to for this is the Kia
plant that came to Troup County, Georgia.
It’s funny how
none of the locals seem to have mentioned any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant.
Instead, the mayor of the town with the Kia plant complains that his town
doesn’t have a high school.
That’s right: he’s complaining that the school system is too
consolidated!
The only actual education between Kia and education in Troup County
is

with West Georgia Tech, the local technical college.

CUEE has finally cobbled together an education committee, but

it won’t even report back before the proposed ballot referendum vote.
CUEE has no plan to improve education.

If CUEE actually did want to help the disadvantaged in the Valdosta
City schools,

Continue reading →

STPP: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline Symposium

Did you know that:

Children are far more likely to be arrested at school than they were a generation ago.

The vast majority of these arrests are for non-violent offenses such
as “disruptive conduct” or “disturbance of the peace.” Five
year olds are being led out of classrooms in handcuffs for acting out
or throwing temper tantrums. Students have been arrested for throwing
an eraser at a teacher, breaking a pencil, and having rap lyrics in a
locker. These children do not belong in jail.

Why do we pay more to incarcerate people than it would cost
to educate them?

Why is this happening? “Zero tolerance” policies criminalize minor
infractions of school rules and high-stakes testing programs encourage
educators to push out low-performing students to improve their schools’
overall test scores. Students of color are especially vulnerable to the
discriminatory application of discipline and push-out trends.

Here’s a chance to do something about it.

The School To Prison Pipeline (STPP) refers to a disturbing national
trend in which students are funneled out of public schools and into the
juvenile and criminal justice systems. Most of these kids are children
of color, and many have learning disabilities or histories of poverty,
abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and
counseling services. Instead they are punished and isolated.

The Valdosta

Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline Symposium
is one of

a series throughout the state of Georgia.
It’s 9:30AM – 4PM 30 Oct 2010.