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Oakland’s renowned school restorative justice program is in jeopardy
The Oakland Unified School District’s restorative justice program has been recognized as a national model for school discipline policies. The program began in Oakland, California, schools in 2007 in collaboration with Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and has slowly expanded throughout the district. Now the program is facing budget cuts that could effectively gut it. [David Washburn / EdSource]
The district’s proposal for over $20 million in budget cuts requires more than $850,000 cut from the restorative justice program. David Yusem, the district’s restorative justice coordinator, told EdSource, “Really what it looks like is they’re laying off almost all the [restorative justice] people. It’s devastating—the amount of brain power they will lose is immeasurable.” The co-founder and executive director of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice described the news as “very disappointing to hear” and said, “I think of all the sunk costs that went into creating such a robust and effective program.” [David Washburn / EdSource]
In addition to steep cuts to the restorative justice program, the budget proposal would also do away with another alternative school discipline program. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports’ social and emotional learning department would be cut to one person. [David Washburn / EdSource]
In 2016, the Obama administration issued “The Continuing Need To Rethink Discipline,” a report on harsh school disciplinary measures, their disproportionate use on students of color and disabled students, and their consequences for learning and involvement in the criminal legal system. The disparities in treatment begin shockingly early. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection from 2013-14 revealed that Black children were 3.6 times more likely to be suspended in preschool than white children. In the K-12 years, suspension rates for Black children were 3.8 times higher than those for white children. Students identified for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were issued out-of-school suspensions at twice the rate of their peers. Despite constituting only 12 percent of students, they also made up the majority of students subjected to physical restraints and seclusion. [The Continuing Need to Rethink Discipline / Executive Office of the President]
These punishments hinder learning, affect students’ health and well-being, and fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. The report also pointed to the ways these disciplinary approaches distort funding priorities. “Twenty-one percent of high schools nationwide do not provide access to the social-emotional support provided by a school counselor,” and 1.6 million students “attend a school that has a sworn law enforcement officer but not a counselor.” And “in the top 10 largest districts in the nation, where more children of color attend school, there are, on average, more police and school-based resource officers in place than school counselors.” [The Continuing Need to Rethink Discipline / Executive Office of the President] Last year, as state legislatures and school districts called for additional school resource officers after the Parkland, Florida, shooting, the Daily Appeal looked at how school “safety” measures can harm Black and brown students.
The alarming national picture explains the importance of, and attention given to, the restorative justice program in Oakland schools. The school district was one of 12 identified by the Obama administration as a model of successful alternative discipline policies. Under the program, suspension rates districtwide went down 57 percent in six years. Suspensions for “defiance” went down 75 percent in five years. These gains, the White House report said, “reflect deep structural changes at both the district and school site level resulting from more positive, restorative, and trauma-informed responses to student behavior, and a commitment to equity and inclusion.” [The Continuing Need to Rethink Discipline / Executive Office of the President]
Lara Bazelon, law professor at the University of San Francisco law school, looked at the Oakland program in her book “Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction.” Bazelon tells a story from 2013 about Cedric, a 16-year-old whose acceptance to high school after 10 months in a juvenile camp was conditioned upon his participation in a restorative justice circle. “Cedric freely admitted,” Bazelon writes, “that he was unhappy about having to sit in a circle” with his parents, teachers, school administrators, a psychologist, and peer mentors “to talk about the pain he had caused other people or the deprivation and harm he had experienced himself. The prospect, Cedric said, ‘made me feel like walking out the damn room.’ But he did it.” And as he and his mother and stepfather spoke, it was revealed that Cedric was getting into trouble because he was trying to help his mother, who was unemployed, pay the rent. [Lara Bazelon / Juvenile Justice Information Exchange]
The adults in the circle responded with love and support, and the facilitator of the circle, the program’s coordinator at the school, “addressed Cedric directly, saying, ‘I will be your brother, I will be your uncle, I got your back. I got stuff for you. Come and get it. And I say this in front of everybody because if I don’t, I need all these people to hold me accountable.’” Cedric was ultimately admitted to Bunche High School and graduated four years later. [Lara Bazelon / Juvenile Justice Information Exchange]
In 2015, Oakland announced that it would introduce restorative justice practices into all its schools by 2020, given the decreases in truancy and suspensions and the increases in test scores and graduation rates. [Lara Bazelon / Juvenile Justice Information Exchange] Now the program is in jeopardy. The budget cuts under consideration will require laying off for more than 100 people and closing or consolidating up to 24 schools. One board member blamed the cuts on the state’s failure to fully fund public education. In addition to cutting the restorative justice program, the budget proposal also requires cuts to school counselor positions. During a public comment period last week, a student told the district’s board: “We should not have to suffer because of your inability to manage money.” [Jobina Fortson / KGO-TV] |
