Don't let restorative justice fail

Recently, pressure has mounted to decrease, if not eliminate, suspensions in public schools, writes New York City teacher Ruben Brosbe in BRIGHT. The correlation between suspensions, dropouts, and incarcerations -- particularly for black and Latino youth -- has been deemed a school-to-prison pipeline. Restorative justice has gained favor as a corrective to the zero-tolerance policies of the 1990s. Within a restorative framework, misbehaving students participate in a community circle, collaborative negotiation, peer mediation, or a formal restorative conference. New York City has announced School Climate Reforms intended to promote "dignity and fairness" in schools, with an accompanying $1.2 million to expand restorative practices. Yet restorative justice requires intensive training for all school staff, including guidance counselors and school safety officers. The city plans to introduce restorative approaches to a hundred New York City schools by September 2015, but the experience of a few city schools now successfully using the practice shows that implementation is lengthy, with bumps and setbacks alongside success. At this point, the city has only trained teachers for community circles, which don't address cursing, fighting or bullying; teachers have received little continued education even in this. If teachers are charged with using restorative justice in place of suspensions but aren't given tools to do so, the promise of restorative justice will be squandered.More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

Published by LEAP

Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.