Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week wrongly blaming the Parkland shooting on the Department of Education’s School Discipline Guidance package. This guidance, released in 2014, reminded schools of their responsibility to address racial discrimination in school discipline, which affects students in every state.
The guidance includes a series of recommendations to help close the school-to-prison pipeline, including limiting police involvement in nonviolent disciplinary matters. Sen. Rubio’s idea to increase contact between police and schools is not what students want or need and will undoubtedly create more threats for girls of color in school.
Here’s why:
School police don’t arrest white boys with guns. They arrest black and brown students. Based on our Let Her Learn reports, black girls are 15 percent of girls enrolled in public school, but 37 percent of girls arrested and 28 percent of girls referred to law enforcement.
[For more on this story by Kayla Patrick and Nia Evans, go to http://jjie.org/2018/03/08/bla...olice-enter-schools/]
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