Introduction
This Webquest is designed to address why the need of Zero- Tolerance policies does not establish success for minority public school students, specifically for African American female students. In order to make young girls feel and be successful in school and out of school, major reforms in the educational systems need to be reevaluated and applied so that our girls of color can be future Presidents, Influencers, and Millionaires/ Billionaires. Combating and diminishing the alarming rates of the School to Prison Pipeline.
https://girlsinc.org/school-pushout-and-how-to-combat-it/
Task
My Plan: To create the necessary alternatives to keep the children in school, safe, and learning for a successful future. Below provides the alternatives to alleviate the rates at which black girls are overtly punished and arrested in and from school environments and as well these alternatives include educational system reforms that provide more Social Emotional Learning Programs, The Importance of Mentorship established in schools, and Why Additional Clinical Staff Support is needed over the excessive Zero- Tolerance Policies embedded in Schools to address the underlying Mental and Emotional Challenges that African American girls face in and out of school. With these alternatives applied, more girls of color can meet the positive academic milestones and become further successful in their life and goals without being affected and inducted into the Prison Pipelines.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4172&context=capstones
https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/protecting-black-girls
To obtain the funding and facilities needed to ensure that Black girls in public schools are not being pushed out of schools and into Prison Pipelines, advocating for these programs and for the adequate support staff to be implemented in school so that African American girls can thrive in and out of school to be the best that they can and inspire to be. Black girls can be successful and will be with the right educational practices and with the right people helping them become GREAT, dismantling the racist and biased perceptions and existing methods that society has established. Our girls cannot be continuing to enter Criminal Justice Systems starting from educational environments but what our girls can do is succeed in any way starting from educational environments. So my question to you is, Will you help our girls Light Shine, or would you let them continue to follow blindly into the Prison Pipeline darkness?
Process
Although the bill introduces the grant of $2.5 million to combat black girls being pushed out of schools and into the school to prison pipeline. I would like to request additional funding of $10,000 to first start placing mentors inside schools where black girls feel unseen, unheard, unsafe, and uneducated. By funding my mentoring program, safe spaces will be created so that young girls could have a space to freely express their emotions, goals, problems, and creativity while establishing healthy relationships with mentors who can help them with school and navigate life. This funding will also make girls want to come to school decreasing truancy and increasing positive behaviors and safety because they will finally have people (other women of color) who they can look up to and be inspired by. Whenever problems occur the mentors will be there as the first responders to calm down and alleviate excessive punishment enforcement. Funding the $10,000 will boost the lives of African American girls because not a lot of us have or seen positive role models Like Us, For Us in- school we need that boost of confidence, that attention, and that realness that only mentors dedicated to them can give. Therefore, from now on Black Girl's Voices can be heard and respected to enhance successful academics and successful livelihoods.
Evaluation
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5325?s=1&r=17
The Ending PUSHOUT Act of 2019, this bill is introduced to address the discriminatory use of suspensions, expulsions, and school-based arrests that ultimately push girls of color out of school. Also, this bill will design a grant program to open funding to hire the mass need for school counselors and other mental health professionals to identify implicit bias, apply reformed justice, and help to establish practices that reinforce positive behavior rather than the existing over-punishment for negative behavior. Next, the bill will require that schools ban the excessive use of expulsions and suspensions for factors such ass defiance, truancy, corporal punishment, physical or mechanical restraints, and seclusion. This will remove the race- and sex-based biases and stereotypes that educators and school resource officers place on black girls to end the punitive punishments black girls face in school. Additionally, the bill would bar any school from receiving this grant under the Act of hiring more law enforcement officers, buying surveillance equipment, arming teachers, or partnering with ICE. This is imperative because the bias causes school-based police officers to criminalize Black girls by upholding violence against African American girls and harsher consequences for their actions through arrest and referrals to the criminal legal system. By limiting contact with law enforcement, it will keep young black girls safer by allowing trained teachers and mental health professionals to handle day-to-day discipline and find better ways to support them in school. In order to, reform educational justice, schools have to put providing support over-policing to induce positive learning environments that are not hostile to African American girls and promote better educational opportunities and social-emotional growth. Passing this bill will surely provide safe learning environments for black girls to grow successfully.
https://nwlc.org/will-democracy-keep-black-girls-safe-the-ending-pushout-act/
Conclusion
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/editorial-ending-school-prison-pipeline-village-work-n616966
As a fellow black girl, I know what it is like to be unseen and unheard in school when sometimes it affected my education because I lacked confidence in myself to want to learn. I was defiant, never participated in class, and was ultimately an average B, C student but it wasn't until my reading specialist teacher from middle school sparked up my light and she was my mentor throughout middle school that helped me regain my confidence academically. Her willingness in taking an interest in me promoted my educational growth and caused me to become a mentor/ advocate for black girls to know that there are people in school that are there for them and wants them to succeed in life so nothing can be taken from them. When black girls are being taken out of schools, their chances of graduating middle, high school, and college lower at horrifying rates, and without the right support from school professionals or school staff that they can come to for guidance they can easily be subjected to lifelong criminal justice systems and that's no place for our young girls to be. I want to be an aspiring Social Worker specifically in schools and I want to not only advocate for black girls academically but to motivate and inspire them to love themselves, be who they are unapologetic, help them reach whatever goals they have and influence them to avoid entering the school to prison pipeline or any other prison pipeline that is designed to uproot and incage our beautifulness and brilliantness. We as black females are bold, smart, pretty and Queens no matter how many times we may get knocked down like Maya Angelou Still We Rise into greatness, and as I reflect that is what I would like to do for my sisters as a Social Worker.
Credits
Be Perfect in Your Imperfection | Lisa Nichols | Inspiring Women of Goalcast. (2018, June 7).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8pgUGx7Pkw
Clark, O. (2018). Bridge To Her Education (BETHERE): Black Girls and the School to Prison Pipeline. SIT Graduate Institute. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4172&con…
Critical Mentoring—Because Young People Deserve the Best of Us | Torie Weiston-Serdan | TEDxKGI. (2018, February 28).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QICreEHuuMQ
Fox, M. (2020, August 26). Here’s what it takes for Black girls to become leaders, according to Michelle Obama. CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/26/michelle-obama-heres-what-it-takes-for-…
Girls Inc. Administrator. (2020, April 15). School Pushout: What You Need to Know & How to Combat It.
Girls Inc. https://girlsinc.org/school-pushout-and-how-to-combat-it/
Good, B. (2022, April 21). The Ending PUSHOUT Act: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Introduces House Legislation to Fight Against Biased Treatment Impacting Girls of Color in Schools. DiversityInc.
https://www.diversityinc.com/the-ending-pushout-act-rep-ayanna-pressley…
How To Let Your Light Shine Bright | Lisa Nichols | Inspiring Women of Goalcast. (2018, February 25).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWpiCOmbVuY
H.R.5325 - 116th Congress (2019–2020): Ending PUSHOUT Act of 2019. (n.d.). Congress.Gov | Library of Congress.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5325?s=1&r=17
Jones-Castro, A., & Johns, D. (2016, August 1). Editorial: Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline is Village Work.
NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/editorial-ending-school-prison-pipe…
L. (2022, January 5). Will Democracy Keep Black Girls Safe?: The Ending PUSHOUT Act.
National Women’s Law Center. https://nwlc.org/will-democracy-keep-black-girls-safe-the-ending-pushou…
Little Big Shots: Sydney Allateef and Maya Angelou's famous poem “Still I Rise.” (2017, March 6).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZoG9FAtQIs
Motivation For Black Women. (2020, May 5). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dejYNDrVE-M
Protecting Black Girls. (2021, June 4). ASCD. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/protecting-black-girls
PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools - Mini Documentary. (2016, August 15).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kse-llLZ0k
The School to Prison Pipeline | Kiera Wilmot | TEDxYouth@TampaRiverwalk. (2015, December 31).
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBhMTXnw6xU
Taraji P. Henson Launches Mental Health Initiative For Black Youth Called The Unspoken Curriculum. (2021, May 24).