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National ACLU News

School-to-Prison Pipeline

The Racial Justice Program is committed to challenging the "school-to-prison pipeline," a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Many of these children have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished and pushed out. "Zero-tolerance" policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while 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 push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline.

The ACLU believes that children should be educated, not incarcerated. We are working to challenge numerous policies and practices within public school systems and the juvenile justice system that contribute to the school to prison pipeline.

Click here to learn more about the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Antoine v. Winner School District

A wonderful example of the ACLU’s fight against the school-to-prison pipeline can be found in the case of Antoine v. Winner School District.

In March of 2006, the ACLU's Racial Justice Program, ACLU of the Dakotas and Attorney General of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe filed a complaint in federal district court on behalf of Native American families with children in South Dakota's majority-white Winner School District. The class action lawsuit claimed that the schools discriminated against Native American students in disciplining them and were hostile toward Native American families.

The Winner/Ideal Native American community and the Winner School District announced in June 2007 that an agreement has been reached in the lawsuit. Under the settlement agreement, which was approved by a federal court in December of 2007, the district will enact policies and practices to ensure that the rights of Native American students are not violated and to enrich the educational experience of all students. The settlement is a major victory for the Winner/Ideal Native American community, and for the community at large. The ACLU is now working with school officials, educational experts and the tribal community to achieve these goals.

Click here to learn more about the students helped by the ACLU in this case.

ACLU of Alabama News

PRESS RELEASE: ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Racial Discrimination in Monroe County School District

May 21, 2008

MONROEVILLE, AL – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Alabama filed a complaint in a class-action lawsuit today charging Monroe County school officials with subjecting African American students at Monroeville Junior High School to the widespread use of racial epithets and slurs, racially-motivated discipline, and racially segregated classrooms, practices that deny African American students their constitutional right to equal educational opportunities.

“Students at Monroeville Junior High are systematically singled out by teachers and administrators for punishment and forced to endure hostile and discriminatory treatment simply because of their race,” said Catherine Kim, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Project. “Such behavior is a vestige of a tragic past and is simply unacceptable in any contemporary American school setting.”

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on behalf of nine parents of Monroeville Junior High School (MJHS) students, names as defendants the members of the Monroe County Board of Education, the superintendent of the Monroe County School District and the principal of MJHS. The ACLU and ACLU of Alabama ask the court to certify as a class all African American students who attended MJHS last year, who attend currently, and who will attend the school in the future, as well as their parents and guardians.

Some of the most egregious allegations in the lawsuit document the use of racial epithets and slurs made by teachers and school officials toward African American students. School officials refer to African American students as “niggers” and “filthy trash,” and they have told African American parents that they would not be permitted to run the school “like a bunch of animals.”

African American children are routinely suspended for multiple days at a time for not having their shirts tucked in properly, for not wearing a belt, for wearing the wrong kind of belt, for wearing the wrong color undershirt, or simply because a school official does not like the way they are dressed. Caucasian children who commit these same alleged infractions go unpunished. African American children are routinely subject to corporal punishment for infractions as minor as running in the hallways or talking in class. According to parents, white children are virtually never subject to corporal punishment.

“All students have a constitutional right to an educational environment free from racial discrimination,” said Allison Neal, staff attorney with the ACLU of Alabama. “The kind of racially charged environment that exists at MJHS and the discriminatory policies and practices of school officials rob African American students of that right. Not only is that immoral, it is illegal.”

The complaint further alleges that school officials retaliate against parents who object to the racially discriminatory treatment of their children. Children whose parents complain are singled out for more punishment, and parents who express their concerns about the use of discipline on their child are banned from the school grounds and threatened with arrest.

Even worse, when these same parents seek assistance from the district’s Board of Education, the school board refuses to permit these parents from airing their complaints. The Board of Education prohibits any public speaking related to racial discrimination at its board meetings, a denial of parents’ free speech rights.

“Unfortunately, the school district’s utter lack of accountability only serves to deepen the problems,” said Kim. “Parents are denied any means by which they can enforce their children’s rights to equal educational opportunity in schools.”

According to numerous parents of African American students, racially discriminatory practices at MJHS have resulted in their children no longer wanting to go to school and have forced them to lose dozens of days of classroom instruction per year because of discriminatory suspensions. Students who once were honor students are now failing multiple classes and many are prohibited from extracurricular activities as a result.

“My son has attended MJHS for nearly three years and during that time his interest in school has declined and his grades have dropped significantly as a result of the racism he is forced to endure every single day,” said Tangelia Yates, one of the lawsuit’s nine named plaintiffs and whose son was once told by a teacher that a pair of pants he had made for a class assignment looked “like something a slave would wear,” according to the lawsuit. “Every child in this country is supposed to have an equal opportunity to succeed, but that can’t happen when children are forced to endure treatment like that which they receive at MJHS.”

A full copy of the ACLU’s complaint can be found online at: www.aclu.org/racialjustice/edu/35433lgl20080521.html

Additional information about the ACLU Racial Justice Project can be found online at: http://www.aclu.org/racialjustice/index.html