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To: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

Tell de Blasio to END the School to Prison Pipeline Now!

New York City's current disciplinary policies and practices are creating a school to prison pipeline for children of color and children with disabilities. Mayor de Blasio, please

• End racially discriminatory school discipline policies
• End all arrests and summons for non-criminal violations
• Invest $20 million to expand restorative justice and trauma-informed care in public schools

Why is this important?

WE HAVE 14 DAYS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, because, over the next 14 days, Mayor Bill de Blasio will be considering important reforms to school discipline and policies and policing practices in NYC Public Schools.

The stories are incredible:

* A Queens first grader with learning disabilities was handcuffed by police and suspended from school when he became upset while painting an Easter egg in class.
*Alexa Gonzalez, a 12-year-old Queens girl, was suspended from school and hauled off in handcuffs for doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker.

The facts are outrageous:

*Black students are 4 times more likely to be suspended than their white peers. Black girls are 10 times more likely than white girls to receive discipline referrals. These racial disparities are a result of systemic implicit and explicit biases in policies and practices.

* Students with disabilities are four times more likely to be suspended than students without disabilities. Black students with disabilities represent more than 50 percent of suspended students with disabilities. Black students also served longer suspensions on average and were more likely to be suspended for subjective misconduct like insubordination.

New York City schools imposed nearly 70,000 suspensions in the 2011-2012 school year and a task force examined disciplinary practices in the New York City’s 1.1 million-student system during the 2011-2012 school year. It found that “the overwhelming majority of school-related suspensions, summonses and arrests are for minor misbehavior, behavior that occurs on a daily basis in most schools.” This excessive use of suspension for minor offenses pushes students out of school and directly on the path towards prison.

Urge the Mayor to adopt changes that will dismantle the school to prison pipeline now!

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Updates

2022-08-17 17:00:35 -0400

25 signatures reached