Summary
Former board member Ray Allen agrees, saying the staff is "using the police to enforce disciplinary policy. These are matters that should be handled most appropriately by the school." And he does think that race is a factor: "There is a great reluctance on the part of the staff, primarily white staff, to intervene early on with young people of color when their behavior is not appropriate." Then kids push the envelope further in terms of behavior, and "you wind up with a major incident that causes the police to be involved."
[Johnny Winston Jr.] told Chief [Noble Wray] the school-police partnership "can go against students receiving an education" if students have to "duck and dodge" cops just to attend class. Winston also said the incident in which a police officer used a Taser gun to subdue a student in the parking lot of Memorial High School "probably set us back many, many years" in terms of building positive images of police in the minds of minorities."If there's one thing I hear from African Americans the most, they don't talk about curriculum or sports or fine arts, they talk to me about how their son or daughter gets treated in the school district, particularly when it comes to discipline," Winston says. "Why is their kid expelled or suspended when another kid who did the same thing isn't?"See the full content of this document
Extract
Getting Kids Ready for Prison?
African American students are far more likely to be arrested in Madison schools than any other racial group, a finding that is ratcheting up the importance of an upcoming review of the relationship between the Madison Metropolitan School District and the Madison Police Department.
A computer analys...See the full content of this document
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