School-to-Prison Pipeline: ACLU-NCA on The Education Town Hall

In-studio guest: Seema Sadanandan, organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union-National Capital Area on countering the school-to-prison pipeline

Full recording: March 28 edition
The Education Town Hall on Facebook

Feature Report [new page]: “Teaching K12 Students to ‘Counter’ Armed Attacks”

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Learn about the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” from the March 28 Education Town Hall. Check out the resources linked below.

Explore specific issues — truancy, expulsions, and barring notices — contributing the tragic “pipeline.” Join with ACLU-NCA and other partners to stay informed and take action.

Contact our guest, Seema Sadanandan (Seema @ ACLU-NCA), to learn more about student and family rights and how to protect them and to join her organizing efforts.

Seema Sadanandan provided a brief history of the American Civil Liberties Union, “protecting our rights for 90 years.” She began her own work with the ACLU just two months ago and focuses on organizing around racial justice.

Sadanandan highlighted three major issues contributing to the “prison pipeline”:

1) DCPS’s new School Visitors Policy which ACLU-NCA believes could keep out many community members, including parents, for lack of ID or “attempt to pose a threat.”

2) Proposed truancy legislation before the DC Council; see ACLU-NCA Testimony in February, and listen to the March 28 edition for a discussion of the bill and recent modifications made by the Education Committee.

3) Charter school expulsions, through which even minor infractions are treated as crimes worthy of banishment. A recent Washington Post story found the rate of expulsion in DC charters 72 times that of DC Public Schools.

In these ways, among others, the ACLU-NCA says, DC schools are contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. And students of color are disproportionately affected.

Sadanandan regularly meets with student and community groups. She calls on parent associations and others to learn more about their own rights and those of their children. Contact: Seema @ ACLU-NCA.

Learn more about the ACLU’s national work on the School to Prison Pipeline

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