PBS! A Strategy to Help Prevent the School to Prison Pipeline

1. PBS! A Strategy to Help Prevent the School to Prison Pipeline Presenter: Damekia Morgan Families and Friend of LA’s Incarcerated Children 504-522-5437

2. Get to Know your Classmate! handout

3. Focus on the Children • Do you think kids have changed? Why? Why Not? • Give me one word that describes you as a 12 year old. .

4. What is the STPP? What’s your definition?

5. View Documentary Q&A

6. FFLIC’s Definition • ...this problem as the systematic and institutional approach to depriving poor people a right to an equitable and quality education; the deliberate approach to using poor people (of color) to fill the Prison Industrial Complex; and the continued intentional efforts to make poor people of color feel inferior to what is deemed the superior race; and this is done by pushing kids out of school through unjust suspension and expulsions, high-stake testing, the lack of consistently available educational resources , denial of special education services, lowered expectations, zero-tolerance, and mentally preparing kids for prison by creating prison like environments in the schools-with the overuse of police and security guards policing students.

7. So, how do our kids go from School to Prison… Court contact Denial of promotion leads to drop out. Expected to be a criminal. Mental preparation for prison.

8. What is PBS? PBIS is defined as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) a proactive systems approach to establishing the behavioral supports and social culture needed for all students in a school to achieve social, emotional, and academic success. Currently this is not happening which is one of the reasons why we believe the STPP exist.

9. PBS con’t… • Is a collaborative, assessment-based approach to developing effective interventions for problem behavior • Aims to build effective environments in positive behavior is more effective than problem behavior

10. Culture & Respect What is culture & respect?

11. Culture & Respect • Students are sent to the office more that any other reason for “willfully disobedient” or disrespect. For PBS to work we must have a shared definition of what is disrespectful. We must understand culture. • When we are looking at the PBS as a strategy to affecting the STPP most of these students will fall in the tertiary (red – 5%) or secondary (yellow -15%) level. • These are the students who will most likely fall outside of the 80% (green group).

12. Culture con’t the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization <a corporate culture focused on the bottom line> Webster dictionary

13. Culture the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations . * the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also: the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>

14. What is the culture of the institution for education when it comes to dealing with behavioral problem student? How can we change the culture? Culture

15. Are we criminalizing Childhood and Adolescent Behavior Facts About adolescent development.

16. Stand up!!! If You...

17. What are other alternatives to removing a student from the learning environment? • Peer Mediation Program • Teacher Buddy system • Community Conferencing • Restorative Justice • Check in Check out • What else?

18. Legislative Policies That furthers the STPP.

19. For more information on how you can get a copy of the DVD… www.fflic.org