"Beating the School-to-Prison Pipeline"  

http://oaklandlocal.com/article/beating-school-prison-pipeline

published by Oakland Local

July 5, 2012

By Barbara Grady   barbgrady1@gmail.com 

Oakland, California, is a city where kids in certain neighborhoods just get swallowed up. There are neighborhoods where street violence, poverty and family dysfunction intersect with inadequately funded schools to leave some kids bereft of role models or hope or evidence that they can pursue productive lives in the regular economy.  When schools don't try to break this cycle, when they pack students into over-crowded classrooms and suspend those kids whose frustration from their home life or street life lead them to act out, then the conditions for a school-to-prison pipeline exist.  Urban school districts like Oakland Unified have a history of being school to prison pipelines, but this year Oakland has made a consorted effort to reverse that and to embrace all of a child's needs in order to prepare him or her for learning.  
	There are things that schools and teachers and parents can do to break the school to prison pipeline. One is keep kids in the classroom. That means finding ways to correct absenteeism and eschewing suspensions. Another is to give kids the benefit of having at least one adult care for them.  For schools, it helps to have adequate budgets to help them fund enough teachers to allow for one-on-one relationships. But even without money, these things can be done.
	My July 5 story "Beating the school-to-prison pipeline'' explored the question what builds up that pipeline and what can destroy it or divert the trail some kids take from school to prison. It was widely read in Oakland, in Alameda County and, apparently, beyond.  The story was cross posted by several other web sites beyond Oakland Local.  In fact, an organization called Reclaiming Futures said my story, which they cross posted, was among its top blog posts of the year in traffic. 
	The impact the story made within the Oakland community was letting people know there is another way; that the school to prison pipeline is not made of impenetrable steel but rather of something porous and changeable.  Since about half of OaklandLocal.com readers are from underserved communities, the story helped readers see how easy it is for our kids to fall into the school-to-prison pipeline and that all it really takes to disrupt it is for caring adults to get involved.