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Scott Menzel, superintendent of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, (left) speaks on a panel on the school-to-prison pipeline alongside Tod Durkin, the parent of a student who went through a mandatory expulsion (center). The town hall meeting on Wednesday, May 24 at Washtenaw Community College was hosted by state Rep. Adam Zemke (right).

(Lauren Slagter | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR TOWNSHIP, MI - There's a correlation between the number of times students are suspended or expelled and their likelihood of ending up in the corrections system, which is prompting educators and law enforcement to come together in an effort to dismantle a so-called "school-to-prison pipeline."

A panel of Washtenaw County experts on school discipline and law enforcement convened by state Rep. Adam Zemke discussed alternative ways to address student discipline issues at a town hall meeting held Wednesday, May 24 at Washtenaw Community College. There was standing room only in the WCC conference room, and Zemke's office said more than 120 people attended.

"We feel this issue is fundamentally contributing to inequality in our country, and it hits home right here in Washtenaw County," said Zemke, D-Ann Arbor, adding that he considered Wednesday's event the start of ongoing conversations about the issue.

Michigan lawmakers recently passed reforms to the state's "zero tolerance" school discipline policy that mandated expulsions for students who brought any type of weapon to school.

The new state law - which goes into effect in August - gives school boards more discretion in considering students' age, intent and prior discipline record when determining appropriate consequences for an offense. The new law also directs schools to prioritize reducing the number of suspensions and expulsions dolled out and to instead consider restorative practices and other alternative discipline approaches.

"I can't wait to see what happens when the law goes into effect, but the truth is we have hearts and minds to change," said Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center, who was part of the panel at Wednesday's event. "It doesn't matter that zero tolerance has ended in our state. It matters, but that doesn't mean that local districts can't say we are going to expel. They still have that option to do that."

Students who are suspended or expelled are three times more likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system than their peers who stay in school, Stone-Palmquist said. She encouraged people to contact their local school boards and ask what discipline policy changes they are considering under the new state law and what alternatives to suspensions their school district offers.

Other members of the panel included: Scott Menzel, Washtenaw Intermediate School District superintendent; Derrick Jackson, director of community engagement for the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office; Joseph Ryan, associate professor of social work and co-director of the Child and Adolescent Data Lab at the University of Michigan; and Tod Durkin, the parent of a student who went through the mandatory expulsion process in 2013.

It wasn't long before the conversation turned to race as Ryan presented statistics on school suspensions and juvenile justice cases.

He gave the example of suspensions at Ann Arbor Public Schools. While the overall suspension rate at AAPS has dropped in the past six years, African American students still are suspended at a higher rate than their white peers - which is not unique to AAPS.

About 16.4 percent of Ann Arbor's high school students in the 2015-16 school year were black, and 43.5 percent of high school students suspended that year were black. A similar trend persists in the juvenile justice system, Ryan said.

Black youths account for about 40 percent of petitions into Michigan's juvenile justice system, he said. About 16 percent of Michigan's children are black, according to 2015 data presented in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count report.

"There's a lot of evidence to suggest that when we alienate youth from public school settings, they're more likely to use their time in ways that aren't as productive. So it's likely that these things (suspensions and encounters with law enforcement) are connected," Ryan said, adding that Michigan lacks a good way to track data on youth between school systems, law enforcement records and Child Protective Services cases.

During a question-and-answer session at the town hall meeting, a member of the public asked the panelists to address whether they think racial bias is a factor in the school-to-prison pipeline and what they suggest to offset the impact of that bias.

Menzel said there are systemic and structural race issues in America, and people have to call it what it is in order to address the issue. He pointed out the low number of minority teachers in schools and the need for professional development for school staff related to cultural competency and equity.

"I think we absolutely have to put the issue of race on the table. ... It means tackling the issues of race and how we understand each other and how we understand the way in which race has played a role in creating or denying people opportunity," Menzel said. "That's a really important conversation."

Jackson shared the results of a case study where the sheriff's office collected information on the history of 25 young people who were "struggling the most," which was defined as having contact with law enforcement, not achieving in school or involvement in the juvenile justice system.

Eighteen of those youth were involved in juvenile court, with a total of 77 cases among them, Jackson said. The majority of youth in the case study were failing their classes and had a high number of school absences. They were detained by law enforcement an average of three times, Jackson said, and the age of their first offense is important.

"Age at first arrest is a huge predictor of someone coming back," he said. "So anything we can do to not use arrest as the only tool, but to really think about other creative, innovative ways to really work with our young people is really, really important."

Derrick Jackson, director of community engagement for the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office (left), speaks on a school-to-prison pipeline panel on Wednesday, May 24, 2017. Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center (center), and Joseph Ryan, associate professor of social work at UM, also participated in the panel.

Officers also looked at every police report those 25 teens had been involved in, Jackson said, whether as suspects or witnesses. Six of them had seen significant domestic violence in their home, 15 of them had an incarcerated parent and 23 had at least one absent parent.

"To me, this ongoing trauma or these pieces of trauma our young people are dealing with, there is a direct correlation (with delinquency)," he said. "I don't think we can have a conversation like this without understand and recognizing some of the other things that are going on in some of our young people's lives.

"Again, we're not talking bad kids," Jackson added. "We're talking about kids who are really struggling to survive in many, many different ways."

Menzel outlined some of the efforts already in place in Washtenaw County schools to change the approach to student discipline. In 2013, Washtenaw County started a School Justice Partnership that involves the court system, the WISD and other nonprofit youth organizations that look at ways to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.

He would like to see schools approach student discipline as an opportunity to help students learn from their poor choices rather than emphasize punishment.

Durkin said he's glad to see the state's zero tolerance policies changing, saying the enforcement of those policies sometimes defied common sense and led to outcomes no one would typically choose for a student. There was no differentiation between a student who brought a paring knife to school with no malicious intent and someone who brought a gun, Durkin said.

At the close of the two-hour town hall meeting, five young men involved in a Youth in Power group asked the panelists how teens can be involved in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.

"We need to make sure that we take away from here that we have a lot of work to do, and we need to help each other out as a community," Zemke said at the end of the discussion. "We need to address things head on and talk about race and socioeconomic disparities across our community, and then we need to act on it. That has to be at a policy level, and it also has to be at an implementation level all across our community."