StoryMapping
THE
TEAM
HOW TO
DISMANTLE THE
SCHOOL TO
JAIL TRACK
a resource guide to collect data, stories,
and build youth political power
StoryMapping
THE
FROM
TEAM
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DEMANDS
developed by students at Youth Justice Coalitions' Free LA High School
Peace Builders & Transformative Justice in All Schools
Stand up for community wisdom. Support community intervention work and peace-building in our schools. This is not simply the training of current teachers, but a fully inclusive model that includes families most harmed by the system and the community leaders who are living a new reality everyday providing peace without a piece.
The County can resource community-based organizations to provide youth workers and restorative/transformative justice practitioners to support students in local schools through the new Youth Development Network.
Pipeline to Traditional Schools, College, and Career
Confront the school-to-prison pipeline in traditional and alternative schools by ensuring that students who want to remain at their home schools or return back to their home school from an alternative school can do so.
The County can encourage all LA County school districts to place more students on a college prep and career path by supporting students to remain in and graduate from traditional comprehensive high schools.
No Probation Officers in Schools
Probation supervision is a relic of colonialism and slavery capitalism denying the dignity and humanity of each young person, their family and community. End Juvenile Probation supervision and courts’ intrusive and violent occupation of our homes, schools, and communities. Resource and support our self-determination, not our surveillance.
The County must end school-based probation and immediately reallocate funds to community-based alternatives rooted in youth development.
No Police
End state-sanctioned violence in our schools.
No law enforcement on any of LA County’s campuses.
The County can encourage other schools to shift away from using law enforcement for school safety and offer resources/alternatives mentioned in Demand #2 that promote real safety and youth development.
No Carceral Schools
The County can end carceral schools by ending youth incarceration and shutting down juvenile court schools, county community schools, and juvenile day reporting centers that do not provide adequate education and only further criminalize youth and alienate them from peers. LA County keeps students trapped in the juvenile justice system by pushing students into alternative schools.
The County can encourage all LA County school districts to transform district community day schools to community schools.
OUR PROCESS
No searches, suspensions,
coerced transfers, or expulsions.
The County can encourage schools to end the use of searches, suspensions, expulsions, coerced transfers to alternative schools, and other forms of punitive or exclusionary school discipline by offering - as an alternative - school-based diversion to all LA County school districts through the Office of Youth Diversion and Development.
In 2019, The StoryMapping Team embarked on a project to hold LA County officials accountable for a small piece of the school-to-jail track system.
We pursued transparency from the Los Angeles County Probation Department - the agency responsible for widening the net of youth under probation supervision in schools - as well as the Los Angeles County Office of Education - the school district responsible for providing seamless access to quality education for incarcerated young people and youth returning home from custody.
To start, youth leaders from the Youth Justice Coalition’s LOBOS squad partnered with Public Counsel and Children’s Defense Fund-CA to use Public Records Act Requests in our fight against school push-out.
2. Submit Requests
In February 2020, we submitted our requests. Here's what we asked for from Probation:
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How many youth are under probation supervision in schools across Los Angeles County?
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How many probation officers are assigned to schools?
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How many youth does each probation officer supervise?
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What is the age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, English language learner status, and/or foster youth status of the youth under probation supervision at schools?
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What schools do they attend?
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How many youth were released from custody?
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How many youth returned to school upon release - and of those, how many returned to a traditional comprehensive high school, alternative school, or juvenile day reporting center?
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What training materials, job descriptions, or documents are there detailing the responsibilities and authorities of probation officers who conduct probation supervision in schools?
1. Co-Create
Public Records Act Requests
California’s Public Records Act (PRA) requires CA government agencies to disclose and provide existing records at the request of the public.
PRA requests are used by members of the community to gain information about government agencies and hold them accountable.
Over the course of 6 months, youth leaders of the Youth Justice Coalition collaborated with Public Counsel and Children’s Defense Fund-CA to develop two PRA requests to send to the Los Angeles County Probation Department and the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
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3. Await Response
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In March 2020, we received Probation's response. The Department did not attempt to clarify the requests made or assist in identifying any responsive records in their possession. From February to November 2020, the StoryMapping Team made multiple written attempts to attain records and meet with probation officials, but the Department refused to disclose existing records.
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The Department's refusal to provide records to the public shows they are incompetent at running their department correctly or willing to lie to the public in fear of what the records might reveal.
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For the Los Angeles County Probation Department to operate without oversight and refuse to produce records at the request of the public is dangerous for youth and families in their jurisdiction and dishonest to our county residents. The Department actively places personnel in schools with our youth without any formal knowledge of how to deal and act with youth other than to criminalize them and deprive them of education and life opportunities.
4. Collecting
Stories
OUR STORIES MATTER
While the Youth Justice Coalition worked on PRA requests, Arts for Healing and Justice Network youth leaders teamed up with Children’s Defense Fund-CA and Public Counsel to leverage the power of art and oral history to highlight the revolving door between the juvenile justice system and alternative schools.
A pillar of the school-to-jail track is the widespread incentives school districts have to keep graduation rates high. By pushing out students “at risk” of not graduating to alternative schools, districts are able to artificially inflate their graduation numbers and leave students to alternative schools with fewer resources and college preparatory courses.
To understand how these issues have impacted them and to share their experiences with others, AHJN youth leaders created school history maps to document the number of schools they attended and the reasons their schools of attendance changed. Afterwards, AHJN youth leaders interviewed each other to reflect further on the different schools they attended, the supports or lack of support available in each school, and the overall consequences school instability had on their lives.
6. Conduct
Interviews
5. Create School History Maps
MAINOR
MORA
7. Archive YJC's Stories
TOOLS
TOOLS
to dismantle the system
Here are the most essential tools to dismantle the school-to-jail track. Hover over to learn more.
To preview a story, click on the image.
To view an entire story, click on the icon for the transcript. To view the original file, and click on the icon.
DOCUMENTS
Anthony
Cam'ron
Da'Ron
Danae
Eddie
Emilio
Francisco
Harry
Jesse
Jaquita
Jose G.
José S.
Juan
Leslie
Lupita
Marvin
Muhammad
Phal
Semaj
Shantel
Shayla
Veronica
Zahria
STORY ARCHIVE
Jasmine
AUDIO
with love,
The StoryMapping Project Guardians
Ruth Cusick
Betty Fang
Gloria Gonzalez
Mora Greer
Jacob "Blacc" Jackson
Zoe Rawson
Anthony Robles
Jose Solano
Victor Torres
Ashleigh Washington
Mainor Xucanx
Los Angeles Youth Uprising Coalition was formed in early 2016, as the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Children’s Defense Fund-California, Urban Peace, and the Youth Justice Coalition began meeting in response to the resignation of Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers in 2016.
The organizations recognized this as an opportunity to push for systemic change at the highest departmental level with the hopes of moving LA County away from a system that punishes and incarcerates young people to a model that is committed to healing, restorative and transformative justice, and youth development. LAYUP successfully advocated for the elimination of WIC 236 “voluntary probation,” a multi-million dollar program which placed youth with no history of court or probation system contact under probation supervision in middle and high schools throughout LA County.
The Children’s Defense Fund-California is the state office of the Children’s Defense Fund, a national child advocacy organization founded by Marian Wright Edelman that has worked relentlessly for over 40 years to ensure a level playing field for all children.
CDF-CA champions policies and programs that lift children out of poverty, ensure all children have health coverage and care and a high quality education, and transform the juvenile justice system to focus on youth development and healing.
The Arts for Healing and Justice Network is an interdisciplinary collaborative that provides exceptional arts programing in order to build resilience and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile justice system. AHJN envisions a future where youth are empowered and the systems that serve them are transformed by using arts as a foundational strategy and catalyst for change. AIYN has identified four areas of focus and shared purpose among membership. These areas are Arts Education, Collaboration, Advocacy and Training.
Our movement lawyering project aims to challenge traditional legal advocacy norms by actively cultivating shared power, decision-making and an interdisciplinary practice with our organizing partners. We bring our legal expertise to bear in breaking down legal advocacy tactics for co-creation of campaign tactics in support of community-led movements. Our chief focus as a team is supporting parent and youth leaders, and the organizers who work alongside them in confronting and dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline in California.
We build consciousness, leadership, and organization among those who face discrimination and societal attack-people of color, women, immigrants, workers, LGBT people, youth, all whom compromise our membership. Linking mass struggles to the need for radical, structural change, we develop campaigns and demands that help build a revitalized world united front that can stop the rising tides of war, racism, imperialism, the ecological crisis and the growing police state. Our work often challenges both major political parties and takes on the organized Right. We fight to win.
Public Counsel’s Education Rights team provides direct representation to students denied appropriate access to Special Education services and students who are being pushed out of comprehensive schools. We serve the most marginalized students, including students of color, English Learners, students with disabilities and those involved in the dependency or delinquency systems. We draw from our direct service work and community engagement to advocate for state and local policy reforms to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the educational conditions for youth who are incarcerated and those exiting the delinquency court system.
StoryMapping
THE
TEAM
a
CONSTELLATION
of how we're
all connected
Our mission is to solidify and advance parent leadership to ensure that all children are rightfully educated regardless of where they live. We seek to effect policy change and mobilize political will through new parent participation models that preserve and expand the right to education for all South LA children and youth.
The Youth Justice Coalition is working to build a youth, family, and formerly and currently incarcerated people’s movement to challenge America’s addiction to incarceration and race, gender and class discrimination in Los Angeles County’s, California’s and the nation’s juvenile and criminal injustice systems.
YJC’s goal is to dismantle policies and institutions that have ensured the massive lock-up of people of color, widespread law enforcement violence and corruption, consistent violation of youth and communities’ Constitutional and human rights, the construction of a vicious school-to-jail track, and the build-up of the world’s largest network of jails and prisons. We use direct action organizing, advocacy, political education, and activist arts to agitate, expose, and pressure the people in charge in order to upset power and bring about change.
