The war on youth and the horror of zero-tolerance policies in schools: No Child Left Behind without handcuffs?
CNN) — There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 
” scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker. Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct. Alexa’s hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and — the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl — her classmates. “They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn’t believe it,” Alexa recalled. “I didn’t want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I’m a bad person.”
Alexa is no longer facing suspension, according a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education. Still, the case of the doodling preteen is raising concerns about the use of zero tolerance policies in schools. I didn’t want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I’m a bad person. –Alexa Gonzalez Critics say schools and police have gone too far, overreacting and using well-intended rules for incidents involving nonviolent offenses such as drawing on desks, writing on other school property or talking back to teachers. “We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal’s office, not sending children to jail,” said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund, a national children’s advocacy group.
There aren’t any national studies documenting how often minors become involved with police for nonviolent crimes in schools. Tracking the incidents depends on how individual schools keep records. Much of the information remains private, since it involves juveniles. But one thing is sure: Alexa’s case isn’t the first in the New York area. One of the first cases to gain national notoriety was that of Chelsea Fraser. In 2007, the 13-year-old wrote “Okay” on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of several students arrested in the class that day; the others were accused of plastering the walls with stickers. At schools across the country, police are being asked to step in.
In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago, Illinois, resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department. The Strategy Center, a California-based civil rights group that tracks zero tolerance policies, found that at least 12,000 tickets were issued to tardy or truant students by Los Angeles Police Department and school security officers in 2008. The tickets tarnished students’ records and brought them into the juvenile court system, with fines of up to $250 for repeat offenders. The Strategy Center opposes the system. “The theory is that if we fine them, then they won’t be late again,” said Manuel Criollo, lead organizer of the “No to Pre-Prison” campaign at The Strategy Center. “But they just end up not going to school at all.” His group is trying to stop the LAPD and the school district from issuing the tickets.
The Los Angeles School District says the policy is designed to reduce absenteeism. And another California school — Highland High School in Palmdale — found that issuing tardiness tickets drastically cut the number of pupils being late for class and helped tone down disruptive behavior. The fifth ticket issued landed a student in juvenile traffic court. In 1998, New York City took its zero tolerance policies to the next level, placing school security officers under the New York City Police Department. Today, there are nearly 5,000 employees in the NYPD School Safety Division. Most are not police officers, but that number exceeds the total police force in Washington, D.C. In contrast, there are only about 3,000 counselors in New York City’s public school system.
Critics of zero tolerance policies say more attention should be paid to social work, counseling and therapy. “Instead of a graduated discipline approach, we see … expulsions at the drop of a hat,” said Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. We see … expulsions at the drop of a hat. –Donna Lieberman, ACLU attorney “If they have been suspended once, their likelihood of being pushed out of the school increases,” she said. “They may end up in jail at some point in their life.” One of Lieberman’s clients was in sixth grade when police arrested her in 2007 for doodling with her friend in class. The child, called M.M. in court filings to protect her identity, tried to get tissues to remove the marks, a complaint states. Lieberman says police subjected M.M. to unlawful search and seizure.
A class-action lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of five juveniles, is pending. It maintains that inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel are aggressive toward students when no criminal activity is taking place. Several studies have confirmed that the time an expelled child spends away from school increases the chance that child will drop out and wind up in the criminal justice system, according to a January 2010 study from the Advancement Project, a legal action group. Alexa Gonzalez missed three days of school because of her arrest. She spent those days throwing up, and it was a challenge to catch up on her homework when she returned to school, she said. Her mother says she had never been in trouble before the doodling incident. New York attorney Joe Rosenthal, who is representing Alexa, plans to file a lawsuit accusing police and school officials of violating Alexa’s constitutional rights.
New York City Department of Education officials declined to comment specifically on any possible legal matters. “Our mission is to make sure that public schools are a safe and supportive environment for all students,” said Margie Feinberg, an education department spokeswoman. Our mission is to make sure that public schools are a safe and supportive environment for all students. –Margie Feinberg, New York City Department of Education spokeswoman.
•New York City Police Department Several media outlets have reported that school officials admitted the arrest was a “mistake,” but when asked by CNN, Feinberg declined to comment specifically on the incident. She referred CNN to the NYPD. The NYPD did not return CNN’s repeated phone calls and e-mails. It is unknown whether charges will be pressed against Alexa.
Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if “common sense is applied.” Michael Soguero recalls being arrested himself in 2005 when, as principal at Bronx Guild School, he tried to stop an officer from handcuffing one of his students. A charge of assault against him was later dropped. He says police working in schools need specific training on how to work with children. In Clayton County, Georgia, juvenile court judge Steven Teske is working to reshape zero tolerance policies in schools. He wants the courts to be a last resort. In 2003, he created a program in Clayton County’s schools that distinguishes felonies from misdemeanors. The result? The number of students detained by the school fell by 83 percent, his report found. The number of weapons detected on campus declined by 73 percent.
Last week, after hearing about 12-year-old Alexa’s arrest in New York, he wasn’t shocked. “There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board,” he said. “Stupid and ridiculous things start happening.”
“Zero tolerance” is neither stupid nor therefore a mistake.
“Zero tolerance” is the expression of the sure knowledge by the capitalist class that historically it is the youth that power revolutions against social systems that are decayed, ready to be thrust into “the dust bin of history.”
“Zero tolerance” is the ruling class’ drive to terrify the youth so that as this economic system descends ever deeper into economic depression and it is no longer possible to live in the old way, the youth do not step forward throwing off the old ideological shackles, as history says they are won’t to do in such circumstances, and provide the power to overthrow capitalism and install a system of production for need rather than profit, i.e., a socialist economic system where the rule is “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”
The daily News Line, a physical newspaper printed on actual paper and distributed among the working class of England and the youth, often prints articles showing the revolutionary action of young workers, exactly the type this ruling class is trying to repress by “zero tolerance.”
A news article or two, a feature article, and a daily editorial can be found at
http://www.wrp.org.uk
Read it daily.
Jack Jersawitz
404-892-1238
Good to hear your voice again and thanks for reading and suggesting sites, Jack.
You make a powerful argument for the brutality wallpapered to our children’s back. And yes, zero-tolerance is a necessity for the ruling class for it teaches obedience, informs the young early as to the rules for the brutal system, embraces authoritarianism with both arms and prepares students for the dramatic ‘changes’ that capital has in store for them, ike low-paying jobs, foster homes, prisons, the military, betray and mistrust of others thus vitiating the need to see the common struggle for human dignity and of course it offers a perverse message to those not caught up and thrown against the wall: you could be next. Obey. You have no choice.
But as I mentioned in one of my articles, perhaps the one where students fight against the Wal-Mart internship thta is really servitude: youth will not take it, they will drop oput of school, either struggle or find their way into the house of mirroed distress, gangs and crime.
Like capitalism, the authoritarianism of ‘schools’ is unustainable and the fight back inevitable.
Thanks for helping us make sense out of much of this, Jack, and my best.
Danny
I’ve heard this term my whole entire life, even now in my senior year it echoes throughout the hallways and PA systems. I feel that the two of you are absolutely right. We don’t even hear this kind of stuff in a history classroom. It’s all censored like the mainstream media, created for the sole purpose of creating blind nationalism and ensuring a future of obedient conformists.
I find myself spending more time sitting out in the hallway rather than in the actual classroom as a punishment. For what, you ask? Questioning. The simple act of questioning as to how our government could possiblY be a “Government for the people,” When corporations are given the same rights as a living being. For the sole purpose of making money. Questioning our protection under the 8th amendment, when big brother is constantly recording us and scanning our emails. When I told my teacher that we could’nt possibly have true freedom, because at birth, were tagged with a barcode, that precious social security number, and the moment you say something the Government does’nt like you tagged with the label “terrorist.”
Terrorist, which by the way no longer has any meaning. It’s simply a term used to justify dehumanizing people who fit into the racial stereotypes that have been brainwashed into our heads by the Wall Street Journal and Fox News
I understand Riot and thank you for reading and taking the time to write. This policy, as you note, is happening all over the country and it is being covered up by corporate press who are anxious to ‘lock down schools and dissent’.
But that is just it, Riot you letter is evidence of the possibilities for a large movement to assure zero-tolerance is redefined and aimed at the war mongers and elite managerial class at schools. For they are the real danger, the reeal child molestors and now wage war on our youth.
We need you to join your local movement against this policy, continue to speak up for this is real education and yes, challenge the authority.
If you find that you are being singled out or in any way overtly harrassed by school authorities get a hold of The Community Justice Netwark in San Francisio. You can call Shadi Rahimi, the Communications Director for this group that is actively fighting these policies.
I just received a messae fro Shadi and he is asking me to continue to expose this. If you wish anonymosuly to write me at weilunion@aol.com I will be happy to hear any stories that you can get me with names of the officials and the schools. I can then include this in more articles I hope to do with Communtiy Justice Network.
We need you. Also, look for an upcoming article about how youth in Detroit are fighting back against Wal-Mart for it will show you both the power of youth and the necessity that it organizes.
Shadi Rahimi’s phone id (415) 321-4100 X 103
You can find the group through google: Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY).
Thank you and get me some details, anonymously if you wish, regarding zero-tolerance issues, punishment by schools and the like. As said, e-mail me: weilunion@aol.com
I look to hear from you!
Danny Weil
If your sick of socialism and this bullshit of micromanaging our lives to do what ever they want us to do at what time….start following Ron Paul Revolution and get big brother out of our lives and moral values back into our political decisions .
Hi, Kevin. The problem I find is that terms are never defined making it very difficult to have a learning converesation. Terms like “socialism” usually are defined by those on the right as being either Russion Sovietism, Stalin or Lenin. Beck is a perfect example of ths with his faux history lessons and knowing his audience will accept his definition for we tend to use words that the describe the world in our heads, not in reality. We tend to think everyone has the same definition of the words we use; this is simply not true.
Being said, ‘socialism’ can be said to exit already — for the rich for what it does economically is socialize the costs of doing business for transnational corporation, subsidies, tax breaks, de-regulation, re-regulation — then when it is profit harvesting time the profits are of course privatized. So we can say under this definition that the corporations and the select few who own their stock are welfare queens.
But this is not ‘socailsm’. It is neo-liberalism a late stage capitlist development when the corporations becomes the ‘state’ or government and of course this is what you are seeing now and have been for more than 30 years.
Socialism, as used by progressives means something very different Kevin. It is a labor theory of value that cliams that workers create profit through their labor, not capitalists. Capitalists would like you to believe you need them and their managerial class and hierarchy. The fact is workers do not need capitalists. They need capital and that is why where you see worker run factories, take Argentina, the costs are socialized but so are the profits. This means the people who actually do the labor, make the capial control its use directly or indirectly. The role of government here is not subsidize the rich or pass ‘free trade laws’ tht hollow out our country, it is to put into place sensible regulations that allow for a more fair and equal distribution of powre and capital.
If workers, though their work rent their lives for ten dollars an hour and increase productivty to the point they are knokcing out value of 20 dollars an hour then why should the surplus all go to the capitalist to creat technology to remove jobs, to speculate, and to other wise buy and sell politicians?
No, workers need to be in control of their labor, they need councils to direct capital investment and a government for and by the people, not for and by the corporation, Kevin, as you have now. For if it continues to become oligarchical it will turn into fascism, Mussolini style.
Ron Paul offers little when it comes to economic sensibility except the call to audit or eliminate the Fed. His policies favor the same corporations that deny basic human rights to workers everyday. Whose factories lie idle or at 70 percent for to produce would mean less profits even if people need jobs. Paul is not part of the solution, he is a libertarian which means if one is to define terms: he is a republican that believes in tthe primacy of the ‘free market’ and thus is not on the side of workers who wish a fair market, Kevin.
Thanks for writing and reading
Danny