Advocates, parents, and students have been working at several levels to transform discipline policy and practice in the New Orleans Recovery School District. Following an organizing effort by the Fyre Youth Squad and others to bring attention to the problems caused by overly harsh school discipline in the New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD), a coalition of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL), Friends and Families of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), Pyramid Parenting, and other local advocacy groups, parents, RSD school personnel, juvenile court staff, and school district staff worked together to revise the RSD's Student Code of Conduct in January 2008. The new code, which is being implemented for the 2008-09 school year for all RSD schools:
JJPL, FFLIC, FYRE Youth Squad, and other parents, students, and advocates have also been successful in realizing numerous other reforms, such as:
FFLIC recently started using media as a tool for organizing on the school to prison pipeline. In 2007, FFLIC began interviewing community members, youth, judges, advocates, and others to learn about their experiences and thoughts on the school to prison pipeline. At the same time, they started broadcasting public service announcements on the radio, participating in local public television segments, hosting trainings, and organizing focus groups with youth about the pipeline and its detrimental effects. The results of these activities culminated in a film, “Stopping the School to Prison Documentary” in 2009. FFLIC has hosted screenings across the state and is now using the documentary to help provide support for their demands on reforming school security and school discipline on the state level.
Resources:
New code of conduct
Order the FFLIC DVD:
Mail check or money order to:
1600 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd
New Orleans, LA 70113
Make check out to FFLIC and put “STPP Documentary” in the memo line
For more information, contact:
Dana Kaplan
Director
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana
1600 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70113
T: 504-522-5437
[email protected]
www.jjpl.org
For more information on FFLIC, contact:
Damekia Morgan
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
1600 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd
T: 504-522-5437 x 229
[email protected]
www.fflic.org