photo by Tagan Engel

Kia Levey-Burden (Cohort 8) is a social worker, professor, advocate, and consulting company president. In this episode of The Table Underground with Tagan Engel, Kia shares her son’s heartbreaking – and heartbreakingly common – experience of biased, over-punitive and unnecessary school discipline practices. It began for her son in pre-kindergarten, and continued into and throughout elementary school. Her powerful story and advocacy skills are helping to shine a light on these unfair and harmful practices wielded by adults who are failing too many children.

As Kia explains, “I often use the analogy: he also has asthma…. If he could control his breathing in a way where he was getting enough air, he would. But because he has a difficult time doing it, he needs the assistance of an inhaler. It’s no different than his ability to manage his anxiety or frustration about things that he just hasn’t built the capacity to do yet… because he cannot do that, then he needs some assistance… we can work together to get him what he needs to be successful. Instead, because those things take more time, I acknowledge that, and they take a little more thoughtfulness and intention, it’s so much easier to put him out of the classroom, so much easier to call me and say just come pick him up. It has become much more easy to suspend him and put him out. And in the most recent episode, it’s become extremely easy to call 911 and to have him handcuffed and police escort him out of the school. And so it just becomes this practice of what’s easier versus what’s best.”

This is one example of a much larger problem in the state and country, broadly known as the school-to-prison-pipeline. As Tagan explains, Hamden’s school district suspended nearly 40% of black middle schoolers last year (compared to 20% Latinx and 8% white). Nearly 30% of students with disabilities were suspended, often for behaviors directly related to their learning disabilities, which is illegal. District-wide, over half of black students have been arrested (compared to just under 20% of white students).

Suspension and expulsion of children in the U.S. becomes prevalent starting in pre-school; Connecticut is one of 10 states with the highest rates in the country. This has many causes. Teachers rarely get access to training in classroom management; implicit bias affects how they supervise black students, especially black boys; the increased presence of police in schools makes them an easy referral for teachers and administrators; there are precious few psychology and/or social work resources available in schools for student support; and teachers under stress who score high for depression are twice as likely to expel children as those who don’t; among other issues.

Kia and her son’s experience illustrates how it is the school environment that needs fixing, not the child: “I never get to witness these things. These episodes, these events, they happen in school… I don’t have these experiences at home with Seth… He’s in a community theater program, and I remember telling the director of the program that these things were happening with him at school, and it blew her mind. And she’s like, ‘It never occurred to me, I never have these kinds of issues with him, I never have these issues with him and other children in the theater production, and I’m hard on them… I don’t sugar coat it for any kid. He takes it, he figures it out, and he responds.’”

As Tagan summarizes, “The importance of hearing this story in all its detail, is to understand the complexity, to gain compassion and to learn about what can be done differently. We need to address learning needs, racial bias, and we need to transform school culture. Seth’s last school said they could not guarantee that the police would not be called on him again, even for a non-violent behavior like running out of the classroom in frustration.”

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