As a follow-up to our initial work on zero tolerance, Advancement Project was resolved not only to reframe the debate about zero tolerance but to catalyze positive local reforms as well.  In addition to attacking the over-use and inappropriate use of out-of-school suspensions, Advancement Project was the first national organization in the country to begin to define and analyze the growing trend of schools turning to police and juvenile courts for typical student disciplinary matters.  

In the past two years, we realized numerous reforms.  For example:

• In Denver, CO, at the urging of our community partner Padres Unidos and Jovenes Unidos, the school district convened a working group made up of district officials, school administrators, parents, and concerned community members to revise the district's school discipline policies.  Advancement Project staff provided legal and policy research support and drafted revisions to the district's school discipline policy, which are intended to ensure that the policies promote discipline that is fair, instructional and corrective. The draft policies also acknowledge racial disparities in school discipline and encourage schools to create a school discipline committee, comprised of school personnel, parents and students, to review discipline data and evaluate discipline policies.  After community feedback, we anticipate presenting the revised policies to the school board for approval in Spring 2007.

• Advancement Project and our Denver partners collaborated with Denver Public Schools (DPS) to design a proposal for an expansion of in-school suspension and restorative justice programs, such as mediation. In July 2006, DPS officials submitted this proposal to the Colorado Department of Education and received a grant for $1 million that will be dispersed over four years. 

• Our work with local organizations in Chicago has been a catalyst for change.  While Chicago is known for its recalcitrance with regard to community-driven reforms, our experience has been different.  For example, in a Chicago Tribune article, Schools, Cops Aim to Curtail Arrests (Feb. 6, 2006), the school district's Director of Safety and Security who vehemently denied our conclusion that CPS needlessly arrested students, admitted to too many arrests.  As a result, CPS practices changed leading to a 13% drop in student arrests during the 2005-06 school years. This reduction in arrests is due, in part, to the fact that some schools in Chicago now refer students to mediation for minor fights, instead of arresting them.  This is a reform that our partners have demanded for years, and it is finally a reality.

•  Many of us watched a nationally broadcast videotape of five-year-old St. Petersburg, FL elementary school student, Ja'eisha Scott, being pinned down, handcuffed by police officers and tearfully taken away for throwing a temper tantrum at school.  In response to this videotape, the national office of the NAACP called upon Advancement Project to assist in addressing the travesty of Ja'eisha's highly publicized school-based arrest.  We responded immediately by working with our Palm Beach County partner, CARE, and their local allies, the Florida State Branches of the NAACP, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to organize public hearings to discuss the school discipline crisis in Florida.   Together, we made significant progress toward soliciting school discipline reform ideas from various communities across the state. 

With the information gathered from these hearings, Advancement Project and our partners issued a report in April 2006, Arresting Development:  Addressing the School Discipline Crisis in Florida, a compilation of the findings from our research and resulting recommendations. The report documented dozens of emotional stories about children who were arrested for minor age-appropriate behavior.  We also learned that statewide there were 26,990 school-related referrals to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) during the 2004-05 school years.  Over half of these referrals (53%) were for misdemeanor offenses such as, disorderly conduct, trespassing, or assault and/or battery, which is usually nothing more than a schoolyard fight. Arresting Development is being used by numerous parent and youth-led groups in Florida, such as the Power U Center in Miami, as an organizing tool for county and statewide reform campaigns in Florida.