The Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation Symposium
“School Discipline: A Pathway to the Juvenile Justice System or an Opportunity for Effective Intervention?”
Monday, February 20, 2012
1:00 – 5:00 pm
The Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation, in collaboration with the Center for Health and Social Policy (CHASP) at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, will present a symposium focused on the issues of school discipline and the juvenile justice system on Monday, February 20, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. The event, which takes place the week of Barbara Jordan’s birthday, is also co-sponsored by the William Wayne Justice Center at the University of Texas School of Law.
Texas State Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson will deliver the keynote address at 1 p.m. The keynote will be followed by three panels featuring elected officials, policymakers, and juvenile justice and education experts. Confirmed speakers to date include Texas State Senator John Whitmire, Tony Fabelo (Council on State Governments Justice Center and author of Breaking Schools’ Rules report), Deborah Fowler (Texas Appleseed), Travis County Juvenile Judge Jeanne Meurer, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, Prof. Brenda Scheuermann (national PBIS expert), Frank Vega (expert on children's mental health and trauma), and Mel Waxler (AISD). The first panel will focus on understanding the current policy landscape, including recent research on school suspensions and expulsions, and ticketing practices. The second panel will cover effective interventions with misbehaving students, and the third panel will center on shifting the culture surrounding school discipline and implementing reforms at the district level. An agenda with a complete list of speakers is forthcoming and will be available here.
This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited and registration is required. To register, please visit: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/barbarajordan/registration
The event will take place at the LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Bass Lecture Hall, located at 2315 Red River St., Austin, Texas, 78712.
For more information, please contact the symposium chair, Michele Deitch, at Michele.Deitch@mail.utexas.edu.
The Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation (BJFF) is a new organization dedicated to perpetuating the legacy of Barbara Jordan by inspiring America to achieve the promise of freedom and justice for all people, by promoting the success of children through early childhood opportunities and effective education, and by confronting injustices and inequities in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The organization’s initial focus will be on issues related to school discipline.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
'School Discipline: A Pathway to the Juvenile Justice System or an Opportunity for Effective Intervention?'
Michelle Deitch asked me to post this announcement about an upcoming event focused on school discipline at UT's LBJ School with the same appellation as this headline:
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21 comments:
When parents become fully invested in their child's education, insist on good behavior and respect for authority, and support their child's teachers and school administrators instead of actively working against them, the problem of school discipline (or lack thereof)will be solved.
@Anonymous, so the problem is all with the parents? Really?
I have close kin who tend to be liberal/progressive who work in a counseling capacity in public schools. They do not like the idea of school to prison pipeline, but they know that with a certain segment of the school population they need physical protection. One has been attacked physically more than once, and had to be taken to the emergency room once. The parents in these instances were not cooperative. Maybe there is a parent to prison pipeline.
Parents are the real problem. Parents complain when a teacher confronts their abusive kids and threaten to sue the school if their abusive idiot kids are out of line. No control at home and no proper guidance from home. Some teachers are at fault but the big problem is lack of parental help.
And lack of parental direction and discipline is a problem schools cannot fix.
Schools and the rest of us need to stop playing like we can keep crying parents this and parents that! Most parents do not give a dang about thier kids. They have handed them off to the system and do not want to be bothered!
Of the parents that do care, well 9 out 10 times those kids are not the problem. Schools need to step it up and stop babying the students and drop all the cute mission statements about how every kid can be a doctor or an astronaut. Every kid does not have the same skills or intelligence.
If little Johnny wants to work then the system should do all they can to assist him at being all he can be. But when he decides to be a problem, if that becomes the routine, move him to a classroom situation more fitting his "choosen " path!
Lets stop having education "occupiers"...work and we will do all we can, act a fool and we can help with that also!
The problem is that these schools were given the power to involve the justice system, went WILD with that power and lost their heads. They thrust everything they could into it, even spitballs and paper airplanes!
We wouldn't have this discussion going on if they had exercised common sense and used the justice system for the big stuff.
The schools alienated a lot of parents and taught kids a lot of bad lessons about the abuse of authority by those in control.
Neither parents nor teachers are solely to blame for the mess we are in with todays young people. They both contribute to the problem and so do all the other adults in positions of authority.
Things sure are different today than when I went to school - a very long time ago. If we got in trouble at school, we were also in trouble at home. My parents didn't force us to make all A's, but they did expect us to do our best, behave ourselves, act like we had some common sense and respect others.
IMO the thing lacking in today's society, not just with kids, but with the adults as well, is respect. If kids aren't taught to respect themselves, others and other's property, then they won't be able to teach it to their children either. You can't give somebody something you don't have and if you don't have respect, then you behave badly.
How can you expect kids to respect teachers and other adults if they aren't taught early that everyone deserves respect? And if they aren't respected themselves. The kids that are taught to have manners, be courteous, show respect and generously give of themselves, do not become problem kids. They go on to be courteous, generous, respectful adults.
Start cutting off the government assistance for parents who don't get their kids under control while at school.
Schools are plagued with a dumbazz policy that believes you can have good education by leaving disruptive, violent kids in the classroom with behaving students. The disruptive, unparented student goes on to prison due to parents born during low-tide at the gene pool. And the behaving students education is very low quality because the education process is continually disrupted by mis-behaving students?
Might as well pull their ass out of class and send them to a correctional education setting because that is a small taste of what life is going to be like if you don't straighten your ass up.
I think derilict parents should be subjected to the asian "caining" punishment.
"The keynote will be followed by three panels featuring elected officials, policymakers, and juvenile justice and education experts."
I see 1 potential "juvenile justice Professional" in the list with judge Meurer. Tha advocate THINKS she is an expert, don't know about the DA, Senator Whitmire is the next closest expert. Where are the ones from the field that REALLY are experts?? Once again wannabe's will drive legislation reforms and the ones in the juvenile justice field will have to abide by reforms that again may not make sense. ASK THE REAL EXPERTS FROM ACROSS ALL OF TEXAS, not people who think they know.
Agreed. All of the advocacy experts know nothing about day to day activities regarding the youth that are on the brink of entering into the juvenile system, nor do they have a real idea about the trials and tribulations that probation and corrections settings go through every day with our kids. When a 16 year old can't read then why should they go to school? Fix education first. Get kids an education, not a citation. We send kids to our juvenile department all the time just to get them out of the classroom. They come back. The probation department can't meet the education requirements while the kids are on probation because it's not their job. We educators need to first educate the "wannabe's" about real life situation where the kids are homeless, trying to go to school, no clothes, living with others while parents are stoned or in prison. It starts at the school level and without funding educators cannot educate because they are worried about budgets.
what a joke texas juvenile justice has come to.... Cherie Townsend and that entire borad that selected that idiot need to go. Has violence related injuries gone down per 100 ADP as comapared to ten years ago? No - they have increased. Look at Townsends tenure and you will see how they have jumped since Nedelkoff screwed up and selected that Townsend idiot. Also, compare the workers compensation claims coming in. Has that improved? No - it too has stayed above the 100 adp study. Bottom line.... Cherie Townsend and her seven foot piece of shit ass needs to go - as does the board - and Perry too. Take Whitemire with them. They are all out of touch with reality.
no change - this does not look like something different: this is a county that knew what they were getting. This is exactly what the tyc looked like... it just has newer paint in the cells.... but wait, that'll change too...
http://spotted.amarillo.com/photos/index.php?id=1879543
Almost half of the juvenile justice population is special ed. This is where the "school to prison" pipeline really exists. Most of the kids we encounter in the juvenile justice system are ones that public school failed to serve, or identify as needing help. It's all about education.
This isn't about Ms. Townsend, TJJD, etc. It is about keeping kids from the juvenile justice system. More mental health services are needed to help the schools identify kids that will end up in the system and treat them before they commit an act that will lead them there. Rural East Texas lacks mental health services and we have to send kids to the juvenile probation department just so they can get help. MHMR services have dropped to nothing due to budget cuts. MOst of our families are indigent and cannot afford private care. Our education budgets have been cut so we don't have enough resources to staff a counseling department anymore. So what happens??? The kids cause a disruption, we call campus police, the kids get kicked out of school and eventually end up at juvenile probation. Solution?? Fund mental health services in schools to deal with the kids and don't push them off onto someone else. Don't criminalize kids for mental health issues beyond their control.
And IMO Advocacy groups don't know a hill of beans.
7:46 AMEN
West Texas is even more rural and mental health services are non-existent. My school now has no counselors available and we have to get MH services from Midland/Odessa, San Angelo and even as far as Lubbock and El Paso when available.
I agree with you 7:46, but don't agree that the solution is to throw more money at the deadbeat MHMR system. MHMR needs a "good-boot-to-ass" sending a clear message across their bough that they are paid to work. Dispite how many times in the past they have been rewarded for sitting around bitching about wanting more money. Who the hell doesn't want more money. If the rest of the state followed MHMR suggestion the State would shut down while everyone sat around drinking coffee bitching about what they don't have.
PLEASE, don't suggest that MHMR get one more dollar until they have been completely overhauled!!!
Here's a novel idea, how about performing the work that the agency is currently being paid to do?
It’s the parents fault, and the schools fault. The recent Perry and cronies taking money from public education to fund prisons is exasperating the problem.
Federal funding cause the public schools to teach to the standard test. This robs children of their creativity and has created a large population of addicts. Most kids are bored with the low level of academics offered in the public school. Thereby causing lazy ass administrators to label a kid ADD-whatever and make them drug addicts. Or worst shoving them in the public school to prison pipeline. And these lazy ass administrators and teachers pompously make the naive parents think this is a good thing. It is a good thing, if you want you kid to become fodder to the moronic tough on crime foolish thinking.
I’ve been told by several counselors in DISD and one in RISD that if I were to take my 7th grade daughter out of her academically high standard private school and put her in public school she would be in tyc, or what ever the state sponsored child abuse agency is called now, within the year. The reason is most of the teachers she would have would not be smart enough to teach her and she would not go for the dumbing down and being blown off. I was told her hunger to learn would be labeled disruptive. Even in honors and AP classes. Hunger to learn is considered disruptive in Dallas and Richardson!!! Sad, very sad.
It’s a historical fact that desegregation caused the ruling wasp’s to believe the public school had to be dumb down to the lowest common denominator, the black child. Someday our society will be able to handle learning about the racial hatred on both sides of the color line with out some ignoramus becoming defensive and labeling a presentation of historical facts racist. I guess this type of learning disruptive! lol
MHMR is not the only state agency sitting around wanting to “get paid” with more free money from tax payers without performing. Wonder where/how this culture of getting paid by the government to do nothing infiltrated our bureaucracy. Well that type of knowledge is disruptive.
Sheldon
MHMR is the biggest joke in Texas. We identify a child with possible MHMR needs, they say they can't asses the child for weeks-months to come, child gets into trouble and we file charges on them just to get them into the probation system so THEY can give them help. MHMR, CPS, XYZ.... No one can help the child so we dump on probation. Yes, this system sucks. I'm a educator, relatives are juvenile probation workers. We see it happen all too many times. Small schools in small towns have it the hardest.
If I had teeth like this...
http://spotted.amarillo.com/photos/index.php?id=1879538
I would not be flashing them....
Although this seminar takes place in the middle of an urban school district with over 80,000 students, I don't see any mention of teachers, counselors, or school principals having speaking roles at this conference. I guess they will be busy actually dealing with the problem students and parents while all the policy wonks and self-styled experts make their sage observations.
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