{"id":32159,"date":"2023-08-21T17:41:35","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T23:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/schools-pursue-restorative-justice-to-keep-kids-in-schools\/"},"modified":"2023-08-21T23:41:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T23:41:35","slug":"schools-pursue-restorative-justice-to-keep-kids-in-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/schools-pursue-restorative-justice-to-keep-kids-in-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Schools pursue restorative justice to keep kids in schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On a brisk February morning with snow on the ground, children arrived at Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed Middle School in Shiprock, on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico. Word in the hallway was something was afoot: Substitute teachers were waiting in each classroom.<\/p>\n

The children\u2019s 35 regular teachers were spotted, sitting in a large circle in the library. Students paused at the doorway to watch.<\/p>\n

The teachers, along with school counselors, were training in a new disciplinary approach, often referred to as \u201crestorative justice,\u201d which seeks to rebuild relationships, not simply punish the student who caused the harm. It\u2019s a model New Mexico\u2019s state education department has begun testing with a pilot project in a few other school districts.<\/p>\n

Rooted in the belief that everybody has a role to play in addressing harm, restorative justice largely relies on people talking and listening carefully to one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised in circles like this; it\u2019s a traditional practice,\u201d said Principal Pandora Mike, who, like much of the school\u2019s staff and nearly all of its 414 students, is Navajo. \u201cRestorative Justice is about self-regulation, responsible decision making. You really want to help students do a lot of reflection on their own behaviors, their own actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to \u201ccircles of sharing,\u201d the program promotes communication through classroom respect agreements to build a greater sense of community among students. When rules are broken, it focuses on mediation. And it seeks to help students understand the root of their misbehavior and how they might do better.<\/p>\n

Proponents say it\u2019s a more effective and less harmful disciplinary approach than removing kids from school through long-term suspensions or expulsions, which are tied to lower graduation rates and a higher risk of incarceration.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s particularly important for Indigenous students. In New Mexico, Native American students are expelled far more often than any other group and at least four times as often as white students, according to an investigation by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica.<\/p>\n

One school district 90 miles to the south of Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed, Gallup-McKinley County Schools, is responsible for most of that disparity. Gallup-McKinley has a quarter of New Mexico\u2019s Native students but accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions in the state during the four school years ending in 2020.<\/p>\n

The school district\u2019s expulsion rate was far higher than the rest of the state, according to New Mexico education department records. The district contested that finding, saying some long-term suspensions were mistakenly classified as expulsions. But Gallup-McKinley\u2019s rate of removals from school for 90 days or more, regardless of what they were called, remained far higher than other districts across the state, an analysis by the news outlets confirmed.<\/p>\n

While Gallup-McKinley has not embraced restorative justice as an alternative to exclusionary punishments, more than a dozen New Mexico schools have, including some serving Navajo children. Twelve statewide are participating in a new state pilot program, but Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed and Cuba Independent Schools, both of which serve large Indigenous student populations, initiated the change on their own.<\/p>\n

In 2020, leaders from all 23 of New Mexico\u2019s federally recognized tribes called for education reforms, including a shift from harsh discipline and \u201ccriminalization of Native children\u201d to restorative justice and peacemaking approaches.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high. Expelling and suspending students frequently doesn\u2019t address the underlying problems and can even backfire, making misbehavior more likely, said Daniel Losen. Losen is the director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and senior director of education at the Washington, D.C.-based National Center for Youth Law. He studies racial disparities in school discipline. Pushing children out of classrooms increases the risk of a child dropping out of school or winding up in the criminal justice system, he said.<\/p>\n

Students \u2013 particularly students of color \u2013 are often punished harshly and at higher rates for vaguely defined, catchall minor infractions like disorderly conduct, Losen noted. \u201cThat\u2019s where the largest racial disparities are usually found.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Gallup-McKinley, for example, disorderly conduct was one of the most frequent reasons for expulsions between the school years 2016-17 to 2019-20, but the term wasn\u2019t even defined in the district\u2019s discipline policy until the 2022-23 school year, after the news organizations asked district officials about this and other facets of student discipline policy. Statewide, Native students were expelled for disorderly conduct at least 76 times and law enforcement was involved in 193 such incidents. About 90% of these incidents occurred in Gallup-McKinley schools.<\/p>\n

Overuse of punitive discipline just pushes kids into an adversarial relationship and discourages them, said Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed Assistant Principal Dannell Yazzie, who is Navajo. Her school is using classroom circles focused on relationship building, Yazzie said, then disciplinary reconciliation circles in the coming school year. She\u2019s put together a team of teachers.<\/p>\n

But there are critics.<\/p>\n

\u201cRestorative justice means no consequences,\u201d said state Rep. Rod Montoya, a Republican who represents the neighboring town of Farmington, adding that talking circles can disrupt teachers\u2019 instruction time in the classroom. \u201cTeachers are not psychologists.\u201d Montoya said he\u2019s written to school superintendents asking that they not adopt restorative justice practices.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, the New Mexico Center for Law and Poverty spotlighted two school districts next to the Navajo Nation for harsh disciplinary practices in a scathing report: Gallup-McKinley County Schools and Cuba Independent Schools district, on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

In the years after, the Cuba school district adopted talking circles as the first response to most student misbehavior but Gallup-McKinley has not. Cuba\u2019s expulsion and out-of-school suspensions have all but disappeared, according to the district\u2019s reports to the state.<\/p>\n

Victoria Dominguez, a counselor in Cuba schools, said just holding a talking circle between students or cliques after an altercation can reveal how the school\u2019s rumor mill can cause students to react to falsehoods or misunderstandings without checking to see if they\u2019re true.<\/p>\n

The size of circles depends on who is involved and is willing to participate. It might gather a counselor and two students who fought, for example, or larger groups populated by students, family members and teachers.<\/p>\n

If students are at odds, Dominguez and their principal will bring them in to talk things out. Problems often stem from misunderstandings, and social media cell phone apps like Snapchat have made things worse, fueling the rumor mill, she said. If a problem persists, they\u2019ll sign non-contact agreements to avoid one another as a cool-down mechanism, or bring in the students\u2019 family members for a talking circle.<\/p>\n

\u201c(T)he number of fights has declined significantly with talking circles,\u201d Dominguez said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a huge turnaround for the district.\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t always wait for an infraction to get kids together to talk. \u201cI\u2019ve pulled kids together to say there\u2019s a rumor circulating that you are going to fight at lunch. We\u2019re doing a mediation circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

But until recently, just a handful of New Mexico schools in the state used talking circles. So last year, the state Public Education Department announced a $237,500 federally funded pilot program to expand restorative justice in schools, with the goal of reducing suspension and expulsion rates \u2013 and ultimately, improve graduation rates.<\/p>\n

A dozen schools across the state agreed to have some of their teachers trained and then train their colleagues through the PED pilot program.<\/p>\n

Monte del Sol, a public charter school in Santa Fe, sent two 10th-grade students, a counselor and administrators to the state\u2019s training. The 10th-graders facilitated the school\u2019s first disciplinary remediation circle, with two groups of 8th grade girls.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t bring an immediate breakthrough, but Amy Garcia, one of the student facilitators, said it was a good start. \u201cNot everybody is super comfortable with talking about how they feel,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cWe did come to an agreement where they would at least give each other their space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restorative justice proponents like Emma Green, who runs the state\u2019s pilot program, see student misbehavior as a red flag that something\u2019s wrong in a child\u2019s life, and an opportunity for constructive intervention \u2013 to discover the underlying problem, mediate and help the child take responsibility for how they\u2019ve affected others, and to connect the child to needed support.<\/p>\n

But student support services are in very short supply in much of the state, skeptics point out. They question whether restorative justice will work across the state.<\/p>\n

Making a student who has been victimized sit down with the student who bullied or victimized them can retraumatize that child, Montoya said.<\/p>\n

When he asked the state public education department whether talking circles would be used even in cases of bullying or physical violence, he was told that is up to individual school districts, which have wide latitude in setting discipline policies.<\/p>\n

Restorative justice facilitator Randy Compton, from Boulder, Colorado, said talking circles won\u2019t resolve every problem. With a case of mild bullying, a talking circle might be appropriate, he said, \u201cbut at the extreme end, a child who bullies others will often just manipulate the process. In those cases, you would not necessarily want to put the child and the student who bullied them in a talking circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to trainings at Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed Middle and Shiprock High School, Compton also has trained staff at Albuquerque Public Schools and the Aztec school district, and schools across the U.S.At Ts\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed, assault, drug and tobacco offenses still will automatically involve out-of-school suspensions, Yazzie said. Upon their return to school, students will attend counseling interventions to discuss their behavior and how it impacted others.\u201cPeople think we just sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya, but it\u2019s not like that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not without consequences. And we will discuss why children behave in a certain way. It needs to be both. We\u2019re providing them with an opportunity to learn and think about their behavior.\u201dTs\u00e9 Bit A\u2019\u00ed is adopting restorative justice practices in stages, Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

From initial training sessions to successful implementation, programs typically require three to five years to become a smoothly operating part of a school\u2019s discipline culture, Compton said.<\/p>\n

But that can be a challenge in New Mexico, where schools struggle with staff turnover. Teachers and administrators come and go frequently. Just as a school begins to make progress, trained staff and organizers will move away, and their replacements must then be convinced to invest their time and energy into learning an unfamiliar approach to student discipline.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, university teacher training programs will have to make restorative justice part of their regular curriculum so that newly arriving teachers already understand the concepts and practices involved, Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe (college) textbooks definitely do not teach this,\u201d Dominguez agreed.<\/p>\n

For now, it\u2019s up to schools and districts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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