Community Rights Campaign

Both High School and College campus newspapers respond to a victory for the community as LASPD adopts new protocols for enforcing daytime curfew and issuing truancy tickets to students.

We're really gaining ground in our fight for civil and human rights in our schools and communities. We need to highlight a few reasons why the policy changes on truancy/tardy ticketing that we won two weeks ago from LASPD are important. The media coverage was great but there's a few things they didn't cover.

This statement is from parents, students, and community and civil rights groups in response to a report released today about the Los Angeles Unified School District's implementation of the School-Wide Positive Behavior Support policy. The policy was adopted in 2007 with support from Public Counsel and CADRE parents to reduce out of school suspensions, particularly of students of color, and improve graduation rates, student performance and school culture. The report was conducted by the University of Oregon Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior in consultation with LAUSD leadership. Public Counsel, CADRE, Youth Justice Coalition, Community Rights Campaign and Children's Defense Fund are part of Dignity in Schools Los Angeles.

Media trumpeted the news as the Los Angeles School Police Department unveiled protocols intended to reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students. The revised procedures are a result of collaboration and discussions between Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, the ACLU of Southern California, Children's Defense Fund, CADRE, and Youth Justice Coalition - groups that work to keep students in school - and Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) leaders.

The collective voices of students and parents rang through the cities of Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland and Los Angeles as they demanded an end to the criminalization of their children, increased parental involvement in all school related decisions, and greater funding for schools. The event, which was hosted by the California Endowment, included a rally, a school to prison pipeline art installation and finished with a panel.