School to Prison Pipelines

Rayne Meyer

Ms.Hesse

English 8

February 26 2019

Dear Betsy Devos,

I’m coming to you today, to address the fact about school to prison pipeline.CIf principals and the board of education are always suspending students for simple reasons.What are they going to be learning and doing while they’re not at school? They’re losing a lot of class work and time not being in school. While they’re outside they could be doing anything like running the streets and doing other illegal things-ethos.Most Americans believe that america is supposed to be a place, where we have equality but this is not fair. Majority on the kids they suspend are black and latino. In the Article “School to Prison Pipeline” it says “The School to Prison Pipeline is a nationwide system of local, state and federal education and public safety policies that pushes students out of school and into the criminal justice system. This system disproportionately targets youth of color and youth with disabilities.” I feel like this is wrong why would you want to take a kid and put them in criminal justice system? Over a mistake it’s never that serious ,depends on what they did-pathos.Most of the time kids are black and latino if that’s the case you should suspend all the kids because every kid made a mistake before. Students should only be suspended for serious reasons, not just because they keep getting kicked out of class , and if they keep getting kicked out they should be in a smaller school setting, except for suspending them. According to the ACLU “School to Prison Pipeline” Article it says that “ACLU believes that children should be educated, not incarcerated. We are working to challenge numerous policies and practices within public school systems and the juvenile justice system that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.” I agree with ACLU because students should not be in a juvenile system,they should be in school learning getting there education. I like the fact that they’re working to challenge policies with public school district ,it shows that some people actually care about us teenagers.This topic should be addressed way more because this is happening a lot in america, it hasn’t been addressed-ethos.”Overcrowded classrooms, a lack of quali­fied teachers, and insufficient funding for "extras" such as counselors, special edu­cation services, and even textbooks, lock students into second-rate educational envi­ronments.” and this is some things that make students react because they’re not focused and they have a lot of distractions around them , they’re not paying attention to their school work and get kicked out of classes-ethos.They don’t have enough services to help them , some students need to be in smaller setting classrooms in order to function. They need one on one time with their teachers. This is just one thing that is happening in the world today ,but there is more I could address. I want you to enforce this issue, so it can change for the better. Hopefully you read this letter, have a nice day.

Yours truly,

Rayne

9th grader

Newburgh Free Academy P-TECH