You just had the best day of school, ready to go home and tell your parents about it, but instead, you are getting tackled by two police officers, stuffed in the back of a police car, and locked in a cell overnight. What caused this situation to happen? You broke a zero-tolerance rule even though you had no idea it was a problem in the first place. When a student breaks a zero-tolerance policy, harsh action is taken, putting students in the school-to-prison pipeline. When a student gets involved in the school-to-prison pipeline, they have a higher chance of suspension, expulsion, experiencing trauma, and possibly being involved in gang-affiliated activities. Why must students be involved in these practices when they’re just trying to live their lives in a way that they can just have fun? School administrators can solve this problem by removing officers from schools and decreasing classroom sizes.
The school-to-prison pipeline is when harsh action is taken after a student breaks a zero-tolerance rule, even if they had no idea about the rule. It is proven that students who are involved in the school-to-prison pipeline have a higher likelihood of being suspended, expelled, or possibly being involved in gang-affiliated activities. Students have to deal with officers and being arrested at such a young age, and after that, they still have to get their mental situation together after the experience. No child should have to experience this at such a young age, or at all. According to Hechingerreport.org, “Last month, our worlds collided again. Two 6-year-old black children were arrested for incidents in their first-grade classroom in Florida. The officer involved in the incident was fired. But that doesn’t erase the trauma that those children faced and will continue to face.” Officers should not have the right to put little kids in the back of their car and take them to prison due to incidents in their first-grade classroom. Sure, they did not follow rules multiple times, but that doesn’t give the officer the right to stuff them in the back of their police car. They could’ve just given them a stern warning on what to do next time. It’s sad to see that people take action so swiftly that they don’t feel the need to even question what happened first. According to the article “Exploring the School-to-Prison Pipeline: How School Suspensions Influence Incarceration During Young Adulthood,”, “When examining outcomes associated with exclusionary discipline,” which is the exclusion of possible situations that may have happened when choosing a form a discipline, researchers “largely find that exclusionary practices are not only negatively related to short-term educational outcomes but also to more long-term life outcomes.” This indicates that officers at school can be a problem for students, as even one incident can cause trauma, mental problems, and demotivation for their work, detaching them from their original dreams and aspirations. This injustice needs to stop, as not only teenagers all over the country have this traumatic experience, adding to the burdens they have to carry, but also shattering dreams and hopes, while they sit and rot in a prison cell.
It’s sad that there are so many ways to fix this problem, yet school administrators don’t utilize them. Schools can reduce classroom sizes to make it harder for incidents to happen, increase the number of guidance counselors available to students, and remove police officers from schools. To further explicate this statement, graduateprogram.org stated, “Reducing classroom sizes helps teachers with personalized learning and decreases classroom distractions. Having effective classroom management is vital to students’ feeling comfortable in the learning environment and teachers’ being able to help students achieve academically.” This statement expresses that if schools implemented smaller classrooms, then teachers would have a way to actually stay calm when teaching students, could teach their students the whole lesson in time, and get work done faster as well. This is also in favor of students, as they have fewer people to deal with and can still be socially active, helping their mental state heal. The University of Florida also recognized this problem and reported, “Police officers have provided services to schools for years, but the practice of hiring police officers, or school resource officers (SROs), to regularly patrol school grounds is a relatively new phenomenon and is consistent with the overall national trend of criminalizing student discipline.” This elucidates that school administrators need to eliminate SROs. Even though they are trained to help students, sometimes they criminalize student discipline. Does it really have to go this far? Did this action have to be taken even if schools just made their system a little simpler for students to understand? It’s infuriating to me that kids are stuffed in the back of police cars after breaking one simple rule without a second thought. This concludes that students should not have to go through these hardships at this age or even at all, as they haven’t even experienced adulthood yet. They should have the right to enjoy life and be kids without worrying about being stuffed in the back of a police car, and instead feel safe everywhere on their school campus.
After hearing that, you can surely understand that it bothers me that students have to fear for themselves while in school, a place meant for safety and learning. How can we learn when we can’t even be at peace? How can we learn with the people meant to protect us being the ones to traumatize us when we looked to them first when in danger? This needs to stop now, not later. Schools need to realize that officers at schools may not be the best option and instead need to decrease classroom sizes and remove officers from their establishments. So let’s break the chains holding students back from having the life they deserve to live. Let’s uplift our students into an environment where they don’t have to worry about dangers creeping in from the window.
