Schools Embrace ​“Restorative” Discipline

(Updated Monday 8:44 p.m.) Six years in making, a new district-wide Code of Conduct was passed unanimously Monday night by the Board of Education.

Kerr learned that skill in part through the school’s system work on ​“restorative practices.” The system has been working on them for years. They are now the focus of a draft New Haven Public Schools Code of Conduct.

(Update: Six years in the making, the new policy was passed unanimously Monday night by the Board of Education.)

“It will give us a foundation for how to deal with student behavior with more justice. We have a socially unjust policy that has been changing and shifting. We just haven’t formally changed it in writing and policy,” said Cameo Thorne, who helped craft the policy as the district’s restorative practices program director.

Restorative practices focus on who is harmed and how to address that harm, rather than who misbehaved and how to punish them.

The goal with the shift from punishment to restoration is to decrease suspensions, expulsions and the way those punishments disproportionately impact African-American and Latino students.

So far, the shift has worked. New Haven Public Schools started piloting restorative justice programs at various schools in 2014. While suspensions and expulsions still disproportionately affect Black and Brown students, the use of these punishments has dropped overall.

It makes sense, Thorne said. Punishments can leave students feeling like the victims and are not actually effective deterrents. When she hosts workshops, she asks attendees to picture the kids most likely to be suspended in the next few days. How do they know, she asks? Because those students have been suspended multiple times before. In other words, the previous suspensions did not solve the problem.

The shift can help with academic gains too. Fewer suspensions means students spend more time in the classroom and with the school psychiatrists, social workers and counselors who can help them address the root of their conflicts.

Kermit Carolina supervises youth development and engagement for New Haven Public Schools. Earlier in his career, his job was to vet expulsions. He often found students getting expelled for fighting in the cafeteria and similar behaviors. When he spoke with the students, there was often more to the situation that in the initial report.

“When we unwrapped it, we found some deep-rooted trauma that had not been dealt with,” Carolina said.

When expelled, students were ​“sent back to scene of the crime, where the trauma might have started. We’re expecting those environments to solve the problem? The resources are in our school buildings,” he said.

Changing the district’s Code of Conduct justifies the work of schools that have already switched to restorative practices and helps emphasize to other schools that this shift is a priority.

“It makes it a focus for the district, as opposed to an add-on,” said Barnard music teacher and restorative practices booster Jonathan Q. Berryman.

Restorative Success

There are few schools that have committed more deeply to restorative practices than John S. Martinez Sea & Sky STEM Magnet School. The school hasn’t suspended a student in years. Principal Luis Menacho couldn’t remember the last time a student was even referred to his office for acting out.

Instead, students have learned how to respect each other, according to each individual’s definition of respect, and talk out conflicts before they warrant any kind of disciplinary action.

Shamya Kerr graduated from Martinez last year and now attends Hill Regional Career High School. At Martinez, Kerr found a mentor, the magnet resource teacher Alyssa Basso.

Kerr used to get angry easily. She felt like the odd one out in a predominately Latino school and her peers’ comments hurt her. Basso would tell her that it wasn’t worth it to get mad, that she was enough just as she is — a good student, too smart to get into fights.

Kerr was able to build her confidence and her sense of her own worth while at Martinez. It’s still useful. A few days ago, her older brother told her that her newfound sport, cheerleading, wasn’t her.

She decided that she didn’t want to argue about it.

“Cheerleading isn’t anyone specific. Anyone could do it,” Kerr calmly told the Independent.

All students pick an adult at Martinez to go to whenever they have a bad day or need advice. Kerr was one of five girls who chose Basso, forming her ​“Lunch Bunch.” They stuck together from sixth to eighth grade and still keep in touch.

During lunch, the group would talk out social issues that they had amongst themselves or with others at school.

“They came leaps and bounds and ended up as some of our top achieving students. They graduated within the top 10 of their class,” Basso said.

One member of the Lunch Bunch, Destiny Baez, became a peer mediator at the school. The position required monthly trainings and weekly meetings.

Students would write down anonymous notes about problems they were facing and place them in designated boxes located in every classroom and office. Every week, two peer mediators would sit down with those experiencing the problem, while two younger mediators watched.

Baez remembered mediating one fight between friends. Misinformation had led to a falling out in the friend group. She and her fellow mediator listened to each participant’s perspective, asked how them how it made them feel and then left the room to let the two talk through a resolution. By the end of the session, the two were back to being friends.

Martinez has narrowed academic achievement gaps over the five years since Menacho has taken over as principal and focused in on restorative practices. There hasn’t been a safety downside to the approach, either. The school hasn’t had any students bring drugs or weapons into the building, Menacho said.

“It’s about relationships and how you treat kids. Once you establish that relationship, kids don’t want to let you down. That’s the mindset we have,” Menacho said.

A Long Road

If restorative practices are such a clear win, why has it taken the district so long to pass this new Code of Conduct?

A series of leadership changes and shifting priorities put the draft on the back burner, according to Cameo Thorne.

A work group of administrators, parents, teachers union representatives and mental health and legal professionals started rewriting the Code of Conduct in early 2015.

It was almost ready for a vote when the Board of Education decided to buy out then-Superintendent Garth Harries’ contract. 

Retired Superintendent Reginald Mayo stepped back in as the board searched for Harries’ replacement. He focused on ways to ensure an easy transition to the next administration and held off on adopting new policies. The next administration, under Superintendent Carol Birks, was also short-lived.

“Every time we have gotten to the pinnacle and we have it in the Governance Committee ready for a read, we have a major event. We buy out another superintendent and put a new one in. Then we start all over,” Thorne said.

And those sitting at the table crafting the policy would change. There would be new sets of parents or union representatives with their own ideas for wording changes.

“I would like it to come to a vote. I’m willing to rework it, but let’s get it done. I don’t want to sit at the table with 15 new people again,” Thorne said.

The new Code of Conduct will help Thorne identify which restorative practices schools are using and where there might be gaps. When a principal recommends a student for expulsion, they will write down what restorative measures they took before getting to that point.

“Nothing is meant as a gotcha for administrators or teachers. It will show me that there are tools that you don’t have that need to be strengthened,” Thorne said.

The transition for these schools won’t require a lot of extra money for new hires, according to Menacho’s experience at Martinez. It’s more about prioritizing professional development time on restorative practices and rebranding and retraining existing employees — like in-school suspension staff to in-school support staff. There is already restorative-focused professional development ready for administrators to start when the code passes.

Jonathan Q. Berryman helped start restorative practices at Barnard Environment Studies Interdistrict Magnet School as the climate leader there. The school hasn’t committed to the process as deeply as Martinez though and Berryman sees a lot of potential for change at the school after the policy passes.

“If the district says this is what we’re doing, it becomes a budgetary priority and a professional development priority. We look for it when we do instructional rounds in every classroom, not just those who believe in it,” Berryman said. ​“Some things ought not to be left to school discretion.”

It would be helpful for schools like Barnard to learn from the district exemplars like Martinez, Berryman said. He wants to see sessions for parents and teachers on what the policy looks like in practice and he wants to see a timeline for the next steps of the rollout.

For Kermit Carolina, the district’s next step after the Code of Conduct adoption is to eliminate the disproportionate disciplining of students of color, particularly Black boys. He has been working on targeted mentorship programs for those students and has plans to expand those efforts.

Board of Education member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur has been shepherding the policy through the board’s Governance Committee, despite further setbacks during the pandemic.