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Traversing the halls of Miami-Dade County public high schools in Florida can be a minefield for Black girls and young women. Friend, Traversing the halls of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) in Florida can be a minefield for Black girls and young women. The proliferation of school hardening — the practice of installing and stationing metal detectors, bullet-resistant glass, security cameras and the presence of law enforcement in schools — is to blame for the failure to uphold a positive and affirming school environment. And it’s Black female students who suffer the most from these policies. In partnership with the National Women’s Law Center, the SPLC published Know Her Name, Keep Her Safe: Centering Black Girls in School Safety, a report detailing the lasting impacts many Black girls endure when they are disproportionately targeted, harassed and even sexually assaulted by school-based police. It is the first to include the voices of Black girls and young women ages 14 to 24 who have attended M-DCPS and were harmed by the practice. In the report, participants are identified only by the school they currently or formerly attended.
Modeled after prisons, school hardening mechanisms create an environment of fear, helplessness and anxiety for students of color, particularly for Black girls. Despite the overwhelming evidence of its lack of efficacy, M-DCPS continues employing more school police than any other Florida school district. One girl included in the report captured the feeling of being on edge all the time. “I just feel like they’re just waiting for us to make one small, minor mistake, and they’re ready to arrest us,” the girl, who requested anonymity, said in the report. “I’ve only seen them arrest students. … [T]hat’s all they’re good for. … It’s like, what’s the point in going to school? It makes us not want to go to school because we feel like we can’t make one minor mistake.” Nationally, schools have been hardening for decades, particularly after the deadly mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1998. After the tragedy, the U.S. Department of Education and the Secret Service surveyed schools to assess ways to prevent threats. They found that the most effective way to make schools safe was to promote a positive school climate, strengthen trust and foster communication between community members. The findings were ultimately ignored and overpolicing in schools became the new normal during the Clinton administration. The 2018 mass killing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, turned the conversation over school safety and hardening measures into a public and political panic. After the shooting, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission was created to investigate system failures and make policy recommendations that would affirm school safety. However, the selection process to appoint people was politically motivated, and the people serving on the MSD commission lacked the expertise and diversity necessary to make recommendations that would reflect the needs of all students in Florida. Then in 2019, the Florida Legislature passed The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act which created measures that prioritize criminalization and shut students and families most affected by school hardening out of school safety decision-making processes. “The report shows a death by 1,000 cuts, the daily micro-aggressions, the dehumanizing of Black girls,” said Bacardi Jackson, SPLC deputy legal director of the Democracy: Education and Youth litigation team, which is dedicated to protecting children’s rights. Jackson said that being subjected daily to school policing normalizes harmful practices that affect Black female students. What’s more, the report shows that officers are insufficiently trained to recognize typical teenage behavior and are unable to judge whether a misbehaving student requires force to be controlled or simply a conversation with a school counselor or psychologist. “They are constantly on the defensive being in school,” Jackson said. “The report told us that there desperately needs to be school climate and discipline policies to include the perspective of Black girls who don’t feel safe.” Additionally, Black female students in this school environment also face the problem of adultification bias, which happens when faculty, staff and school police make erroneous assumptions that Black girls who are taller and more physically developed than white girls the same age are older than they are. This leads to more school discipline, harm and arrest of Black girls and young women, according to the report. The data has been clear for over 20 years – positive school climate and trusting relationships create safe schools. And as long as policymakers continue to ignore data-informed strategies, students, especially Black female students, will continue to feel unsafe and be pushed out of school altogether, enforcing a lifetime of negative psychological and economic consequences. Your partnership helps us publish these groundbreaking reports. Without your moral and financial support, we could not do the work to shed light and advocate for children’s rights across the country. Thank you. Sincerely, Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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