Mother, son fight back against discriminatory school discipline in Georgia

By Rhonda Sonnenberg | Read the full story here

Friend,

E.C. turned 15 last September. He wasn’t at school, where he always celebrated his birthday with friends and ate pizza and cupcakes that his mother brought. Instead, he was at home in Georgia, isolated from his schoolmates and forced to take virtual learning during a nearly six-month punishment meted out by the Walton County, Georgia, school district.

“He didn’t celebrate at all this year,” his mother said. “Of my three children, E.C. was always my most joyful and outgoing. Now he’s depressed and doesn’t want to come out of his room. He’s not around his friends. He couldn’t go to homecoming, football games, is not allowed anywhere on Walton County property.”

Last April, the school district expelled the Black student, who was an eighth grader at Loganville Middle School, after a substitute teacher caught him holding an electronic vape device. E.C. — whose name has been abbreviated in this story to protect the identity of a minor — was about to pass it to a white female student outside the adjacent girls’ and boys’ bathrooms. A third student, also white, had given it to E.C. to hand to that student’s girlfriend and then had quickly walked away.

As further punishment, E.C. was referred to youth court for possession of the vape — a misdemeanor under Georgia law setting 21 as the minimum age for vaping — placed in the alternative school program of virtual learning, and denied accommodations for special education services that he was receiving for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Of the three students involved, only E.C. was severely punished.

The two others denied that they had anything to do with the incident. The female student received no punishment, and the other boy told E.C. that he spent two days in in-school suspension, though the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing E.C. in a lawsuit on E.C.’s behalf, has no way of verifying the statement because schools do not disclose information about discipline against other students. What is clear is that administrators believed the white students over E.C.

In the Walton County School District, Black students make up 25% of the total school population yet account for nearly 41% of disciplined students, according to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.

Sincerely,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

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