Skip to main content

Grace Under Pressure

 


Good morning, Columbia/HoCo.

So much hangs in the balance this morning. Votes must be counted. The fight for each of those votes to have meaning continues. We may very well be exhausted. 

This is the story you need today. I’ve been saving this for just the right moment.

Out of Jail and Back in School, Grace Finds Her Voice, Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica

Grace made an appearance once before on this blog, as an inspiration to a Guest Post by former Board of Education candidate James Cecil. 

Grace is a child like so many of our own or those that we know.  She struggled with the transition to distance education.  She was deprived of the support services known to help her through her challenges.  She missed one of the requirements for school.  She has been incarcerated for over two months.  

He was moved to write by the original story from ProPublica:

A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So A Judge Sent Her To Jail, Jodi S. Cohen

Grace’s story shocks us (I hope) because it is such a vivid example of criminalizing student behavior.  Most of us remember not doing our homework now and then. I’m pretty sure none of us went to jail for it. But Grace is a Black teenager with learning issues and mental health challenges. She did not receive the benefit of the doubt. 

When you hear people talk about the school to prison pipeline, this is it. Some students get the benefit of the doubt; some go to jail for the same behavior.  It doesn’t help the students improve in any way and it doesn’t make schools safer.

The second ProPublica articles catches us up with where Grace is now. She’s no longer incarcerated. She’s grateful to the outcry that brought attention to her case. She is going to a new school, doing well, and she is on a mission.

She feels an urgency to use her experience to bring awareness about shortcomings in the juvenile justice system and the criminalization of Black girls in particular.

Cohen, writer of these two pieces, has done an excellent job of giving the reader the kind of personal information that helps us see the humanity of her subject. Grace is an American teenager: someone who struggles, sometimes triumphs, sometimes fails. She should be more than a statistic on a discipline report. We should want her to be known and respected as much as we want our own children to be known and respected.

As we examine the issue of having police in schools here in Howard County, Grace’s story is weighing heavily on me. Even here in “multi-cultural/diverse” Howard County we are arresting students rather than connecting them with the help they need. As many as one per school day. And they are predominantly Black and Brown students. Many have learning issues or are in special needs programs, or have mental health challenges.

They do not receive the benefit of the doubt.

We absolutely can do better in Howard County. We need to stop criminalizing the behavior of young people, and we need to stop viewing our Black and Brown students through that narrow and harmful lens.

“There are so many other Graces out there who need a voice, and they need to be heard,” Grace said. “They are screaming, they’re yelling, they’re asking for help.”











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more