Too many African-Americans pushed out of schools, activists say

By Gracie Bonds Staples

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

African-American students are pushed out of traditional schools and into alternative education at disproportionately high rates for minor offenses.

The practice is one that civil rights activists say often leads the students straight into the criminal justice system.

“Even in counties where African-Americans make up a small percentage of the population, they still make up a large majority of suspensions and students placed in alternative settings,” said Edward DuBose, president of  the Georgia State Conference NAACP.

DuBose will hold a press conference to highlight the issue at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the state Capitol.

He will be joined by Chara Fisher Jackson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, and Richard R. Boykin, attorney for Amitai Carter, a Houston County special education student sent to alternative school.

Carter, a 15-year-old ninth-grader, was among about 100 students watching a fight after school early last month, Boykin said. He said Carter was videotaping the fight with his cellphone when a white assistant principal came from behind and placed him in a chokeholde.

In response, Boykin said, Carter swore at the assistant principal and was later expelled.

What happened to Carter, activists say, is typical of what happens to too many African-American students nationwide.

Neither Houston County Superintendent David Carpenter nor Assistant Superintendent for School Operations Robin Hines was available for comment.

“They’re all in budget meetings,” said Beth McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the district.

McLaughlin declined to discuss the matter in detail, citing student privacy laws. She said the Houston County school board will hear an appeal from Carter at a meeting Thursday.

Boykin said expulsion seemed unreasonable and excessive under the circumstances, adding his client "may be a cause celebre in terms of what's happening to black males" in Georgia schools.

"We hope that just shining a little light on this situation in terms of suspension and expulsion we can reverse this trend,"  Boykin said.

DuBose said that . of 338 out-of-school suspensions in Houston County in 2009, 235 of those students, or 69 percent, were African-American. Blacks make up only 35 percent of the district’s total enrollment, he said.

Statewide, he said, 153,279 students were suspended in 2009 66 percent of them African-American. At the same time, blacks make up only 38 percent of total enrollment, he said.

The numbers are similar across metro Atlanta, he said.

“This is an ongoing trend that we are seeing not only in Georgia but throughout the country that funnels children into the school to prison pipeline,” said Jackson, of the ACLU of Georgia.

“It’s a matter of over-disciplining children for minor offenses and adhering to strict and repressive zero-tolerance policies that don’t make school safer but deprive children of the education and services that they are entitled to,” Jackson said.