For the past year, BOP and other Bay Area community organizations have been pushing the Oakland school board to eliminate willful defiance from the district’s discipline policy. Data shows that willful defiance, a very broad category that has been used as grounds to discipline students, has led to the disproportionate suspension of Black students in Oakland and across the state.

BOP parents, students and community members all agree that willful defiance should be eliminated from the school discipline code. We recognize its use in classrooms as an umbrella term that serves as grounds to harshly punish Black students for simple classroom behaviors, from chewing gum to cursing at a teacher and everything in between. One of the largest problems with the term willful defiance and other punitive practices that support a culture of zero-tolerance discipline is that Black students are the ones who suffer from the narrative that almost anything they do in the classroom can be seen as “defiant” where teacher’s implicit bias is involved. Not surprisingly, Black boys receive the most suspensions for disruption and willful defiance.

Our year-long negotiations with the district to eliminate willful defiance appears to be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. On April 22nd, in coalition with Public Counsel, Coleman Advocates, Gay Straight Alliance and other organizations in the Dignity in Schools Coalition Bay Area Chapter, we went to the school board meeting where the board policy we proposed was up for public discussion.

On May 13th, the school board will reconvene to vote on the adoption of the board policy. This will make Oakland Unified the third district in the state to eliminate willful defiance as a reason for suspension or expulsion, following Los Angeles Unified and San Francisco Unified. This is a big win for Oakland, but the fight does not stop here. In addition to eliminating willful defiance, we demanded that the school board put a cap on the budget for increasing police officers and instead make a significant investment in the restorative programs that OUSD has said it’s committed to.

While a decrease in the disproportionate suspensions and expulsions of Black students is definitely a priority for Oakland’s Black parents, students and community members, it is attached to a larger vision of ending harsh discipline and the punitive culture that is created by biased policing in our schools and community alike. One of the tensions from the school board when talking about deepening the investment in programs like restorative justice and the manhood development program, for example, always seems to be the lack of funding. However, the school district currently has a budget of $7.2m for school police and there are plans to increase that budget next year to account for the hiring of more police officers.

“I know in our schools that we need intervention, restorative justice practices, we don’t need anymore money spent on a cops grant,” said Michael Ford, one of BOP’s parent members.

Contrary to evidence that proves the success of restorative justice and positive behavioral intervention supports in reducing suspensions and expulsions and actually improving outcomes for students when behavior issues arise, there is no evidence that suggests that more police in schools actually keeps kids safer. Rosie Torres was the only school board member at the April 22nd board meeting who publicly supported a shift in investment from police to restorative practices. Our newly appointed Superintendent Antwan Wilson made it clear that he’s not going to divest in police at all, spewing the same rhetoric of fear that has contributed to the creation of policies like willful defiance, zero-tolerance and increased reliance on policing our young people. “I will not support [putting a cap on the police budget], not when I know how many guns are being taken from our kids in our schools right now. At the end of the day, if the gun is in the school and its being pointed at me and I see it, I don’t care who it is,” Wilson said. This contradicts data from Oakland School Police Department regarding the number of student arrests (possession of a weapon leads to mandatory arrest in Oakland schools) . Additionally, this contradicts claims by most administrators and OSPD that Oakland schools are already safe. This is a common tactic used to scare our community into supporting police.

In order to win this fight to secure a better school climate that actually supports the success of Black students, Latino students, Asian and Pacific Islander students, Indigenous students, and white students alike, we have to continue to push the district to put their money where their mouth is. It is not enough to simply say we are committed to restorative justice, the district has to put a sufficient financial commitment behind it and one thing is for sure, increased budget for police officers will not get us to that vision. Join BOP and other members of DSC Bay Area on May 13th to make sure the board votes in favor of the policy to eliminate willful defiance and continue to follow the BOSS Campaign for updates on our push to #CapThePolice.

Hard Knock Radio (Audio starting ~ min. 40)
KPFA-AM

Oakland’s New District 4 School Board Member Advocates Restorative Justice
Mimi Rohr, Contra Costa Times

OUSD to Eliminate Willful Defiance Discipline Policy But the Fight is Not Over

Black Organizing Project

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