The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s Demand to Learn Campaign is working to eliminate disciplinary practices that push students out of schools.
Demand to Learn Campaign focuses on ending school pushout in Arizona. School pushout is a term for when disabled students and students of color are discriminated against and, in turn, leads to them being suspended or to the student dropping out.
To fix the problem of school pushout, Demand to Learn focuses on improving school climate, ending disproportionate discipline, and removing barriers for student enrollment.
According to data from the Demand to Learn campaign website, Latino students are six times more likely than their white peers to receive out-of-school suspensions. While African American students are eight times more likely and Native American students are ten times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions.
Data also showed that students with disabilities in elementary and middle school are twice as likely as students without disabilities to receive in-school suspensions.
Another change Demand to Learn is advocating for is the removal of Student Research Officers (SRO) on school campuses.
“With police present in schools, it increases the probability that students will be criminalized for normal behavior… and increases their likeliness of the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Cynthia Diaz, an organizer for Demand to Learn.
Felina Rodriguez, a middle school teacher and Demand to Learn advocate, experienced first-hand the negative impact of SROs on students.
In 2019, one of Rodriguez’s students informed her they were pepper-sprayed by the school’s SRO when two students got into a fight, and a group of students formed around them to watch, in which the school’s SRO pepper-sprayed the entire crowd of students.
Rodriguez claimed the school principal decided to ignore the incident and tell parents a version of the story that made it seem as if the children deserved to be pepper-sprayed.
Rodgriguez decided to advocate for her students and was put on administrative leave after she told the administration she was uncomfortable with how the school was handling the situation.
Before her leave, Rodriguez helped her students partner up with multiple organizations including, Demand to Learn, Puente Movement and Poder in Action, to advocate for the removal of the SRO, said Rodriguez. The ACLU sent a letter to the school stating the SRO should be removed, and shortly after, the SRO left.
Rodriguez says she now works with Demand to Learn to create “better training models for schools and families so they can see the ins-and-outs of the school system and how it is creating school pushout.”
Demand to Learn has a current focus on Phoenix, but their goal is to expand across Arizona.
In May of this year Demand to Learn collaborated with Stand for Children and passed a bill in Arizona Congress that prevents students under the age of seven from being suspended. The state bill went into action this September.
Diaz says future plans for Demand to Learn include teaching families how they can advocate for their children in schools and working with schools to develop models to increase student retention while making sure people who are being directly impacted by these issues are leading the way to change.
Contact the reporter at seballe1@asu.edu.
