Mini Grant Update from Peter Rawitsch and Veronica McLaurin-Brown, April 13, 2022
I am thrilled to report that Veronica McLaurin-Brown and I achieved our goal of ending out-of-school suspensions for 4, 5, 6, and 7-year-old children, except for guns, drugs, or a assault, in New Hanover County, NC.
We were awarded a $500 DEY Mini Grant in June, 2021.
Our project, Love Our Children, started in March, 2021 after the New Hanover County Board of Education voted 7 – 0 to maintain a student behavior policy that allowed for our youngest learners to be kicked out of school for minor offenses such as in appropriate language, insubordination, or disrespect. This week, they voted 7 – 0 to revise that policy.
Here is the local coverage we received in the media:
After year of pressure from community, school board ends suspensions for youngest students
Wilmington StarNews
Love Our Children prevails: New Hanover school board unanimously votes to end suspensions for young students – WHQR
NHCS will no longer suspend students under 8, except in extreme cases
NHC School Board votes to end most suspensions for younger students
Although eleven states and the District of Columbia have statutes that ban the use of out-of-school suspensions for 4, 5, 6, and 7-year-olds, New Hanover County is the first county in North Carolina to do so.
Thank you again, for believing in us and supporting us as we started on our advocacy. This is a victory for the young children and their families in our community.
All the best,
Peter
P.S. Veronica McLaurin-Brown has decided to run for the NHC Board of Education. I am her campaign manager. Why change one policy when you can have an impact on all of them?
original mini grant report, august 2021
The vote was 7 to 0.
The New Hanover County Board of Education, North Carolina, voted unanimously to approve Policy 4300 that allowed Building Principals the authority to suspend students for up to ten days for minor infractions of the Code of Student Conduct.
That was on March 2, 2021, after months of work by the New Hanover NAACP Parents’ Council to end suspensions for Kindergarten through 5th grade. The Parents’ Council had met with the Superintendent twice. It had sent emails to all seven of the Board members. It had even collected over 400 signatures on a petition. It just wasn’t enough.
Veronica McLaurin-Brown and I met at a Parents’ Council meeting during a Zoom call the preceding winter. I was blown away by her descriptions of racism in the local schools from the past four decades. For 34 years Veronica had experienced it all as a teacher, principal, and as an Assistant to the Superintendent. Black students were not treated the same as White students. When she went to the White school administrators with her concerns, she was told repeatedly, “We know.”
Not much has changed.
During 2018-2019, the last full school year that was not impacted by COVID, there were 887 suspensions in our elementary schools. 40% of them were for Kindergarten through 2nd grade children. Even worse, 18% of the elementary students were Black, but they represented 61% of the suspensions. It is shameful.
Much to our disappointment, the Chairperson of the Parents’ Council decided that the group would no longer pursue a change in the discipline policy. All of our research, speeches at Board meetings, and TV interviews stopped. The Chair wanted to talk about other ideas.
Veronica and I were done talking. We were ready to take action.
We had one goal: Revise Policy 4300 to include the sentence, “Suspensions will not be used as a consequence for 4, 5, 6, and 7-year-old children, except for offenses that endanger the health and safety of others, such as the possession of weapons or drugs or a violent offense.”
We worked together to develop a plan: Go out into the community to listen, inform, and educate people about the harmful impact suspensions have on children. We applied for and received a Defending the Early Years mini-grant to allow us to hire a local activist and consultant to get us organized for what we knew would be a large-scale, long-term project. (Sadly, the consultant didn’t work out and we ending up forming a team of concerned citizens who helped us with our planning.)
We believe that change happens one conversation at a time and we have been talking to anyone who will listen. We have met individually with each of the School Board members. We have spoken with community leaders from various non-profits. We talk to cashiers in the grocery stores. We talk to the members of our churches, book clubs, and Facebook groups. We are even in conversations with residents in a housing project.
We have a name (Love Our Children.) and a logo. It’s printed on t-shirts, 3” badges, lawn signs, and a banner. We are working on renting electronic bulletins around the city. (The mini-grant has been used to defray the cost of some of these items.)
We have a website, a Facebook page, and a YouTube channel with recordings of our speeches to the Board of Education.
We have a petition for individuals to sign and a resolution for organizations to endorse.
We held our first press conference on July 13, 2021. It received local TV, radio, and newspaper coverage.
We attended a back to school community event last weekend where we offered out first fliers with a Spanish translation. We will participate in another community event this weekend.
All of this is in an effort to put more pressure on the Board of Education members to add one sentence to the current Discipline Policy.
We’re not done.
Our next steps include:
- Gain broader support for this non-partisan issue. We want our next press conference to include endorsements from local Democratic and Republican leaders.
- Find additional funding to cover the cost of printing fliers and buying TV, print, and social media ads. This will help us educate the public.
- Increase the pressure on two more Board of Education members to vote for a policy change. We believe we already have two allies on the Board.
Veronica and I are in this to win. And once suspensions have ended, we will move on to the next issue.
We love our children. We are working on getting the whole community to love them too.
The Defending the Early Years mini-grant has helped us on our journey. Thank you for your support!
Peter Rawitsch, rawitschp@mac.com
Veronica McLaurin-Brown, vsmbrown@charter.net
