Student Advocacy Center: Solutions, Not Suspensions Campaign

The Student Advocacy Center in Ann Arbor is part of a Solutions, Not Suspensions Campaign. This is part of a national movement to reduce suspensions in schools and promote positive behavioral interventions.

Here are a few facts from the campaign:

Michigan ranks 5^th in the country for highest rates of student suspensions, with students of color, students with disabilities, and students in foster care being suspended at significantly higher rates. 

Every dropout costs society an estimated $250,000 over the student’s lifetime in lost income. Research shows that students who are expelled are more likely to drop out of school and/or get arrested.  

Michigan law does not currently require schools to work to reduce suspensions and expulsions and informal guidance by the State Board of Education, while a step in the right direction, has been largely ignored.

Here is the current list of organizational endorsers. (There are also individual endorsers. You can be one of them!) The Student Advocacy Center recently approached the Ypsilanti Community Schools with an informational letter, asking them to be the first school district to sign on to this pledge. That would be timely, too, considering that the YCS school board recently voted on some expulsions, including an expulsion of an elementary school child!  (I believe they were all mandatory, but I'm not positive about that. Did you know that students who are suspended are twice as likely to drop out? Or that black students are are 2-1/2 times more likely to be suspended than white students, according to the U.S. Department of Education?)

Organizations

1. ACLU of Michigan 
2. Ann Arbor Concerned Citizens for Justice
3. Association for Children's Mental Health 
4. Better Detroit Youth Movement 
5. Cherish Our Youth
6. Citizens for Prison Reform 
7. Education Trust – Midwest 
8. Greater Works Youth Empowerment 
9. Harriet Tubman Center 
10. Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice
11. Keeping Them Alive 
12. Matrix Human Services
13. Michigan Alliance for Families 
14. Michigan's Children
15. Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency
16. Michigan County Social Services Association
17. Michigan League for Public Policy 
18. Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, Inc. 
19. National Association of Social Workers - Michigan Chapter
20. Shetroit.com 
21. Sower Center for Successful Schools 
22. Student Advocacy Center of Michigan 
23. The Arc of Michigan
24. Youth Voice 

You can sign the pledge, or work to get your school district to sign on to this.

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