We Rise Together: Perspectives of black male students in secondary school: Understanding the successes and challenges

Abstract

<p>As stated in report: We Rise Together: The Peel District School Board Action Plan to Support Black Male Students is a comprehensive response to that challenge. The plan is both defined and open—there are clear, detailed first steps, and also a commitment to continue to consult with the community on these steps. The goal is to balance the need to act on the findings without delay, while we honour and respect the powerful knowledge and insight in our community to refine that work. The bottom line is that this action plan will not succeed without the genuine involvement of the community. We can only rise together.</p>

The Third Administrator? Perceptions of School Resource Officers in Predominantly White Elementary Schools

“…Research also suggests the presence of SROs influences school discipline by increasing exclusionary punishments like suspension (Fisher & Hennessy, 2016;Gottfredson et al, 2020;Na & Gottfredson, 2013;Weisburst, 2019), with Black students most likely to experience suspension with the presence of an SRO (Weisburst, 2019). Qualitative studies of SROs help illustrate how SROs can lead to higher rates of exclusionary discipline, finding SROs can escalate situations with students that might have otherwise not resulted in a suspension or arrest and can shift schools to more punitive approaches to discipline, potentially as a result of SRO involvement in collective leadership (Gray et al, 2016;Kupchik, 2010;Mukherjee, 2007;Nolan, 2015).…”

“…Each of the reports addressed similar questions as research studies on whether SROs help students feel safer as well as whether they criminalize students. These evaluations had a range of findings from overwhelmingly positive to accusations of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism (Duxbury & Bennell, 2020;Gray et al, 2016;Samuels-Wortley, 2021) and culminated in the Peel Regional Police dissolving their SRO program (Westoll, 2020). Along with the increase in scrutiny of SRO programs following the murder of George Floyd, critical reports and research such as these have led to the ending or restructuring some SRO programs across Canada and the United States (Balingit et al, 2020;Samuels-Wortley, 2021).…”