When Ron Brown College Preparatory High School first opened in Washington, D.C., in 2016, some community members initially pushed back. In a Washington Post article, people commented that the “young kings” sounded like a gang and accused the school of segregating D.C. students.

But this didn’t stop Ron Brown College Prep from creating a safe space for its Black male students using restorative justice principles as a foundation. Instead, “young kings” who enter through the doors of the high school are greeted by staff who aim to empower their students through a loving and supportive environment.

After desegregation, Black schools that once served as safe spaces either replaced Black teachers with white teachers or disappeared altogether. As a result, Black students have been overrepresented in the school-to-prison pipeline ever since, researchers and child advocates say.

Ron Brown College Prep hopes to dismantle this. 

The public high school specifically curated for male students of color was a product of Benjamin Williams’s experience in school and his drive to make a difference. 

Williams, the founder and former principal of the school, grew up in foster care with his brother, living in many homes and attending many different schools. While Williams was more successful academically, he said his brother was just as capable –– he just needed different support. 

He said he and his brother would have benefitted from a school like Ron Brown.

Williams was observant growing up. He said he always noticed how people who looked like him were treated: first in his middle school, high school, then college. When he began a career in education, he saw it firsthand.

Researchers from Princeton University found that in 2019, Black students were 2.5 times more likely to be referred to law enforcement, 3.5 times more likely to be arrested and 4 times more likely to be suspended than white students. 

This is when Williams said he realized, “It’s not just me and my brother, it’s more than that.” 

Charles Curtis, a psychologist and restorative justice coordinator at the school, said if school were in session right now, students would probably be talking about police brutality in their morning community circle, which starts off each day connecting them with one another.

“Community circle is really where we connect. We also get in the habit of being together, sharing ideas, doing social and emotional work,” Curtis said. 

Curtis said that Black spaces like the school are important, especially for boys in their adolescence who are growing up in a country that doesn’t accept them.

“It is fundamentally hostile to their existence, to their mental health, to their opportunities to progress,” Curtis said. “They are criminalized. This is their life.”

Built on restorative justice

The morning circle is fundamental to the restorative process at Ron Brown. This process focuses on the reason behind the student’s behavior and connects them with the community and the person they may have harmed, rather than suspending and expelling students as a default. 

Curtis said schools often look at situations warranting either restorative justice or exclusionary discipline. 

“There is no ‘which’ at Ron Brown. It is always restored,” he said. “Even in the most severe scenario where the young person did get suspended, our effort is always restorative.”

Curtis is a part of the CARE Team, which supports students and teachers in restorative practices. It’s made of counselors, psychologists, social workers, a director of empowerment and culture, and other school administrators.

The team addresses school culture, climate, restorative practices, and social and emotional learning, according to the Ron Brown website.

Teachers are also encouraged in their classrooms to address any conflicts or disruptions instead of sending kids out of the classroom. Students participate in peer circles, which use a restorative justice model to address and repair situations between classmates. 

Williams said he was intentional in bringing restorative practices into the school to help students learn accountability.

“You also have to make sure that you hold yourself in a way that you are willing to speak up for yourself. And that’s not something that most of our young men were expected to do prior to walking into the space,” Williams said.

Curtis said involving students in these practices is important because it helps them cultivate skills to not only help them navigate their experience in school, but outside of it as well.

A culture of love

Christian Johnson, who goes by CJ, was heavily involved with the school’s restorative justice practices when he was a student. He led morning community circles and sat in on restorative justice circles as part of the junior CARE team.

Johnson, who graduated with the inaugural class in June 2020, said his experience at Ron Brown shaped him into the leader he is today. He still remembers his first day walking into Ron Brown. 

“I had my jacket newly dry-cleaned, my tie was perfect, my shirt was pressed,” he said. “I was ready.”

As soon as he walked in, he and his fellow classmates were called “young king” by school staff. He said the day started with a morning community circle and greeting his brothers, a ritual that took place every day of his high school career. 

Calling students “young kings,” was a part of a constant push to empower students to take control of their own fate, Curtis said. He said this is deliberate because Black students are often exposed to narratives about what is wrong with them.

“We were intentional about every time we speak to them or of them that we were naming what was right about them,” he said. “You are special. You are important. You are a ruler. You are most of all the ruler of yourself. You decide where you are going.”

Johnson said he remembers Williams stressing the importance of taking advantage of the opportunities the school had to offer. 

The school takes students on college tours as early as ninth grade. Curtis said this exposure is important, because it shows the students that they have options and opportunities to create their own destiny.

Johnson said the moment that stuck out to him the most during his time at Ron Brown was when his stepfather passed away in June and the whole school reached out to him. He said he didn’t expect to be embraced the way he was, but that it speaks to the family culture intrinsic to the school.

“The school hours end when they end, but we don’t ever stop belonging to each other,” Curtis said.

Johnson said Curtis is like his uncle, and that he continues to ask Curtis for advice about both  small and large life decisions. Their relationship extends beyond the school walls, and Curtis continues to support Johnson as he begins the next chapter at Howard University, playing basketball and studying finance.

Johnson said he thinks Ron Brown was built on culture, and that restorative justice contributes to the positive culture he experienced. 

“The loving and the caring that the teachers have and the staff have for everybody is Ron Brown itself,” Johnson said.

Source photo courtesy of Christian Johnson

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Advocates, community members and Spokane Public Schools administration in Washington state came together during a 2016 school district meeting to address the high suspension and expulsion numbers of students. It was during that meeting that the superintendent signed an initiative bringing restorative justice to all 54 schools.

Restorative justice, or restorative practices, is a philosophy that focuses on restoring community relationships rather than punishing the offender as a way of discipline. 

“When we treat that individual student with respect and provide the support they need that benefits everyone,” said Julie Schaffer, restorative practices manager in the Office of Family and Community Engagement for Spokane Public Schools. “The whole community is safer and healthier because of that.” 

When students misbehave in schools in the U.S., they are often punished through punitive measures that lead to school exclusion. These measures come from zero tolerance policies which aim to address “disruptive and/or violent behaviors,” according to a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report. 

In recent years, schools, districts and communities in over 27 states, including several school districts in California and the Dekalb County School District in Georgia, have started incorporating restorative justice as a way to “shift the culture from discipline to accountability and problem solving,” according to the same report.  

The Spokane school district has a three-tier process in its restorative justice effort, with the first tier used to help build community relationships so that students feel they can approach teachers with problems, the second tier uses restorative strategies to address problems in the classroom and the third tier aimed at mediation. 

In a Spokane Public Schools presentation on the district’s restorative approach, the differences between a restorative and punitive approach are highlighted as being more focused on why someone may have acted out and how they can work to fix the problem rather than what rule they broke and how the student should be punished.

Schaffer said that teachers within the schools have a freedom in how creative they implement the practices in classrooms.

“It could be like get to know you, games, where there’s a lot of movement or you know, and it depends on the age of the student,” Schaffer said. “So that tier-one classroom level, it’s really the proactive staff.”

Throughout the district, the use of classroom circles, mediation and conferencing are used in a three-tier process focused on building community, resolving conflict, repairing harm and reconnecting students. 

“It’s giving the youth an opportunity to really reflect and come up with their own idea of what needs to be done to repair the harm or the relationship if there was another person involved in the incident,” Schaffer said, describing some of the methods they use in the classrooms

In 1998, Bob Murphy moved to Spokane, Washington, where he became focused on restorative justice after spending a career in education in Alaska as a teacher and principal. 

He spent eight years as a program director for a dispute resolution center where he was involved in a victim-offender mediation program, before being contracted as a restorative justice mediator with Spokane Public Schools.

“From the schools or the juvenile justice system, we really owe it to kids and families to have alternatives where they have an opportunity to learn a lesson from those [mistakes], right,” Murphy said. “And not be hamstrung the rest of their life by a mistake they made as a kid.”

During the 2014-2015 school year, Spokane Public Schools district had 5,506 exclusionary discipline consequences, or any disciplinary actions by teachers which includes warnings, suspensions and expulsions. 

Just four years later, the number of exclusionary discipline consequences dropped from 5,506 to 4,166 by the 2018-2019 school year. The district formed a Superintendent Work Group on Restorative Practices, a collaboration between district staff and community members, to focus on exclusionary discipline. 

Nikki Lockwood, speaking of her experience as a community advocate before being elected as a board member for Spokane Public Schools, said for the first three years the work group met monthly to go over discipline data and worked in subcommittees to propose any changes to address issues. The group currently meets quarterly to continue to address any issues and how to better implement restorative practices.

Modern restorative justice practices have been around since the 1970s, with programs focused on reconciliation between offenders and victims. These practices aim to bring accountability and acknowledgement of the harm caused to the community, while also restoring relationships and aiming to reduce crime. Some restorative justice practices include victim-offender dialogues, conferences and peer circles. 

The philosophy behind restorative justice has its roots in cultures across the world including within Native American communities, the native Maori people in New Zealand and more, according to the International Institute for Restorative Practices. 

In the U.S. larger school districts like Oakland Unified School District in California began implementing aspects of restorative justice in the early 2000s, even decreasing the amount of suspensions by 86% in one middle school.  

However, while restorative practices are implemented, Schaffer said that they can work alongside exclusionary discipline. 

“So maybe there still is a suspension or that student needs to take some time away from the school building,” Schaffer said. “But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t also be a restorative intervention. And sometimes exclusionary discipline could be shortened based on the student’s willingness to engage in a restorative intervention.”

Nicole Rosenkrantz, community partnerships manager in the Office of Family and Community Engagement for Spokane Public Schools, explained the district recently received two grants to fund an in-school diversion program that will have mentors address student mistakes and behaviors in the school rather than sending them to juvenile court or dealing with exclusionary practices. The program is currently ready to roll-out for the next school year.

“When people are given an opportunity to accept…responsibility for the role they’re playing in something… not only is it an opportunity for a lesson,” Murphy said. ”But it really can fundamentally change how people approach life.”

Source photo courtesy of Spokane Public Schools

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