By Ashley Ruano, Fix School Discipline, October 1, 2019
The #StudentNotSuspects coalition has long worked in Los Angeles to end the random searches policy that discriminate against students and create a hostile campus environment for students to learn. For many years, Los Angeles Unified School District implemented mandatory random metal detector searches in middle and high schools. The searches did not make campus environments more secure. Instead, the policy targeted, and criminalized students of color. With the random search policy ending in 2020, what are students who experienced the impact this criminalizing practice saying? What are the educators who supported ending random searches saying about the policy change? How do community members define and create campus safety? We are asking these questions as LAUSD discusses how to replace random searches with real restorative practices and campus safety solutions. Fix School Discipline, along with community partners, asked students, educators, and parents to share their stories in this series of blogs.
Student leader, Ashley Ruano shares with us her firsthand experience of random school searches not making campus environments more secure, how they targeted and criminalized students of color, and what the end of random school searches in LAUSD means for her.
My name is Ashley Ruano and I am a junior at Apex Academy. My charter high school shares a campus with LAUSD schools. I have been through a handful of random searches from middle school to high school and each experience has been different. There are so many harms to these random searches but now we have gotten the chance to change the policy to one where students can be treated as they deserve to be treated.
Comments (0)