According to researchers from San Diego State University and University of California, Los Angeles, Sacramento schools disproportionately suspend black boys. The researchers’ new study, “The Capitol of Suspensions: Examining the Racial Exclusion of Black Males in Sacramento County,” revealed that the schools with the worst record are right here in the state capital: The Sacramento City Unified School District has suspended more black boys than any other district in the state—including Los Angeles’ much larger one. Three other local districts are in the undesirable top 20 for disproportionate suspensions.
While the research brief didn’t examine what behavior preceded the suspensions, other studies have shown that black boys are disciplined more harshly than classmates of other races or ethnicities for the same minor transgressions.
“What we find as a pattern is that when black boys do things that are normal, it’s viewed as criminal,” said San Diego State education professor J. Luke Wood, one of the authors of the new report. “When white children do things that are normal, it’s viewed as just that—normal.”
According to Sac City Unified spokesperson Alex Barrios, the district, like most others in the county, is beginning to take a restorative justice approach to discipline to “ensure that our system is more focused on helping students understand how their actions impact others and holding them accountable for those actions, rather than just punishing them.”
Restorative justice is about keeping kids in their classrooms when they act out. Instead of booting them to the principal’s office or out of the school, the philosophy calls for confronting students’ issues through mediated talking sessions and understanding life circumstances that may contribute to their behavior, like hunger, housing insecurity or community trauma.
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