When you think of first grade, what comes to mind? I remember my teacher, Mrs. D, a beloved white-haired grandma who doted on her students. The sing-song of her early grammatical lessons is triggered in my head almost every time I type. “You change the Y to an I and add ES.” It doesn’t look that poetic, but she’d write it on the board as she called out in staccato, shaking her butt to the Y and the I and most especially the ES. If I ever have occasion to write an essay about church belfries, or more likely, mass casualties (but not, sadly, monkeys or attorneys), the memory of Mrs. D will shake her butt at the chalkboard in my head for three days straight. Mrs. D helped us understand that grammar could be a game if you looked at it the right way. She was maternal but did not smother. She taught, but did not preach. I hope you had a Mrs. D in your young life that you’re thinking about right now as you recall your time in first grade.
When six-year-old Ja’Briel Weston grows up, he will likely remember first grade as defined by one moment: The day school security personnel handcuffed him to a chair.
In a lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Ja’Briel’s father alleges that he was handcuffed in two separate incidents. First, a security officer was directed to handcuff the boy by his leg to a chair as punishment for disobeying his teacher. Ja’Briel was again handcuffed and shackled by the same security officer several days later after arguing with another child in the cafeteria; he was not handcuffed during the argument, but in the principal’s office. While the security officer was later fired for her actions, the lawsuit alleges that they acted at the behest of principal Daphyne Burnett. Ms. Burnett, the suit alleges, created a disciplinary policy that called for handcuffing as a response to misbehavior.
Sarah T. Reed Elementary is part of the troubled Recovery School District of Orleans Parish in Louisiana. Demographically, the school is 98% African-American. Ninety percent of the students qualify for a free lunch, which means they are among the most impoverished of the city’s residents. They are trapped in what advocates have labeled the School to Prison Pipeline, referring to the increasing use of the juvenile justice system and law enforcement for discipline that was once handled internally by public schools. According to the ACLU, black students are more likely than white peers to be suspended, expelled, or arrested for the same behaviors. When students are arrested at school, many of them begin a lifelong relationship with the criminal justice system, first as juvenile offenders and then as adult prisoners.
Ja’Briel’s school sent him down the pipeline exceptionally early, but he’s not the only one. Bob Herbert’s March 2010 column in the New York Times recounts a number of incidents involving students treated as criminals in New York City’s public schools. A 2005 Florida girl’s case briefly sparked outrage when she was handcuffed, pinned down, and arrested during a tantrum. Children with disabilities are also targeted for criminal treatment. In Georgia, an eight-year-old boy with autism was handcuffed after acting out in school. A disability rights group in North Carolina is suing the local school district after incidents where autistic children were handcuffed to control their behavior. The children were also allegedly directed to brawl by their teachers.
What would Mrs. D have done if she’d caught Ja’Briel arguing with another boy? If a child in pain threw a tantrum and refused to calm down? If a child with a disability failed to sit still? In Mrs. D’s class, where fewer than twenty children sat in neat rows and enjoyed brand new books, where most kids went home to full refrigerators and didn’t have nightmares about the time their friends and neighbors drowned in their living rooms, where we all thought everyone went to the doctor once a year and had a yard to play in and soccer camp and band practice to attend, we had never seen real handcuffs. When I think about first grade, I marvel at Mrs. D and how deftly she prepared her students for their future as scholars. Ja’Briel Weston will remember his chains.
Leslie Fenton | Contributor
Leslie M. Fenton is an attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana. Since graduating from NYU Law five years ago, she has successfully survived two different bar exams, one hurricane, four jobs and three cross-country moves. While she previously enjoyed brief professional flings with capital appeals and disability rights, she usually represents victims of domestic violence in family law proceedings. She and her wife are expecting their first gayby in February.
Read more by Leslie on RootSpeak
See Leslie in action at:
