Fremont High School students in Oakland Unified use restorative justice circles to welcome newcomers, get to know each other and build bridges between different cliques and ethnic groups.
Credit: Tatiana Chaterji / Oakland Unified
A change has come to my classroom, and I didn’t even know it.
While I’ve been busy teaching, California passed Senate Bill 274 expanding the prohibition of suspensions for low-level defiance behaviors to higher grades. I had no idea, nor did any of the colleagues I’ve spoken to recently.
Perhaps that is because my school is in the San Diego Unified School District. Along with other districts like Los Angeles Unified, we’ve been focused on restorative practices, instead of punitive ones (like suspending students) for nearly a decade. At my school, for example, we have an amazing counselor and a part-time restorative justice lead.
But I’ve learned recently that my experience isn’t normal. Many schools do not have any training or funding for this type of training. And this lack of both training and funding is going to put any California teacher in between the new law and a hard day if we don’t address it statewide soon.
What is restorative justice?
Essentially, restorative justice practices are relationship-building. They fundamentally weave in and under everything about a school built on respect and collaboration. These practices include, but are not limited to, affirmations, restorative circles, student check-ins, community circles, social contracts, and activities that enhance relationships.
We know that when a school puts restorative justice in place with fidelity, suspension rates decrease and student learning outcomes improve. Students themselves report a preference when restorative measures are taken over traditional ones. Importantly, this means that defiance issues are far less common or reported in schools effectively implementing restorative justice.
Restorative justice is erroneously seen by some as an alternative way of addressing serious school incidents. It is not, nor has it ever been, a solution for things like sexual harassment, physical assault, hate crimes, vandalism or other serious incidents at a school.
Some believe that restorative justice is mostly concerned with helping the student who causes harm, not the child who is harmed. This, we have found, is often based on a teacher’s experience with improper implementation at the administrative level.
When this occurs, it rightly causes frustration. It also causes some to express that they do not believe justice has been served for the person who was harmed. When restorative justice practice fails to restore justice, it cannot be called restorative, or justice.
Another fallacy is that restorative justice is only used to “put out fires,” when students are in trouble. However, when properly implemented at a school, most restorative practices occur before any issues arise.
Through the work of our council, we’ve found that even though our district leadership actively supports, advocates for and prioritizes restorative justice practices, the lack of state funding has made implementation extraordinarily difficult.
For example, elementary, middle and high school levels within San Diego Unified have been funded quite differently. While middle schools have been funded for a two-day-a-week position, high schools have only had funding for a position one day a week. Worse, elementary schools were not allocated any funding for a restorative lead. That lead position is essential for restorative justice to work well. Restorative leads schedule positive school events, conduct restorative circles and follow up to ensure resolutions — while teachers teach — just like a doctor might follow up to be sure an illness is cured.
If an elementary school wanted to pursue restorative practices, they had to hire a restorative lead out of their limited site funds. This lack of alignment between different grade levels in a district the size of San Diego Unified, we found, mirrors the type of limited training and funding allocation for other districts throughout California. In other words, districts like ours want to implement restorative justice, but they can’t afford to do so properly. Meanwhile, state laws like SB 274 have changed the expectations for how teachers interact with students daily.
This discrepancy between legislation and funding can put teachers in a difficult situation — unable to suspend students who are disrupting their classrooms, and lacking restorative justice training and support that would enable them to more effectively manage their classrooms. And this leads our council to the following recommendations for all California districts, public and charter, and state educational leaders.
- State funding should be earmarked for ongoing restorative training and professional development for all staff in K-12 schools.
- State funding should be allocated for the restorative lead position uniformly in all public schools and public charter schools.
- Districts must support transformation within their schools, like San Diego Unified’s leadership does.
Our council is eager to work with any parent or educational advocacy group, state legislator, or public or charter district leader interested in taking on this important work with us.
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Thomas Courtney is a sixth-grade humanities and English language arts teacher at Millennial Tech Middle School in southeast San Diego.
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