School to Prison Pipeline Focus Work Group

Our Purpose

The School to Prison Pipeline Focus Workgroup will:

1. Provide programmatic and administrative policy, budgetary and resource allocation recommendations to the School Board for consideration, adoption and implementation.
2. Study current student disciplinary practices in PGCPS and examine national best practices to provide policy and budget recommendations to the Board of Education.
3. Provide recommendations regarding how to more effectively support students who might be more susceptible to removal from school under the school system’s current disciplinary policies and practices.
4. Draw upon relevant prior school system reports and studies for insight about how to address this issue.
5. Consider recommending the hiring of additional non-academic support staff to provide wrap-around services for students and added mental health and behavioral specialist staffing to help eliminate non-academic barriers to student learning and success.
6. Examine the role of cultural awareness in the choices that students and school teachers and administrators make in the school environment that lead to unnecessary and disproportionate suspensions.