Advocacy to Disrupt the School to Prison Pipeline
2025-2026 Legislative Priorities
The “school-to-prison pipeline” is, in reality, two pipelines that combine to drive students out of the classroom, away from a pathway to success, and towards or into the juvenile or criminal justice system:
The first pipeline involves frequent suspensions and expulsions that remove students from their classrooms and disconnects them from their school community. Once outside of school, these students are far more at risk of justice system involvement. Youth are more than twice as likely to be arrested during periods when they are suspended or expelled from school even if a student has no prior history of delinquent behavior.
The second pipeline involves arrests in school for behaviors better resolved through alternative approaches. Students are arrested and sent into the system for levels of disruptive behavior that in many cases could be handled through restorative or therapeutic approaches, leading to system involvement rather than addressing the underlying needs of that behavior.
School Discipline
An Act Enhancing Learning in the Early School Years Through a Ban on School Exclusion in Pre-Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (FAct Sheet - Rep. Decker Hd.1267/ sen. Gomez sd.1354)
The Young Student Exclusion Ban Act aims to improve educational outcomes by banning Massachusetts public schools from suspending or expelling students in Pre-K through 3rd grade. Black and Latinx young children are four and three times, respectively, more likely than their white peers to experience school exclusion. The bill expands this exclusion ban to 4th grade one year after enactment, and to 5th grade two years after enactment.
An Act Addressing School Exclusion Policies to Remedy Disparities in Educational Achievement (FACT SHEET - Reps. Ultrino & Meschino Hd.1270/ Sen. Jehlen Sd.1067)
Though students facing serious allegations are afforded due process protections based on constitutional rights, current law driven by anti-youth narratives of the 1990s, allows a student charged (prior to arraignment or adjudication) with any felony, regardless of seriousness, to be suspended or expelled from school without the opportunity for any due process in the juvenile court. This bill would require that students are entitled to all of the procedural protections before exclusion.
An Act Requiring Accountability for Inequities in Suspension and Expulsion (RAISE Act) (FACT SHEET - Reps. Ultrino & Meschino Hd.1982/ Sen. Jehlen Sd.2506)
The Student Opportunity Act (SOA) establishes criteria that school districts must use to measure and address disparities in student academic achievement. The current criteria, however, only measures academic outcomes related to graduation, including test scores and other metrics of student achievement, but excludes student discipline which research establishes has a detrimental impact on student educational outcomes. This bill addresses the role that school exclusion plays in driving persistent disparities in academic achievement by including suspension and expulsion in the required outcome criteria, with specific targets for sub-populations of students who experience disparate school exclusion.
An Act Regarding Families and Children in Need of Assistance (FACT SHEET - Reps. Mendes Hd.2453/ Sen. Jehlen Sd.1693)
This bill ensures that families desperate for services first have the opportunity to connect to services at the community level and that court referrals are used only as a last resort. This bill also specifically addresses school-based CRA petitions, which a case file review revealed are often referred to court to address needs that fall within the school’s legal authority, changing the law to require these petitions to be rejected and sent back to be handled at the school level. Lastly this bill takes the needed and equitable step of raising the lower age of jurisdiction for CRA’s to age 12, matching the same minimum age for delinquency petitions and ensuring that young children are kept out of the legal system.
School Policing
An Act Relative to Safer Schools (FACT SHEET - Rep. Sabadosa hd.4297/ Sen. r. kennedy Sd.1005)
Building on the reforms of the policing reform bill of 2020, this bill improves accountability and transparency for school-based policing while providing grants for districts to develop more holistic safety practices that do not rely on school-based police.
Transparency, Accountability and Equity
An act to ensure equitable access to education, including special education services, for all students in massachusetts (FACT SHEET - rep. decker Hd.2933/ sen. creem Sd.1911)
The lack of publicly available data illustrating bias and disproportionate outcomes impacting students on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, disability and English learner status, and the intersection of those identities, has a negative impact on our collective ability to effectively address these disparities and drive positive change. This legislation directs the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to publish data that it already collects in a manner that is analyzed by student subgroups so that it is easier for educators, parents, students, communities and policymakers to use it to improve outcomes for specific groups of students. While data is currently accessible by race, ethnicity, sex, English Learner status, and disability, this bill takes the important added step of making “cross-variable” data accessible, which illuminates the performance of students who fall in multiple or overlapping categories. This level of transparency allows those seeking to create positive change the type of in-depth information necessary to identify student groups that are most vulnerable, most impacted by disparate treatment or most in need of support or intervention.
For previous reform, check out prior efforts: