Terrant Payne, a black student with special needs, was arrested for the first time at his high school in the Round Rock school district after being caught in a fight that an administrator was forced to break up.
Sent to an alternative school, Payne was then arrested a second time for sleeping in class, behavior deemed “disruptive conduct.”
Three credits away from graduating, the 18-year-old has now been in jail for over a month.
Terrant is one of thousands of minority students who are disproportionately disciplined in schools across the nation.
Data from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights shows that black students in grades K-12 are 3.8 times more likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions than their white peers; preschoolers are 3.6 more likely.
Again compared to white students, blacks are 1.9 times more likely to be expelled and 2.3 times more likely to be referred to law enforcement.
New truancy laws in Texas shifted the pressure to schools and parents. Effective Sept. 1, 2015, the policy change added a new requirement that all public schools implement truancy prevention programs.
As school districts adjust accordingly, two local nonprofits are continuing the fight to end school-to-prison pipeline patterns.
Through the system
One of those organizations is the Excellence and Advancement Foundation. Founded by Huston-Tillotson education professor Dr. Courtney Robinson, the group aims to combat the direct and indirect push out of young people from the school system to the juvenile justice and criminal justice system through prevention, intervention and education programs.
“We understand that the school-to-prison pipeline has no bounds when it comes to children of color… [minority students] are disproportionately disciplined in our schools… the data shows that over and over and over again,” Robinson told the Austin Urban Post.
82,231 black students were suspended from Texas K-12 public schools in the 2011-2012 academic year, according to a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, blacks accounted for 13 percent of students in school districts across the state, 23 percent of expulsions and 31 percent of suspensions.
In recent years, out-of-school suspension rates overall have decreased by 20 percent, according to the 2013-2014 Civil Rights Data Collection. But still, discriminatory patterns continue to plague the system.
“I think the biggest problem is that children of color are under too much surveillance. They are watched more than other kids, so it fits that they are perceived as the ones acting out,” Robinson said.
She has been working with the Payne family.
At the time of Terrant’s first arrest, they were amid the process of scheduling a hearing to evaluate his special education needs; trying to put some things in place that would make him more successful at school.
Robinson visits Terrant in jail. “He’s not out yet because his family can’t afford to get him out. I’ve just been telling him he’s not going to be there forever, and that he will graduate from high school and have a life; trying to keep him focused and positive,” she said.
His mother Charmetha Payne said that it’s been awful since her son has been gone, but getting updates from Robinson on his well-being has helped put her at ease.
“They keep me in the loop of what’s going on,” she said. “They let me know how he looks, how he’s doing, things like that. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t otherwise know because I don’t have funds to send to him so that we can make contact over the phone.”
Robinson described the ordeal as a distinctive school-to-prison case, but envisions a success story for Terrant as they work to figure out the best schooling situation for him.
Outside the box
Since 2014, the U.S. Department of Education and Justice has sent guidelines to school districts designed to avert “zero tolerance” discipline policies. Aimed at potentially harmful behavior, these policies have disproportionately impacted minority students.
Many schools across the nation have implemented a model of “restorative discipline,” which consists of holding constructive conversations to facilitate relationships and reconciliation.
Locally, too, foundations are working outside of the system, using “purpose-driven” leadership models to help students think beyond the scope of a classroom.
AMP360 is working to connect communities and create young leaders through social entrepreneurship.
“We want to teach skills. We want to create opportunities for kids from marginalized communities. But we also want to uplift the whole community through whatever it is they are learning,” said co-founder Claire Morel.
Morel said the idea for the organization was conceptualized after noticing that the real issues in Texas exist at the intersection of education and justice. AMP360 openly recognizes that black and brown students are punished at higher rates than their peers.
“A lot of kids fall through the cracks because they are not being stimulated,” said Morel. “In many ways, they are being taught by educators who don’t understand them, their culture or their reality.”
Morel and co-founder Freddy Womack work with middle and high school students on cultivating community-based projects.
“Kids who know they are engaged in something important; who know they matter; who know that what they’re going through matters; who feel like they have an active role in changing the world they live in,” said Morel. “Those are not kids who want to be on the block hanging out doing whatever.”
Similar to Morel’s concept, The Excellence and Advancement Foundation’s Black Leadership Academy, designed for third through 12th-graders, seeks to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of our country’s history.
The goals of the academy are to improve racial identity, academic engagement, college readiness and community engagement, according to their website.
“[We give]… students a space where they feel safe and comforted, because often times there are microaggressions happening in schools that black students have to deal with every single day,” said Robinson.
Chalisa Warren decided to put her fourth grade daughter in Robinson’s program because she wanted to reinforce and emphasize how African history played such an important role in American history.
“I think, as kids get older, they want to become more inquisitive…” said Warren. “If you give them a sense of pride early on, I think they will be more accepting of themselves and others as they [build] their life.”
Warren’s daughter, who is the only minority in her class at the academy, is now is able to think outside of what she reads in school curriculum.
“She can put that into a better perspective because she now has a little bit more of a foundation to know that, at some point, we can insert ourselves here because we were leaders and kings in Africa as well,” Warren said.
Austin Urban Post 
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