Traditional school discipline is particularly challenging and oppressive for youth and their families because disciplinary practices sit at the intersection of the most pressing social problems of the past 40 years. While it is tempting to view traditional school discipline practices as an isolated problem, requiring stand-alone solutions, history tells a very different story. The rise of exclusionary school discipline is inextricably intertwined with both longer term trends including centuries of structural racism, and explicit and implicit racial bias, as well as more recent trends including the rise of increasing economic inequality, the decimation of the social safety net, mass incarceration, and increasing intergenerational poverty and educational inequity. As successes in changing school discipline policies at the Statewide level and in the major urban cores have accumulated, we have recognized both the opportunities and challenges to leveraging these successes into viable, sustainable and successful change. In 2016, the California Statewide School Discipline Action Team recognized how much the school-to-prison pipeline is nurtured in the California Central Valley, which consists of nine counties: Kern, Madera, Fresno, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Sacramento, Tulare, Kings and Merced. As a result of the new focus, in June 2016, the Central Valley Movement Building (CVMB) Coordinating Team was formed. CVMB Coordinating Team includes the Black Parallel School Board, Center for Multicultural Cooperation, Fathers and Families of San Joaquin, and the Dolores Huerta Foundation. These and other groups work to challenge negative and hurtful school discipline practices in the Central Valley that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.
