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124: The City That Kicked Cops Out of Schools and Tried Restorative Practices Instead w/ Andy Kopsa
15 Plays2 years ago
I’m speaking today with freelance journalist Andy Kopsa whose work has appeared seemingly everywhere: The New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Cosmo, and her most recent piece from the December issue of In These Times that we’ll be discussing today - and that you heard an excerpt of in the introduction - is about her investigation of Des Moines Public Schools’ 2021 shift away from the School Resource Officer, or SRO, program and toward investing in restorative justice, it has the incredible title, The City That Kicked Cops Out of Schools and Tried Restorative Practices Instead
Andy had mentioned in a tweet before our recording that “Iowa is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to public education.” That’s to say, so much of what Andy reported in her piece is directly tied to the particular political context of Iowa in the 21st century - as we get into in the episode - failing to address deep dem ographic divisions & whose embrace of endless cynical, dead-end, culture wars has only deepened divisions. Only ⅓ of predominantly older white Iowans live in rural areas, half of the Black population is concentrated in just 4 cities, of which Des Moines is the largest, and nearly 60% of Iowa farmland owners don’t farm. So while Iowa is an increasingly non-white, urban population, our political & cultural identity is wrapped up in the nostalgia of the white rural family farm, a factor which explains the radicalization & consolidation of political power in the Iowa GOP, who hold a majority everywhere Iowans are represented.
A headline from the November elections read, “Iowa's GOP clout in Legislature, Congress most since 1950s”, and you better believe they are governing as such. While national headlines often focus on larger states like Texas & Florida, the education culture war really started here. Iowa is the canary in the coal mine. That’s an appropriate lens we should bring to the conversation at the intersection of racialized policing & punishment & the role it plays in our schools, particularly when communities of Color decide to go another way & invest in restorative practices.
Guest
Andy Kopsa is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in NYTimes, FP, Atlantic, Cosmo, Al Jazeera, Guardian, Playboy, and more.
Resources
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
We can try to undo the harm, but sometimes there's more to it.
00:00:03
Speaker
Just a simple conversation won't get over it.
00:00:06
Speaker
It might take years, it might take days or weeks.
00:00:09
Speaker
But Mr. Musa adds, if we can come to an agreement where kids can say, hey, this happened, we're going to move on from it, we don't have to even speak to each other, but we can finish out the school year and both of us will be successful in our own ways.
00:00:24
Speaker
He told me that's the winner.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 124 of our podcast at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:34
Speaker
My name is Nick Covington and I'm the creative director at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:38
Speaker
This episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Marcelo Vianna Neto, Doron Zinger, and Cassandria Scozofava.
00:00:47
Speaker
Thank you so much for your ongoing support and you can find more about our work at humanrestorationproject.org.
Investigating Des Moines Schools' Shift to Restorative Justice
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm speaking today with freelance journalist Andy Kopsa, whose work has appeared seemingly everywhere.
00:01:01
Speaker
The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Cosmo.
00:01:04
Speaker
And her most recent piece from the December issue of In These Times that we'll be discussing today, and that you heard an excerpt of in the introduction, is about her investigation of Des Moines Public Schools' 2021 shift away from the school resource officer or SRO program
00:01:20
Speaker
and toward investing in restorative justice.
00:01:23
Speaker
It has the incredible title, The City That Kicked Cops Out of Schools and Tried Restorative Practices Instead.
00:01:31
Speaker
Andy had mentioned in a tweet before our recording that Iowa is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to public education.
Iowa's Role in Education Culture Wars
00:01:38
Speaker
That's to say, so much of what Andy reported on in her piece is directly tied to the particular political context of Iowa in the 21st century, failing to address deep demographic divisions and whose embrace of endless, cynical, dead-end culture wars has only deepened divisions.
00:01:57
Speaker
Only one-third of predominantly older white Iowans live in rural areas.
00:02:02
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Half of the black population is concentrated in just four cities, of which Des Moines is the largest, and nearly 60% of Iowa farmland owners don't farm.
00:02:12
Speaker
So while Iowa is an increasingly non-white urban population, our political and cultural identity is wrapped up in the nostalgia of the white rural family farm.
00:02:22
Speaker
a factor which explains the radicalization and consolidation of political power in the Iowa GOP, who hold a majority everywhere Iowans are represented.
Political Power Shifts in Iowa
00:02:33
Speaker
A headline from the November elections read, Iowa's GOP clout in legislature and Congress most since 1950s.
00:02:41
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And you better believe they are governing as such.
00:02:43
Speaker
While national headlines often focus on larger states like Texas and Florida, the education culture war really started here.
00:02:51
Speaker
Iowa is the canary in the coal mine.
00:02:53
Speaker
And that's an appropriate lens we should bring to the conversation at the intersection of racialized policing and punishment and the role it plays in our schools, particularly when communities of color decide to go another way and invest in restorative practices.
00:03:23
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today, Andy Kopsa.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:03:27
Speaker
I am glad to be here.
Des Moines' Unique Approach to SRO Removal
00:03:29
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So the city referred to in the title is Des Moines, Iowa.
00:03:32
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The content of the piece is so powerful.
00:03:34
Speaker
There's so much that I want to get into in our conversation, but let's just start at the beginning with the relevant question that a colleague of mine actually taught as a high school history elective, and that now the National Democratic Party is asking and revisiting our first in the nation caucus status, and that's why Iowa.
00:03:51
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Why not visit and report on
00:03:53
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What's happening in Los Angeles, Oakland, Arlington, Chicago, these other much larger cities who have made similar moves.
00:04:01
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I'm Iowa through and through.
00:04:03
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I was born and raised on a farm in the middle of nowhere that is still there.
00:04:07
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So, you know, everything always leads me home.
00:04:10
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I mean, and I think too that you make a really good point here with your lead and about the first in the nation caucus status, which of course is up in the air.
00:04:18
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But I think that we have a special place or we did have a special place in this sort of national conversation.
00:04:26
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And so Iowa is always where I am.
00:04:28
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It's home, you know, I mean, Iowa's home.
00:04:31
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That is really why, but I think the reason that Des Moines stuck out to me, frankly, was because it's unique in, it's doing things that LA and Chicago didn't.
00:04:41
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So there's a part in the piece where it talks about Chicago and LA kind of going halfway
00:04:47
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and sort of partially removing SROs or partially doing blah, blah, blah.
00:04:52
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But Des Moines was unique in that it did both simultaneously.
00:04:57
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And some of that was by design.
00:04:58
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Some of it was just happenstance.
00:05:00
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And so that was unique in the nation.
00:05:03
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And I wanted to, and I was thrilled to see that that was something that was happening in Iowa because there's precious little good news out of Iowa.
00:05:11
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And this to me was tremendous news.
00:05:13
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Also, and just sort of selfishly, you know, I, you may have read in the piece, I actually was put into a juvenile facility when I was 16.
00:05:22
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And so, you know, there was nothing like this kind of process of restorative practices.
00:05:27
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So it was kind of selfish in that way, but also Des Moines is doing something
00:05:32
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extremely unique, I think, that needs more conversation.
00:05:35
Speaker
And there's, it's interesting because you also had put out in a, in a tweet this morning, you said that Iowa is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to public education.
Iowa's Political and Demographic Transformation
00:05:44
Speaker
So what, what did, what did you mean by that when, when you had Iowa on your mind in that context?
00:05:50
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In that context, I think it's interesting that we hear a lot about the terrible things that, for example, Texas is doing with education or the terrible things that DeSantis is up to with education or insert whatever, you know, anti-trans girls bills, whatever.
00:06:07
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It's like people, Kim Reynolds has been outflanking DeSantis and Abbott.
00:06:13
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What is getting ready to happen in Iowa, and you know this, is that
00:06:17
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they are going to introduce a bill that pushes to defund public education further with voucher bills.
00:06:25
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You know, I think that the canary in the coal mine to me is that Iowa used to be a sort of bellwether, right?
00:06:32
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We used to be a reasonable state.
00:06:34
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Like I'm thinking back in the Robert Ray era where people could kind of turn and look at us and like, oh, we're reasonable folk, whatever.
00:06:43
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Well, we've shifted that now.
00:06:45
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We're no longer necessarily a bellwether, which sort of has a good connotation.
00:06:51
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We're the canary in the coal mine now, right?
00:06:53
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And so with public education, I think that the attacks and the onslaught during the election cycle from the Iowa GOP, they're telegraphing their next move, specifically to DMPS.
00:07:07
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She is very clear about what she wants to do.
00:07:10
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And what she wants to do is destroy public education.
00:07:13
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And, you know, like I said, she's outflanking these other bigger states that are going to get more and more attention.
00:07:20
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And I think it's important that people think about Iowa as much smaller, much more manageable, much easier to see what's going on with education or with any policy issue.
00:07:32
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But the larger states get a lot more kind of attention on that.
00:07:37
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It's like now everything gets filtered through that culture war lens.
00:07:41
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And as the country becomes more polarized, that is reflected in the local state parties too.
00:07:48
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Even though something might not be an Iowa issue, suddenly it becomes an Iowa issue because it's a
00:07:54
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focus of the national conversation, the national culture war, the national election cycle.
00:08:00
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And that's reflected in things like Kim Reynolds had run this ad during the election cycle that said like, Iowans, we get up early, but we're not woke.
00:08:10
Speaker
And it sounds so hollow and artificial, you know, coming out of her, but it's like,
00:08:15
Speaker
It's so it's but it's so emblematic to of of these longer term, I think, demographic shifts in Iowa, particularly like like these urban rural divides.
00:08:24
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And I think that'll be something that we start to unpack when we get into this issue with urban education versus rural and rural.
00:08:32
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And even some of the some of the ideas that that Reynolds and the Iowa GOP have for their voucher programs for all these other kinds of changes that they want to make.
00:08:39
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It's all it's kind of situated in this culture war context.
00:08:43
Speaker
That's not just a political one, but it's a it's one about demographics.
00:08:47
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You know, it's it's very much about.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, go ahead.
00:08:50
Speaker
No, I was just going to say, and it's made up.
00:08:52
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It's absolutely it's garbage.
00:08:54
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It's nonsense.
00:08:55
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It's crazy talk.
00:08:56
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And so the but your point about demographics of.
00:09:00
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you know, when I grew up, everybody I knew, their dad and mom were farmers or worked in the agricultural industry, not big ag, not big ag.
00:09:10
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I'm talking they worked at the co-op, they sold seed, they whatever.
00:09:14
Speaker
But now it's like people drive 50 miles to go to Waterloo from, you know, where I grew up to go to work and come back.
00:09:22
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So it's like this divide doesn't exist anymore.
00:09:25
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Like this notion of,
00:09:28
Speaker
you know, farm people and urban people is garbage and it's poison.
00:09:34
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And I think that it is beneficial to one party only, and that's the GOP.
00:09:40
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More people are of color.
00:09:43
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Marshalltown, which is a nearby district, is incredibly diverse.
00:09:47
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And while these are just pockets, and while obviously Iowa is white as white can be, there is a shift.
00:09:55
Speaker
You know, there is a fundamental shift in these sort of micro-opilises like Marshalltown or Fort Dodge or, you know,
00:10:03
Speaker
these other places.
00:10:05
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Yeah.
00:10:05
Speaker
So I think that rural urban is a real myth.
00:10:08
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It's hard to, you get it.
00:10:09
Speaker
It's hard to explain kind of what's behind that.
00:10:12
Speaker
But I think that it's a lot more fluid.
00:10:14
Speaker
Those divides are not as big as we think.
00:10:18
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And I think that rural and urban in Iowa has become
00:10:22
Speaker
even more of that coded language versus geography, right?
00:10:26
Speaker
I mean, it's like, come on.
00:10:28
Speaker
Again, it's a cultural kind of signal, right?
00:10:30
Speaker
Like you're part of a rural identity, even if you live in a huge suburb of Des Moines.
00:10:37
Speaker
You're still, you know, identify as a rural.
00:10:39
Speaker
Correct, yeah.
00:10:39
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you know, GOP voting person with all, you know, all of the accoutrement that come along with the signaling that identity, even though you live in a suburb that has 100,000 people, you know, but that differentiates you from, you know, say someone who is urban in big scare quotes there, particularly for Des Moines.
Community Involvement in Restorative Practices
00:10:58
Speaker
And so if we bring the context into Des Moines public schools, and I think we can start to talk about Roosevelt in particular, right?
00:11:06
Speaker
They
00:11:06
Speaker
Oh, my God, I guess we should, right?
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
They are a place where the white student population is less than was less than half of the student population.
00:11:16
Speaker
So it's kind of impossible, I think, to disentangle those bigger political discussions that are that are happening between parties and political polarization around.
00:11:26
Speaker
demographics and issues of race and geography and those divisions and both what what had taken place in Des Moines public schools your investigation into Roosevelt in particular and then the I think also then the pushback and the response that the negative critiques which I believe do not necessarily come from
00:11:48
Speaker
the students, the teachers, the people themselves on the ground experiencing it, but are in fact, you know, the result of those external forces viewing people in these, you know, urban school district that has the student population taking control, making these own changes and kind of wanting to sabotage that.
00:12:06
Speaker
So before I get too far down into things, the subheader of the article reads, here's what happens when a school rethinks punishment.
00:12:14
Speaker
So let's just get into what
00:12:16
Speaker
What happened?
00:12:17
Speaker
What did they do?
00:12:17
Speaker
What's the background?
00:12:19
Speaker
Well, interestingly, I mean, so again, I said that Des Moines public schools are kind of unique in this.
00:12:25
Speaker
What happened seemed very sudden.
00:12:27
Speaker
The long story short is that the Des Moines Police Department contract renewal was up for their work in public, you know, in Des Moines public schools and high schools.
00:12:39
Speaker
And they walked away from the contract.
00:12:42
Speaker
And in the end, it was an amicable kind of divorce, but it was something that was sort of in the works before then.
00:12:51
Speaker
So what Des Moines Public Schools did was made a conscious decision to become a, quote, actively anti-racist school district.
00:13:00
Speaker
And so that's the backdrop.
00:13:03
Speaker
So, you know, and I sort of detail this in the
00:13:06
Speaker
in the piece is that while there was always activism and always push toward, you know, hey, we're this minority majority minority district is kind of what people would talk about, is that there was
00:13:21
Speaker
know this push to become you know not only more culturally aware but to hire uh teachers that represent that look like kids right so you hire black latinx get some people in the room so those kind of wheels had already started turning through town hall meetings and things like this that the community was having within itself and then george floyd was brutally murdered in front of our eyes right
00:13:46
Speaker
And so that's when there was this, you know, the summer that Andrea Sohori was arrested, the summer that kids from DMPS really got involved in and really started making the push.
00:14:00
Speaker
toward, no, we're not gonna stand for this.
00:14:04
Speaker
And so this process that had kind of started, this conversation that kind of had started with DNPS had gotten kicked into overdrive.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so that summer of 2020 or whenever it was, there were town hall meetings that were specifically anti-racist town hall meetings.
00:14:19
Speaker
What the takeaway was, Des Moines Public Schools brought in an outside sort of moderator to oversee that process.
00:14:29
Speaker
They brought in stakeholders that were, you know, including students, involving students in the process.
00:14:35
Speaker
What an idea, right?
00:14:37
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:14:38
Speaker
So involving students in the process, families, community organizations, bringing them in and talking to them about George Floyd being murdered.
00:14:47
Speaker
Right.
00:14:48
Speaker
And how that makes the kids of color, black kids feel when they walk into a school and see a police officer and Lyric Sellers, who is amazing.
00:14:57
Speaker
And you should talk to her.
00:14:59
Speaker
You know, she's she said to me, safety is subjective.
00:15:01
Speaker
Right.
00:15:03
Speaker
It's subjective.
00:15:03
Speaker
When I walk in and see a cop in a school, I'm not worried that I'm going to get my brains bashed in because I'm white, right?
00:15:11
Speaker
That's not her maybe lived experience.
00:15:14
Speaker
So all of these conversations were underway and the board and Ahart and this sort of community came together and
00:15:23
Speaker
It was at the end of that summer, it was the overwhelming message was we need to do something different DMPS.
00:15:32
Speaker
We need to.
00:15:34
Speaker
Our kids don't feel safe.
00:15:36
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The families don't feel safe.
00:15:38
Speaker
And it's not just the fighting in schools that's going to happen.
00:15:41
Speaker
Sorry, it's just going to happen.
00:15:42
Speaker
They're kids.
00:15:43
Speaker
You know, kids are jerks.
00:15:45
Speaker
I was a jerk when I was a kid.
00:15:46
Speaker
So I was, I was terrible.
00:15:48
Speaker
So it's going to happen.
00:15:50
Speaker
But the thing that they can control were these armed policemen in the hallway, right?
00:15:55
Speaker
And so that's one part of what happened, is that
00:16:00
Speaker
the data collected from those town halls, and it is data, there is data to support this.
00:16:06
Speaker
It was clear that that was one thing that needed to happen for kids of color, black kids to feel comfortable, and that there was already this sort of restorative social emotional learning work that had been going on sort of in the background
00:16:22
Speaker
since 2018-ish in DMPS.
00:16:26
Speaker
And so what happened then was this sort of inflection point when the cops terminated the contract.
00:16:34
Speaker
It was a shock.
00:16:36
Speaker
They weren't expecting it.
00:16:38
Speaker
And so they were caught on the back foot, Des Moines Public Schools, even though the conversation had sort of started.
00:16:44
Speaker
Hey, maybe police officers, you consider being unarmed or perhaps you consider maybe not being in uniform.
00:16:52
Speaker
And the police were like, no, you know what?
00:16:56
Speaker
We're just going to we're going to cut our losses here and we're going to go away.
00:17:01
Speaker
And so that was like, okay, well, that's fine because that's what we're hearing from our people, but thanks for the notice.
00:17:09
Speaker
So that happened in February, I think of 2021, which was a sort of,
00:17:14
Speaker
which was sort of shocking to, if you listen to as many hours of school board meetings as I have, you will register the shock when that was announced by some of the great people at DMPS who had those conversations with the police.
00:17:32
Speaker
So what happened was that freed up, you know, $750,000.
00:17:35
Speaker
Hey, that's defunding the police, right?
00:17:41
Speaker
For my fiscal conservative friends, that's refunding people's taxpayer dollars and reallocating it to appropriate use.
00:17:50
Speaker
And what that did for DNPS was allowed them to say, okay, we have to implement something immediately now.
00:17:56
Speaker
And so we have to go forward with our plan to implement restorative practices as a proactive, not just reactive, right?
00:18:07
Speaker
So proactive program to not just avoid disciplinary issues, but to start meeting the needs of our kids, right?
00:18:20
Speaker
What happens before they even get in the door?
00:18:21
Speaker
Do they have food?
00:18:22
Speaker
Do they have healthcare?
00:18:23
Speaker
Do they have, do they have,
00:18:26
Speaker
a home, right?
00:18:27
Speaker
So that $750K came in handy when they brought in 20 new
00:18:34
Speaker
That's a huge hire during COVID, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
So it wasn't necessarily planned at that moment, but they met it.
00:18:43
Speaker
They met that moment.
00:18:45
Speaker
They met that sort of moment and brought in RP-trained staff.
00:18:51
Speaker
Urban Dreams provided.
00:18:53
Speaker
I don't know if you're familiar with Urban Dreams, but they're an amazing community organization that has been involved in the historically Black community.
00:19:03
Speaker
in over Sixth Avenue that was already working in the restorative space.
00:19:09
Speaker
So they started partnerships with them.
00:19:11
Speaker
I think Isaiah Knox, who is now state senator-elect, Isaiah Knox is the director of Urban Dream.
00:19:18
Speaker
So they worked with them and also with the International Institute of Restorative Practices, which is the only post-grad university in
00:19:29
Speaker
the United States that teaches this in a master's level.
00:19:34
Speaker
They brought them in to do training.
00:19:37
Speaker
I mean, they went all in, right?
00:19:39
Speaker
So it was a huge scramble.
00:19:41
Speaker
And so the first year didn't look so hot from the outside.
00:19:44
Speaker
And one thing that you've got to that I think is really critical that people understand, and Deb Henry, who is an amazing teacher and was the Des Moines Area Education Association rep at the time, said,
00:19:58
Speaker
The pushback that she was hearing during the first year was from suburban teacher or teachers that were like, oh, you know, sort of like tisking.
00:20:09
Speaker
And it was funny.
00:20:10
Speaker
It didn't make it into the piece, but God love her.
00:20:12
Speaker
She said, well, guess what?
00:20:13
Speaker
You don't get an opinion.
00:20:14
Speaker
Exactly.
00:20:15
Speaker
You don't live in Des Moines.
00:20:17
Speaker
Is this upsetting you?
00:20:18
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:20:19
Speaker
It's going crazy.
00:20:20
Speaker
It's going okay.
00:20:21
Speaker
And the first year was a slog.
00:20:23
Speaker
And it's not all sunshine and roses.
00:20:26
Speaker
It's just simply not.
00:20:28
Speaker
But I was blown away at how that buy-in from the top
00:20:35
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administration to the top like principal shapa is amazing he is an amazing leader to his buy-in at roosevelt that empowered his his staff from teachers to food service to operations folks like it is a truly a group effort and that has been critical so where they're at now
00:21:02
Speaker
from where they were in February 2021 when the cops said, hey, we're leaving, which landed with a thud in the local media.
00:21:11
Speaker
But they're doing a hell of a job.
00:21:14
Speaker
There's problems.
00:21:15
Speaker
There's still calls to police.
00:21:16
Speaker
There always will be.
00:21:18
Speaker
But they're making, they are slow and steady, and it doesn't happen quickly enough for some people.
00:21:26
Speaker
And that
00:21:27
Speaker
is where the exploitation of urban comes in by the GOP, right?
00:21:35
Speaker
You know, they hired 20 new folks, they've allocated
00:21:39
Speaker
I believe they hired 13 additional this year, folks.
00:21:43
Speaker
They do ongoing training.
00:21:45
Speaker
And so I only looked at Roosevelt.
00:21:47
Speaker
And from what I see and from the stats, which again, Iowa, there's stats.
00:21:52
Speaker
Go clickety-clack on your computer and you can pull them up on the Iowa Department of Education website that bears out that some of this is working and it's working well.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I think with any huge cultural shift as this must be, of course it's going to take time.
00:22:10
Speaker
So in order to, especially if we're considering February 2021 is near the end of one school year, you know, no major changes are going to happen from February to May.
00:22:21
Speaker
And yet, like you said, Des Moines was kind of playing the cards that they were dealt.
00:22:27
Speaker
And when I when I put it off the piece and read it on paper here, but I put about as many exclamation points around that 750 K number as I could imagine, because it really is like emblematic of that notion.
00:22:40
Speaker
People criticize using that phrase of, you know, abolishing the police and all those kinds of things.
00:22:45
Speaker
But the notion is that, well, then it's not just that then nothing happens.
00:22:49
Speaker
Right.
00:22:51
Speaker
that money and those resources actually go back into the community to sort out other ways of, you know, of either being proactive in order to prevent future incidents from happening, or they don't have to be reactive in ways that are overly punitive, particularly when we understand the racial outcomes of those things.
00:23:11
Speaker
And you outline all those in the piece.
00:23:12
Speaker
And another part that I had outlined here, because you mentioned the principle,
00:23:16
Speaker
I loved his honesty and his candor in his answer that he gave here about the replacement of SROs with RP has changed in his own thinking.
00:23:24
Speaker
And he said, quote,
00:23:31
Speaker
Because we do have the skills and resources to deescalate situations now.
00:23:36
Speaker
But when you're in the midst of it, you know you have this resource.
00:23:39
Speaker
It's very easy just to ask for the police.
00:23:41
Speaker
So it's like just opening up your toolkit and saying, we can't use the cops anymore.
00:23:46
Speaker
We can't use the cops to arrest kids or then...
00:23:49
Speaker
Once it gets in their hands, it can escalate into the legal system very easily.
00:23:54
Speaker
But now when we have to deal with students on relational terms, when we have to use those other tools in our toolkits, well, then we actually start to reflect back on the previous practices and say, well, that probably wasn't right for me to escalate that to involve an officer and then contribute to consequences that may or may not happen outside of the school system there too.
00:24:17
Speaker
One thing that we kind of can get into here then is the fact that you had actually spent time in these
Observations of Restorative Practices at Roosevelt High School
00:24:23
Speaker
schools.
00:24:23
Speaker
You weren't just reporting from afar.
00:24:25
Speaker
You went and talked to these people.
00:24:26
Speaker
But what I appreciated is that this wasn't just like a one drop in, one and done kind of thing.
00:24:32
Speaker
Can you describe the approach?
00:24:33
Speaker
Because you actually had a longitudinal.
00:24:35
Speaker
You visited two times for a good lengthy amount of time there at Roosevelt.
00:24:40
Speaker
How did you approach that issue?
00:24:42
Speaker
How did that help you understand that?
00:24:44
Speaker
What was going on?
00:24:45
Speaker
Explain to us the students that you talked with.
00:24:47
Speaker
Let's talk about the think tank.
00:24:49
Speaker
Like how is it actually working in those spaces?
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I would have hung out longer if they would have let me.
00:24:56
Speaker
I mean, honestly, I mean, it's when I do these, these kinds of investigations, it's so valuable for me to just be able to observe.
00:25:05
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's actually an honor to be allowed into that space.
00:25:09
Speaker
I consider anytime that anyone allows me to hear their stories and tell their stories, it's a huge honor.
00:25:17
Speaker
And I don't take that lightly.
00:25:19
Speaker
And
00:25:19
Speaker
You know, the interesting thing about being able to go in the spring, which was bananas, because everybody was still wearing masks.
00:25:27
Speaker
It was getting towards graduation time.
00:25:30
Speaker
So it was like this different sort of frenetic pace.
00:25:33
Speaker
And so I was able to establish a rapport with a few of the kids, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
And sort of take my lead from them and be able to meet the community, right?
00:25:48
Speaker
I mean, honestly, I was expecting from some of the reports that I was just going to enter and it was going to be bedlam, right?
00:25:53
Speaker
It was just going to be bananas.
00:25:54
Speaker
It was going to be like, pack, everybody's packing heat, you know, whatever.
00:25:58
Speaker
And it would just, it was just high school, right?
00:26:02
Speaker
So that's not, again, not to say this is a Pollyanna view, but it was very...
00:26:08
Speaker
A frenetic case, I ran around with Mr. Ahmed Moussa, who is out there doing the Lord's work and running around talking to kids.
00:26:17
Speaker
And again, they were still getting their feet underneath them as well.
00:26:21
Speaker
So the RP folks were still getting their feet under them because, again, they had just started.
00:26:27
Speaker
I mean, they weren't even like several months into it.
00:26:29
Speaker
Right.
00:26:30
Speaker
So it was great to go in and be able to see that.
00:26:33
Speaker
I think one young girl that I spoke with, Vanessa, who's highlighted in the piece, you know, and I can't help but bring my personal experience into this.
00:26:43
Speaker
And I'm not I'm not a young black girl.
00:26:45
Speaker
Right.
00:26:45
Speaker
But I but I was a young girl.
00:26:48
Speaker
And to see her, you know, from the spring when she was
00:26:52
Speaker
you know, very trepidatious.
00:26:55
Speaker
I mean, you got to consider that COVID colors the before times and the after times.
00:27:01
Speaker
And with Vanessa, the last time she had been in school was she was in seventh and eighth grade, right?
00:27:06
Speaker
And that was virtual learning.
00:27:09
Speaker
And so she went from a middle school environment
00:27:12
Speaker
to high school.
00:27:14
Speaker
And so she was completely discombobulated, but she talked to me.
00:27:18
Speaker
And so the importance of making that kind of connection and listening to kids where they are, by the time I went and saw, you know, back in the fall,
00:27:29
Speaker
And the transition, you know, and I say it in the piece, I didn't recognize her.
00:27:33
Speaker
I'm like, who is this kid that's so happy to see me?
00:27:35
Speaker
I'm like, what?
00:27:36
Speaker
And she was like, and she started talking and she's like, oh, well, you were talking about your daughter and blah, blah, blah.
00:27:41
Speaker
I'm like, holy crap, this is Vanessa talking.
00:27:44
Speaker
And I think that in the piece, I do take pains to cite actual experts in this field.
00:27:51
Speaker
And I relayed that story of just Vanessa from springtime to fall.
00:27:56
Speaker
to Ann Gregory, who is literally one of the foremost experts in this arena,
00:28:01
Speaker
you know, she was very clear, like not knowing anything about Vanessa.
00:28:07
Speaker
From the outside, what she was able to identify in that kind of growth, aside from whatever personal growth a girl goes through in a few months, was that Mr. Moussa, the think tank, that Shapa, everybody responding with a trauma-informed
00:28:26
Speaker
view versus punitive view with Vanessa allowed her to feel more comfortable in class and go to class, you know, so that they help facilitate that transition.
00:28:41
Speaker
So those tiny little moments in the hallway, those tiny little points of connection, which is literally one of the tiers of RP is like, hey, how are you doing, Vanessa?
00:28:55
Speaker
What's going on?
00:28:56
Speaker
Why are you in the hallway?
00:28:58
Speaker
What's going on?
00:28:58
Speaker
Are you on your way to class?
00:28:59
Speaker
What's going on?
00:29:00
Speaker
Right.
00:29:01
Speaker
Again, if I go back again, I hope that I'm allowed back in a year.
00:29:06
Speaker
I mean, I want to see what happens with Vanessa next, because if this community approach continues to take place and if students are allowed to.
00:29:15
Speaker
agency and understanding in the RP system, you know, I'm excited to see where that kid goes.
00:29:23
Speaker
And I think that that goes with any of the kids I talk to.
00:29:26
Speaker
The time that it takes to report stories like this is supremely frustrating to people.
00:29:31
Speaker
because we all want that quick turn and burn, but you just don't get that kind of perspective on what's going on.
00:29:40
Speaker
You know, things could change drastically and God knows what could happen in the next, you know, whatever.
00:29:47
Speaker
For now, it was a win, right?
00:29:50
Speaker
So it's a big deal working just on a side note, as a journalist myself, I work with a lot of folks who have gone through trauma.
00:29:58
Speaker
I work with a lot of victims of sexual assault.
00:30:00
Speaker
I've worked with people from who survived like, you know, Premier Rouge, you know, so it's like these kids have experienced their own kind of trauma.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's not the same trauma as the assault survivor or the genocide survivor or the
00:30:16
Speaker
whatever, but you come to them
00:30:19
Speaker
and give them the agency and the dignity of their humanity as a reporter.
00:30:26
Speaker
That's my job when I approach these kids.
00:30:29
Speaker
And we're all products of trauma.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's just a sliding scale, I think.
00:30:34
Speaker
And that's the approach that I take when I talk to kids.
00:30:38
Speaker
And that was the everlasting frustration to some of my editors because I was like, I'm not going to push them for what you're asking me to push them for because it's not going to get at the story.
00:30:49
Speaker
So yeah, it was a gift to have that kind of longitudinal space, right?
00:30:55
Speaker
That's not often available.
00:30:57
Speaker
But, you know, I think that more of that kind of reporting is necessary to actually illuminate what's really going on, not just a point in time or not just a one-off soundbite, you know?
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was incredible in the piece because you got to see the growth in those students as the results of these practices.
00:31:18
Speaker
And then just to hear in their own words, too, like here were in Vanessa's words, right?
00:31:23
Speaker
The anxiety that she had of coming back to the chaos, you know, the perceived chaos, right?
00:31:28
Speaker
It might have been fine from everybody else, but for her, it's like overwhelming.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, going to a high school, shit, I mean, I had 70 kids in my high school class, right?
00:31:39
Speaker
Right.
00:31:39
Speaker
I mean, and that was the largest class to go through.
00:31:42
Speaker
And high school's intimidating.
00:31:44
Speaker
She had 500 kids in her class coming from two years of COVID learning.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:49
Speaker
So it is chaos to go back to that, right?
00:31:52
Speaker
So what I think is awesome about the restorative approach then is it doesn't take that trauma and then say, well,
00:32:00
Speaker
The way that we're going to deal with this is through exclusion and through punishment because your behavior in the way that you are dealing with that trauma, the way that you're communicating that to the world doesn't fit into the norms of school and the norms of the way that we expect the average person who hasn't experienced trauma, which of course now...
00:32:19
Speaker
If you have any kind of restorative mindset, you realize, right, again, that sliding scale that you referenced, but those hard and fast punitive policies are made for some ideal person in mind, right?
00:32:29
Speaker
But the restorative practices acknowledges that, right, not only is that behavior communication, but
00:32:34
Speaker
We can mitigate, right, not only the trauma-based approach is we can not only mitigate that behavior, but we can help that person kind of grow and become integrated back into the learning community of school, back into the communities outside of school.
00:32:49
Speaker
And the people that are going to do that work are not going to come from without.
00:32:52
Speaker
So, for example, one of the things that we, you know, we learned as a country as the result of the Ferguson Black Lives Matter protests is, right,
00:33:00
Speaker
the police in Ferguson, the vast majority of them did not come from the community of Ferguson.
00:33:04
Speaker
Of course not.
00:33:05
Speaker
So it's so easy to punish and police people that you don't know that you don't identify with, because the law is something that you can do to them without having to feel the social consequences of it.
00:33:19
Speaker
Right.
00:33:19
Speaker
But
00:33:20
Speaker
It's impossible if you're coming from that community to say like, well, the people that we're policing and putting in jail are me.
00:33:27
Speaker
They're my people.
00:33:27
Speaker
They're my neighbors.
00:33:28
Speaker
They're my cousins.
00:33:29
Speaker
They're my neighbors' kids.
00:33:31
Speaker
They're my children.
00:33:32
Speaker
They're my 10-year-old, right?
00:33:33
Speaker
It's like, what?
00:33:35
Speaker
So then the people who are coming in to lead that restorative, the restorative practices, like Mr. Musa that you mentioned in the piece, is from the community and spends time with them outside of school.
00:33:45
Speaker
You mentioned playing pickup ball down the street, et cetera.
00:33:49
Speaker
There's a change of tenor, I bet, coming into the schoolhouse door and taking on that role.
00:33:55
Speaker
But the relationship is there because he knows for those kids to succeed outside of the school space and inside the school space, he's going to have to work to maintain that relationship.
00:34:04
Speaker
And of course, that work is messier.
00:34:06
Speaker
It takes a lot longer, but it's more rewarding in the long run for kids.
00:34:12
Speaker
communities, for schools, for individuals, then exclusionary and punitive a bit, which just takes that trauma and bottles it up and tries to push it away somewhere else, where then we know, you know, then those students may be more likely to experience drug and alcohol addiction, to experience violence and sexual abuse.
00:34:29
Speaker
And then it just cycles into the community where then they become, right, they become the people who do those things to other people too.
00:34:36
Speaker
So it's like,
00:34:36
Speaker
short circuits that whole trauma loop in the process, which is why I think this is so powerful.
00:34:42
Speaker
And I think too, one of the responses that I started to see on social media once the piece came out was a tweet from a former Roosevelt student who said,
00:34:52
Speaker
That's my high school.
00:34:53
Speaker
This is amazing.
00:34:54
Speaker
There's no place for cops in schools.
00:34:56
Speaker
Former Grandview professor and friend of our organization, Kevin Gannon, said, my kids go to this school.
00:35:02
Speaker
The staff there is awesome.
00:35:03
Speaker
They really walk the walk.
00:35:05
Speaker
What has the reception been broadly from when the piece came out?
00:35:09
Speaker
I want to touch on one thing before we move on.
00:35:12
Speaker
Because the thing that is important, and I think that it will be important to you as an educator who's experienced some bad stuff, right?
00:35:22
Speaker
But let's get clear, right?
00:35:24
Speaker
Our teachers have experienced trauma.
00:35:27
Speaker
Our teachers, especially, I mean, across the country,
00:35:30
Speaker
but they are beaten to a pulp through COVID.
00:35:33
Speaker
I'm sorry, they just are, right?
00:35:36
Speaker
They're targeted, they're sinister agendas.
00:35:39
Speaker
And what RP does is absolutely take into account the health and well-being, mental health, well-being of staff, of teachers, of making sure that, you know,
00:35:53
Speaker
We know this work is hard and it's extra hard.
00:35:57
Speaker
So we're going to support you teachers.
00:36:01
Speaker
What does that look like, right?
00:36:03
Speaker
So I think that that's an important part of the RP way of working is that it is about the kids, but you want to make sure that you take care of
00:36:12
Speaker
you know, not just the teachers, but all your staff from bus drivers to custodians to blah, blah, blah.
00:36:18
Speaker
So I just wanted to make sure that that is in there as well.
00:36:21
Speaker
That is absolutely part of what Roosevelt does.
00:36:24
Speaker
And it's part of this year's, you know, they have goal setting.
00:36:27
Speaker
Part of this year's goals is getting, what do the teachers need?
00:36:30
Speaker
Is it, it sounds stupid, but is it a, is it a book group?
00:36:33
Speaker
What are we doing?
00:36:34
Speaker
You know, or do you just want to be left alone?
00:36:36
Speaker
What do you want?
00:36:37
Speaker
What can we do for you to make your life better here?
00:36:40
Speaker
Because this is hard stuff and it's going to get harder.
00:36:44
Speaker
In my mind, I think oftentimes the structures and systems of schools that alienate and isolate kids have the same impact on adults, too.
00:36:53
Speaker
So I would say that a practice probably isn't restorative if it makes the situation for the adults equally chaotic and stressful, if it increases their stress and the chaos, etc.,
00:37:04
Speaker
You know, then that probably isn't restorative either.
00:37:07
Speaker
So it's like the purpose is that it restores the relationship.
00:37:11
Speaker
It restores that, right, that connectivity, that community, both to the adults and the kids in the building alike.
00:37:18
Speaker
And that's the part that makes it restorative.
00:37:21
Speaker
Right, right.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so it's what some people experience in their schools as a, you know, it's the same kind of thing with like a teacher, maybe experiencing something punitive.
00:37:31
Speaker
You know, I don't know if you know anything about that, but, you know, experiencing anything punitive from their administration versus, you know, it's the same thing, to your point.
00:37:41
Speaker
And but that doesn't mean there aren't guardrails.
00:37:44
Speaker
That doesn't mean there isn't accountability.
00:37:48
Speaker
This kind of dovetails into the response.
00:37:50
Speaker
By and large, it's been a good response.
00:37:52
Speaker
The biggest critics, I was kind of on tenterhooks about how Lyric was going to see it.
00:37:57
Speaker
She's like, this is great.
00:37:58
Speaker
And the school, you know, I've gotten some good feedback because, you know, I'm always concerned about how I represent people.
00:38:04
Speaker
and they were like this seems like it's getting at what we're trying to do so it was like this very sort of stoic reserve good job so i took that as a good as a good response and i think it's getting shared a lot and and i think it it's kind of it kind of surprised me i don't know that it is getting such a big pickup but i guess it speaks to people's desire to see something different happening
00:38:29
Speaker
you know, just for me as part of my process too, I do try to engage with folks who try to engage in as honest brokers feedback.
00:38:39
Speaker
One thing that I do think one response I got was like, you know, the restorative justice paradigm versus restorative practices.
00:38:46
Speaker
Restorative justice is often in the carceral system where it's adults who have to be, you know, where there is a very clear
00:38:53
Speaker
victim of violence or whatever, and separating that out from what restorative practice school are.
00:39:00
Speaker
So, I mean, I think that there's a lot of education that still needs to happen.
00:39:04
Speaker
And that was a very valid feedback.
00:39:06
Speaker
It's like,
00:39:07
Speaker
But what are we focusing on the victim?
00:39:10
Speaker
There's a lot of language that still needs to be talked about within, you know, the system.
00:39:14
Speaker
I think I think it's perceived as a lot more sunshine and roses than I thought it would be.
00:39:20
Speaker
I mean, there's still issues, you know, and I think I've gotten some feedback from parents of middle school kids.
00:39:27
Speaker
And I think middle school is a different animal.
00:39:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:39:31
Speaker
It always is.
00:39:32
Speaker
By far.
00:39:33
Speaker
And I would love to, and I'm, and I'm open to speaking with them because I think their experience is valid.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I do think, but it is a very different animal than, than Roosevelt high school.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, and something that is a positive aspect of school systems as well.
00:39:46
Speaker
I think regarding the middle school situation, I think it's interesting because perhaps there should be an onboarding or transition.
Challenges and Criticism of Restorative Approaches
00:39:54
Speaker
Like, hey, if we know these restorative practices work at the high school level and those students are going to eventually become high schoolers, what are we doing to support those restorative practices and scaffold them down the line?
00:40:06
Speaker
So that way,
00:40:07
Speaker
middle school students can become maybe student-led practitioners of that work by the time they become in high school.
00:40:13
Speaker
Like how far down the line does that then go where we can say middle schoolers become high schoolers and how far down you have to go to start to support and scaffold that work to quote-unquote work at the high school.
00:40:26
Speaker
But I also wonder if there isn't a role then in the long-term
00:40:29
Speaker
plan for this to have those younger kind of identify some student leaders.
00:40:34
Speaker
Particularly, I would lean on kids who would often be the ones who would, you know, get in trouble and be been pushed more of those boundaries and those envelopes and kind of knight them as the would be, you guys are going to become the leaders in high school.
00:40:48
Speaker
Right.
00:40:48
Speaker
So it's like, how can we wrap the supports around you and train you up to become a restorative practices student leader by the time you get into the high school?
00:40:56
Speaker
And then that problem maybe takes care of itself.
00:40:59
Speaker
If you can see the transformation of these students who were, you know, quote unquote, the troublemakers when they were in middle school and then become the student leaders by the time they're in high school, I think that's a place for incredible growth.
00:41:09
Speaker
You had mentioned the it's not all sunshine and rainbows aspect of this.
00:41:12
Speaker
And I think we would be remiss if we didn't talk about some of the criticism of restorative practices as well.
00:41:18
Speaker
So did you hear anything either on the ground or what have you heard either before or since?
00:41:23
Speaker
What are their origins?
00:41:24
Speaker
Do you think they hold up?
00:41:25
Speaker
What's kind of your feel on that?
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
I think, well, first, just on the middle school thing, that is part of DMPS's long-term.
00:41:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:33
Speaker
It just makes sense.
00:41:34
Speaker
So I wouldn't say that.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker
So again, it's, you know, they do have a projection and goals over the next few years.
00:41:42
Speaker
So, you know, they are, I think that maybe the 13 hires that I might be speaking, I would have to check, but I do believe they are moving this into the middle schools.
00:41:51
Speaker
And again, you know,
00:41:53
Speaker
That I think is critical.
00:41:56
Speaker
And I think that there's already some work in some elementaries.
00:42:00
Speaker
But again, that's just on that front.
00:42:02
Speaker
So that is part of their yearly planning is like, we're going to systemically try to roll this out.
00:42:09
Speaker
It's just going to take time.
00:42:10
Speaker
And I know that's hard.
00:42:11
Speaker
So some of the pushback too, I think one of the things that is valid is that RP does not
00:42:19
Speaker
it's not a cure-all.
00:42:20
Speaker
It's not.
00:42:21
Speaker
And one of the things that was critical, the key is, is that it's restorative practices as implemented at Roosevelt High School, that has to be restored, or it has to be employed with fidelity, right?
00:42:38
Speaker
And with consistency.
00:42:40
Speaker
You can't
00:42:42
Speaker
You can use one aspect, like you can use the circle, right, as sort of a restorative model, but that doesn't work in a silo.
00:42:50
Speaker
You have to have that check and connect at the door.
00:42:53
Speaker
So a lot of pushback, to use one example, even within the Roosevelt community was there was this uptick in fighting or the perception of fighting towards the end of the school year in 2020.
00:43:08
Speaker
what, 2021, after the program had only started, right?
00:43:12
Speaker
And so there was this new fighting policy that came into effect in December
00:43:18
Speaker
by DMPS as a response to this perceived uptick in fighting.
00:43:26
Speaker
And so they implemented this sort of three strikes you're out, which sort of goes in conflict with RP.
00:43:33
Speaker
But this was at the end of the school year and, you know, Ahart's term was wrapping up and whatever.
00:43:41
Speaker
Right.
00:43:42
Speaker
So there was sort of a knee jerk response to implement something that seemed kind of to go counter to it to stop gap, stop gap.
00:43:52
Speaker
But that's because it just got started.
00:43:54
Speaker
Right.
00:43:54
Speaker
But like anything, it has to be, again, employed with fidelity and with
00:44:01
Speaker
So it has to be, and I will be candid, I think it was a change in Roosevelt leadership, I think when Principal Chapa took over, that a lot of staff and even students said to me they felt a shift because he was
00:44:16
Speaker
he bought into it you know he believes in rp and empowers his folks but before then sort of towards the end of the year um it was kind of touch and go and deb henry sort of spoke to that i don't think it made it into the piece but she said it was sort of like we had to get the right people in place and so even teachers were like we do not have the right people in the rooms right now and so okay
00:44:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
And so the teachers were sort of, you know, pushing back a little towards the end of the year, even though they were at an overall good, they were feeling good about it.
00:44:50
Speaker
They were like, hey, listen, man, we got to get people.
00:44:52
Speaker
So there was, there's growing pains.
00:44:54
Speaker
I think, too, that there's this notion that there is an accountability, which is nonsense.
00:44:59
Speaker
Right.
00:45:00
Speaker
It's like, you know what?
00:45:01
Speaker
The cops still get called.
00:45:02
Speaker
The cops, you know, I spoke with Jonathan, who was arrested, like maybe three days after I left Roosevelt.
00:45:09
Speaker
It's like there's still accountability.
00:45:11
Speaker
And so I think it's sort of this idea that, oh, we're just going to let kids run the show.
00:45:18
Speaker
And it's like, no, that's not true.
00:45:20
Speaker
It's not, it's not completely true.
00:45:22
Speaker
We're just, we're listening to them, but they don't, you know, it's not, it is a very systematic approach.
00:45:29
Speaker
Can I interject here real quick?
00:45:30
Speaker
Sorry.
00:45:30
Speaker
I just want to say to you, and it perhaps a shifting definition of accountability, because I think.
00:45:34
Speaker
Right.
00:45:35
Speaker
It's a conversation that we've had on our end on, say, on the grading side, where rather than, say, if a student turns in work late, right, you wouldn't give them a zero.
00:45:45
Speaker
And a lot of people say that not giving a zero is not holding them accountable.
00:45:49
Speaker
Well, our counter to that would say,
00:45:50
Speaker
Holding them accountable is just getting them to do the work in the first place.
00:45:53
Speaker
Making them do their job, right?
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:55
Speaker
So it's like, okay, what is holding them more accountable than saying, no, if we think this learning is important and this is something you have to do, it's not holding you accountable just to say, okay, you can skip that one and move on, right?
00:46:06
Speaker
Take the zero and move on.
00:46:07
Speaker
Like, no, we think it's so important that you actually need to learn this.
00:46:10
Speaker
So it's not an option for you to not do it.
00:46:13
Speaker
In the same way that I think on the behavior side, I think it's not accountability just to say like, oh, we're just going to push you through this system now that kind of alienates, isolates, puts you in proximity to the legal system, et cetera, et cetera, just because we don't want to deal with you.
00:46:28
Speaker
I can't imagine a more
00:46:30
Speaker
holding students more accountable than you mentioned in the piece, say, writing and reflecting on the things that they had done.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, in the think tank.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah, in the think tank, right?
00:46:38
Speaker
Internalizing and then making amends and reparations and talking to, you know, the adults, the students, you know, your peers that you're having beef and issues with.
00:46:48
Speaker
And then, like, that's the whole issue of restoration is,
00:46:51
Speaker
actually overcoming those barriers and those obstacles, reflecting on that behavior so that you don't engage in it in those negative things again, and then building relationships with people to ensure that it doesn't happen in the future.
00:47:02
Speaker
Like that to me is true accountability, not a particular punishment or following a particular system because it makes adults or outsiders feel good.
00:47:11
Speaker
And you had mentioned that's where a lot of those criticisms come from as well, is that
00:47:15
Speaker
I think there definitely is back to those sort of racialized notions of crime and punishment and crime and criminality of who gets punished and who gets entered into the criminal justice system.
00:47:27
Speaker
When you have a majority non-white school like Roosevelt take those community issues into their own hands and say, like, we're not going to feed our kids into that system anymore anymore.
00:47:38
Speaker
We're going to try something different than, you know, people in the in the majority vast majority white suburbs then say, oh, well, that's not accountability.
00:47:45
Speaker
You're not punishing those students.
00:47:47
Speaker
You're not doing those things.
00:47:48
Speaker
And then you turn around and look at what their white high schools look like.
00:47:51
Speaker
And you say, well, how many arrests do you have?
00:47:53
Speaker
How many of those?
00:47:54
Speaker
Right.
00:47:54
Speaker
What what is what is the racialized policing look like in your context?
00:47:58
Speaker
Right.
00:47:58
Speaker
And you say, oh, yeah, well, you know, it's it's a the shoes on the other foot now and now you don't want to reflect on your own stuff.
00:48:04
Speaker
Right.
00:48:04
Speaker
So I think that is super interesting, too.
00:48:06
Speaker
I think to kind of transition here, I want to know you had told me originally that the original draft was over 10,000 words.
00:48:16
Speaker
and had to be whittled down to about half of that which is 10 pages with the wonderful um you know photography that you're able to get yeah mike is a great photographer yeah i could imagine reading this and wait his kid his kid mike the photographer his kid went to roosevelt so he was he was like yeah it's old home week so but yeah years years ago yeah no that's i mean it's just it's
00:48:37
Speaker
It's community.
00:48:39
Speaker
That's it.
00:48:40
Speaker
Right.
00:48:40
Speaker
Like you have a buy and you have an interest.
00:48:42
Speaker
You don't want to see those kids, you know, entered into a system that's going to treat them, you know, racially different than anyone else.
00:48:48
Speaker
So 10K.
00:48:49
Speaker
Right.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:49
Speaker
To return to the word count here.
00:48:51
Speaker
I want to know what got left of the cutting room floor.
00:48:54
Speaker
What what would you have included in the cops a cut that didn't make it into the in these times piece?
Impact of Iowa's Political Climate on Education
00:49:00
Speaker
Well, there was a lot of criticism, thoughtful criticism of our governor.
00:49:06
Speaker
What's her name?
00:49:07
Speaker
You know, a lot of very specific Iowa stuff and the specific pressures that, you know, not just Iowa teachers and not just Iowa kids, but
00:49:17
Speaker
my God, our health care system, right?
00:49:19
Speaker
And the punishing, I could not make a point of how irresponsible Governor Kim Reynolds was during the COVID crisis in school, right?
00:49:32
Speaker
Punitive actions taken toward communities of color that are disproportionately impacted with her anti-masking mandate, kids with disabilities and medically fragile children,
00:49:44
Speaker
Um, it's policy violence is what you call it.
00:49:47
Speaker
Metting out this policy violence against anti-trans.
00:49:50
Speaker
There was some of that in there.
00:49:52
Speaker
I talked to the kids and the teachers about what happens on the Hill and that does filter down to them.
00:49:58
Speaker
They do know.
00:49:59
Speaker
What were they saying?
00:50:00
Speaker
I want to, what, what did, what were their comments?
00:50:02
Speaker
I mean, you know, when I was talking to their sort of, uh, workers are like, well, who cares who plays basketball?
00:50:09
Speaker
Let's just play.
00:50:10
Speaker
It's like we're writers, right?
00:50:11
Speaker
It's like, who cares?
00:50:12
Speaker
This anti-trans bill that was signed with such glee as these kids were trying to make it through another day of school, it filters down because it comes through the adults.
00:50:28
Speaker
It comes through every aspect of life.
00:50:32
Speaker
And, you know, not to take away from, you know, I pointed out some of the direct work
00:50:37
Speaker
racist policies, you know, the de facto redlining bill through anti-sectionate housing, like giving agency to landlords to refuse public housing vouchers.
00:50:51
Speaker
That impacts the community and the rural community, by the way.
00:50:56
Speaker
You're going to see grandma out on the street.
00:50:58
Speaker
But anyway, so that policy violence, that attack of students, that direct attack
00:51:06
Speaker
that Reynolds did, like in the wake of the young boy, 15-year-old Lopez, it took her a week to respond to that shooting when that young boy was murdered out front of East.
00:51:18
Speaker
Took her a week to respond to that.
00:51:21
Speaker
And I pointed that out in the piece was that, and she didn't even respond to it except when she was giving a bunch of American Rescue Plan Act, taxpayer, U.S. funded Democrat bought and paid for funds to Des Moines,
00:51:36
Speaker
airport when some sentient reporter said, hey, any comment on that shooting?
00:51:42
Speaker
Oh, our schools are failing our kids.
00:51:45
Speaker
You know what, Kim?
00:51:47
Speaker
And so a lot of that didn't make it into it because that, I don't care what you say, that impacts kids.
00:51:55
Speaker
It rolls down literal guilt.
00:51:57
Speaker
So it was a lot of this nonsense policy violence.
00:52:02
Speaker
It's not nonsense.
00:52:03
Speaker
It has real world impact.
00:52:06
Speaker
And that was crammed into a very small section that had to be edited out that I will be happy to share.
00:52:11
Speaker
But a lot of statistics.
00:52:14
Speaker
So national statistics about, you know, after Columbine, we didn't have cops in schools really until after Columbine.
00:52:23
Speaker
And so what have we seen?
00:52:25
Speaker
Statistically, kids are getting murdered left, right and right at school.
00:52:30
Speaker
And it's not not typically by a bunch of young black kids.
00:52:34
Speaker
It's a bunch of young white kids with access to guns and the governor sat at the desk happily signing a Second Amendment restoration bill.
00:52:42
Speaker
Right.
00:52:42
Speaker
So it's like it's a lot of these things I tried to pull out of.
00:52:47
Speaker
And so this goes back to that Iowa is sort of first in the nation status, which is still kind of like would be the best thing for that to go away.
00:52:55
Speaker
That was kind of couched in that.
00:52:56
Speaker
It's like you see the issues.
00:52:59
Speaker
that they are targeting and that are targeting communities of color in Iowa that figures into education.
Hope for Change Through Iowa's Youth
00:53:08
Speaker
It just it does and the voucher bills.
00:53:10
Speaker
So a lot of that made it and then a lot of very specific data because I love me some data about how disproportionately girls, black girls, first and foremost,
00:53:22
Speaker
but girls specifically who were being arrested in school.
00:53:27
Speaker
And again, I mentioned that I was a 16 year old that ended up in a locked facility.
00:53:32
Speaker
I was one of those kids who ended up in the system and I'm a white kid from a teeny tiny farming community.
00:53:41
Speaker
You did mention in the piece that an ACLU report found that black girls in Iowa were nine times more likely than white girls to be arrested.
00:53:50
Speaker
Did you know that, yeah, do you know that Iowa outflanks a lot of the world in jailing, not only kids, but in jailing people in general?
00:54:00
Speaker
I have no idea.
00:54:00
Speaker
Proportionally.
00:54:01
Speaker
Yeah, oh God, stats, right?
00:54:03
Speaker
So, but that all goes back to, again, sort of my interest in Iowa is that Iowa is an unfortunate outlier in the fact that, you know, we like to talk about farms and farmers, but we have more inmates.
00:54:17
Speaker
than farms, right?
00:54:18
Speaker
We have more prisons being built.
00:54:20
Speaker
So there was a lot of sort of backgrounding going on.
00:54:24
Speaker
There was a lot of attention, you know, because I went into this as a young girl who had gone through, you know, had been actually cuffed and thrown into a cop car and terrified and arrested for, you know, DUI at 16.
00:54:37
Speaker
I don't have any problem sharing that.
00:54:40
Speaker
The disproportionate way that we as girls are impacted
00:54:45
Speaker
And to see it play out in Des Moines, I'm like, what in the, it was like 200 some percent jump over this period of time.
00:54:52
Speaker
A lot of that.
00:54:53
Speaker
So that was, you know, my original intent was to examine how it impacted girls just sort of spread out there.
00:54:59
Speaker
So a lot of that was cut just because it became a different story, a more broadly, a more broad narrative.
00:55:08
Speaker
So a lot of that.
00:55:09
Speaker
And then just a lot of real legislative,
00:55:14
Speaker
policy nerd type stuff that was being done in Iowa specifically.
00:55:18
Speaker
All that builds the, it builds that important context that we got to a little bit at the beginning, people to just kind of understand holistically, right, this situation in Iowa where, you know, you have this GOP trifecta, you have this demographic shift of a
00:55:35
Speaker
largely aging, rural, you know, Republican population mixed with a huge growing, but increasingly compact in the sense of geography or compact urban, non-white, largely, you know, liberal population, a much younger population too.
00:55:53
Speaker
So I think I take a lot of solace in the fact too that there's going to be generations of people coming out of schools like Roosevelt and all the Des Moines high schools.
00:56:02
Speaker
And as those programs begin,
00:56:04
Speaker
scaffold down into the middle school and elementary school level who then are going to go out into the world and think that the restorative practices are the norm and that policing in schools is not.
00:56:14
Speaker
And so they're going to be the people to lead the change in the future too.
00:56:17
Speaker
I mean, I don't know, we don't have time to go into Lyric Cellars, but she might have to be someone that we talk to.
00:56:22
Speaker
You should talk to her.
00:56:23
Speaker
That we have to talk to because she is one of those activists who kind of got the ball rolling on this.
00:56:28
Speaker
And my understanding now as a college student is still engaged
00:56:32
Speaker
I'm firmly in that work.
00:56:33
Speaker
ISU is doing some great work there, too.
00:56:35
Speaker
So, I mean, anyway, but where she's going to school, you know?
00:56:39
Speaker
Yes, I think, yeah, like there's just a generation of young Iowans who are excited and enthusiastic and engaged.
00:56:46
Speaker
And angry.
00:56:47
Speaker
And angry.
00:56:48
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:48
Speaker
And justifiably angry.
00:56:50
Speaker
I'm sorry, but you get to be justifiably.
00:56:53
Speaker
I mean, that is okay.
00:56:55
Speaker
Use that.
00:57:13
Speaker
Right.
00:57:14
Speaker
More liberal in their social views, more tolerant of of, you know, LGBTQ peers and other people more more tolerant and more aware of, you know, the disproportionate impacts of all these different ideas and systems.
00:57:29
Speaker
Right.
00:57:30
Speaker
So I guess I take solace in the fact then that, like, they are leading the charge here in the.
00:57:36
Speaker
In taking control of their own community restoration and then in the process of that, building a model for what students are going to expect to see when their own kids go to school, a model that they'll expect to see in the rest of the world.
00:57:49
Speaker
And they can prove that to, you know, the rest of Iowa for the rest of the country and become a model, you know, for what that looks like.
00:57:58
Speaker
I think so.
00:57:59
Speaker
But I will push back on that once.
00:58:01
Speaker
They shouldn't have to have that job.
00:58:03
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:58:03
Speaker
They should not have to have that job, especially young black girls, young black folks.
00:58:09
Speaker
They shouldn't have to try to bring all the rest of us along.
00:58:13
Speaker
And I'm afraid, you know, I'm afraid they're going to leave.
00:58:16
Speaker
Right.
00:58:17
Speaker
Why are why why are we staying?
00:58:19
Speaker
They're passing again this policy violence.
00:58:22
Speaker
Why are they going to stay?
00:58:24
Speaker
Why are they going to stay?
00:58:25
Speaker
And so, you know, it should not be on them.
00:58:28
Speaker
It makes me nuts because it's like they shouldn't have to be the ones that have to do this.
00:58:32
Speaker
So so we need transparent, almost white folks like us who are from Iowa, who have a vested interest to to truly just own our privilege and understand it's not their job.
00:58:45
Speaker
How can we help?
00:58:46
Speaker
How can we help?
00:58:47
Speaker
How can I help you?
00:58:49
Speaker
Is it me shutting up and listening to you?
00:58:51
Speaker
Yes, fine.
00:58:52
Speaker
I will do that.
00:58:53
Speaker
Can I tell your story because I have a platform?
00:58:56
Speaker
Because I'm a white lady, old and grizzled as I am?
00:59:01
Speaker
Yes, I will do that.
00:59:02
Speaker
Right?
00:59:03
Speaker
Kudos to the adults in these systems who are, you know, leading the charge and kind of taking that model.
00:59:08
Speaker
And then shame on the political leaders who are actively trying to sabotage, you know, those movements as well, certainly.
00:59:15
Speaker
And it's the people in positions of power that have to speak out.
00:59:19
Speaker
We need the white folks in state government to start using their platform in a more forceful way.
00:59:28
Speaker
And you can't fight crazy with being quiet.
00:59:33
Speaker
To kind of wrap things up here, I had asked you to think about a part of the piece that you maybe found the most compelling or that exemplified that work the most and have you read it in your own words.
00:59:45
Speaker
And maybe we can explain a little bit why that is.
00:59:47
Speaker
And that could probably wrap us up on a bit of a high note here.
00:59:50
Speaker
Would you mind taking a look at that?
00:59:52
Speaker
Oh, my.
00:59:53
Speaker
I would be interested in what stuck out to you.
00:59:54
Speaker
But I think that when I was speaking to Ahmed, Mr. Musa, he said, we can try to undo the harm, but sometimes there's more to it.
01:00:04
Speaker
Just a simple conversation won't get over it.
01:00:07
Speaker
It might take years.
01:00:08
Speaker
It might take days or weeks.
01:00:10
Speaker
But Mr. Musa adds, if we can come to an agreement where kids can say, hey, this happened,
01:00:16
Speaker
We're going to move on from it.
01:00:18
Speaker
We don't have to even speak to each other, but we can finish out the school year and both of us will be successful in our own ways.
01:00:25
Speaker
He told me that's the winner.
01:00:27
Speaker
And that's that subtle sort of space.
01:00:30
Speaker
It's like this doesn't have to look like everybody shakes hands and walks away friends.
01:00:36
Speaker
That's not what this is about.
01:00:37
Speaker
This is about getting kids through the day.
01:00:40
Speaker
And it's about providing wraparound services.
01:00:42
Speaker
Do they have food?
01:00:43
Speaker
Do they have a home?
01:00:45
Speaker
And that's all part of this.
01:00:48
Speaker
So, I mean, that really stuck out to me as sort of emblematic.
01:00:52
Speaker
It's that tiny victory that adds up over time.
01:00:58
Speaker
And that's not comfortable for a lot of people because they want to see big, splashy change.
01:01:04
Speaker
But I just thought it was so like, yeah, you know, this getting a kid through a day sometime is the best possible outcome because then there's a chance at
01:01:15
Speaker
there being a next day, right?
01:01:17
Speaker
And so I think that really stuck out to me.
01:01:20
Speaker
Well, I think one of the other things too that was interesting to me and we haven't spoken about was Yonathan had such a spark when we talked about history.
01:01:28
Speaker
I did highlight that.
01:01:29
Speaker
That to me was incredible.
01:01:31
Speaker
I think especially in the, I'll try to find it and try to emphasize it here, because I think what's incredible about that is if we think, yeah, here you go.
01:01:39
Speaker
You say, I asked Jonathan, who was a student who was in the think tank, and you had said that he had been arrested shortly after.
01:01:45
Speaker
He actually wasn't.
01:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, he wasn't in the think tank.
01:01:48
Speaker
No, he actually just got, he actually just got arrested.
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:50
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
01:01:51
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:52
Speaker
Well, yeah, you say, I asked Jonathan what his favorite subject is.
01:01:55
Speaker
He answers immediately, history.
01:01:57
Speaker
He loves learning about World War II and Vietnam, Korea.
01:02:00
Speaker
He thinks his maternal grandfather served in World War II, and he says uncles fought in other wars.
01:02:06
Speaker
And what I had put here, I said, here is a subject that is underrated and underrepresented in the system.
01:02:13
Speaker
As we, you know, as again, let's put it in a policy focus.
01:02:16
Speaker
CRT?
01:02:17
Speaker
Right.
01:02:17
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:02:18
Speaker
It's part of the laws against so-called divisive concepts.
01:02:21
Speaker
But then also the bigger pushes that our governor has been really proud of in STEM.
01:02:25
Speaker
And, you know, the history is not a part of building that context for STEM.
01:02:30
Speaker
And yet here is a student who, you know, is at the margins of the system, who is involved in the legal system here, too.
01:02:39
Speaker
And here he says this is the thing that he enjoys that anchors him.
01:02:42
Speaker
he might not get to take a history class in the course of his day.
01:02:45
Speaker
You know, I don't know what the curricular requirements are, but there's probably only a couple of years, you know, meant to do that.
01:02:51
Speaker
And then it might be math and science and, you know, all those other kinds of things too that we're emphasizing.
01:02:56
Speaker
But yeah, that was a shocker.
01:02:58
Speaker
It was that spark, right?
01:03:00
Speaker
But the thing was, is that his entire...
01:03:02
Speaker
I mean, he was great to let me sit there and talk with him.
01:03:05
Speaker
But man, we I got the feeling he would have talked about that all day if they would have let me stay there.
01:03:12
Speaker
But that's that.
01:03:12
Speaker
But that's the thing.
01:03:13
Speaker
It's like, what's your favorite history?
01:03:16
Speaker
You know, history immediately straight away.
01:03:19
Speaker
And so but that to me was great.
01:03:21
Speaker
It's like you don't expect it.
01:03:23
Speaker
So what do people expect when they walk into a kid who's been arrested for having knives and knives?
01:03:29
Speaker
you know, cannabis cartridges, like, oh, some punk.
01:03:31
Speaker
No, it's some kid that loves history, right?
01:03:34
Speaker
The Korean War.
01:03:35
Speaker
He may, so let's just set aside that he may, you know, his, he's got some prices to pay.
01:03:41
Speaker
He did some stuff that's illegal, that, but that doesn't discount from the fact that it's like, there's more to it than that.
01:03:46
Speaker
Right, and there's more to him.
01:03:47
Speaker
I think, yeah, there's more to all those kids, right?
01:03:50
Speaker
All right.
01:03:50
Speaker
Well, the piece is the city that kicked cops out of schools and tried restorative practices instead.
01:03:56
Speaker
The author, Andy Kopsa.
01:03:58
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today, Andy.
01:04:01
Speaker
Thanks for letting me rant.
01:04:03
Speaker
And we could probably go on, but.
01:04:05
Speaker
Anytime.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, we'll do the B side later.
01:04:08
Speaker
All right.
01:04:09
Speaker
Thanks, Andy.
01:04:15
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast.
01:04:18
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
01:04:22
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.