Redefining Parent Participation

• Created community-based independence and a community-wide identity through a “follow the parent” approach – Built an independent grassroots database of several thousand South LA parents across dozens of schools through neighborhood-based, parent-centered outreach that includes door-knocking, school-front canvassing, and word of mouth with over 12,000 parents
• Elevated parents’ stories of their treatment by schools into a structural issue of racial justice – Published a participatory action research report entitled: “We Interrupt This Crisis – With Our Own Side of the Story: Relationships Between South LA Parents and Schools”  in English and Spanish  (2004)
• Developed pathway for parents to move from self-advocacy to systemic change advocacy – Launched our Parent Educational Empowerment Academy in 2008 to introduce parents to personal development and transformation practices that helps them be lifelong leaders and organizers, graduating over 250 parents through 2017
• Invested in a now successful model for cultivating Black-Brown solidarity between African American and Latino South LA parents – Demonstrated and practiced from the beginning an explicit consciousness about language, history in South LA, history of treatment in South LA schools, persistent race-based disparities for African American families, and the role that anti-Black racism has had in creating the school conditions that both groups are now fighting

Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline

• Reduced out-of-school student suspensions in LAUSD by 91% since 2005 through our policy victories – Despite persistent racial disparities, the policies we won generated a monumental decrease in student suspensions, from 72,668 at the end of 2005-06 to 6,226 at the end of 2016-17
• Started first-ever legal advocacy trainings for South LA parents whose children were unjustly removed from school through suspensions and involuntary transfers – Held several know-your-rights trainings and legal clinics for parents concerned about the fairness of their children’s suspensions, especially those in special education
• Launched first-ever community organizing campaign in LA to stop school “pushout” – Collected nearly 50 stories of suspensions and over 120 surveys of youth who did not finish high school in our human rights documentation project, and held first-ever “people’s hearing” on school discipline practices and pushout attended by 100 community members  (2005-06)
• Won a new district-wide school discipline foundation policy – the first of its kind in the nation’s second largest district – based on positive behavior support – Influenced and secured Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD’s) adoption of the most progressive and comprehensive district-wide school discipline policy in the nation, based on positive behavior support (2007)
• Created parent-led community monitoring model of LAUSD’s policy implementation – Piloted and sustained grassroots, community-led monitoring of LAUSD’s School-Wide Positive Behavior Support Discipline Foundation Policy  (2008 – current), resulting in three participatory action research and “shadow” reports in 2010, 2012, and 2017 that highlight significant implementation gaps and persistent racial disparities in South LA
• Eliminated “willful defiance” as a justifiable reason for student suspension – Joined with the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition to develop and support the adoption of the 2013 School Discipline and School Climate Bill of Rights resolution by LAUSD  (2013) which eliminated this category, and joined with allies across California to pass AB420 (2014), placing a moratorium on willful defiance suspensions in grades K-3 from January 2015 through June 2018

Movement Building