Okemos, Michigan

Okemos School District Student Expulsion Hearing Part 1 Tim Stewart SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE

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• published: 18 Jan 2015
• views: 1372

This is the first of three segments of a video recording of a school disciplinary hearing before the Okemos Public School Board where the Okemos HS Administration was seeking the expulsion of a young, black sophomore student with special education classification for misconduct. The hearing was held in open session and recorded at the request of Timothy and his mother. In this segment of the contested case hearing the Procedure to be followed by the School Board to conduct the hearing is discussed by the Board president. The school board attorney called as her first witness the assistant high school principle who explained the facts relating to the alleged misconduct and his interaction with the student on the day the alleged misconduct occurred. The hearing was held without any of the witnesses being sworn under oath regarding their statements of facts or representations to the school board members who were present to deliberate the request for expulsion of the student. A quorum of 4 members of the Board was present to hear the case and decide whether to grant the high school principals request that the student be permanently expelled from the Okemos School District, which has only one high school. In addition, the Okemos School superintendent was present to assist the school board and to help the board in its deliberations about whether to expell the student. The school district was represented by an attorney who presented the case in support of the expulsion. The student was represented by attorney Howard Spence, who appreared pro bono and represented the interests of the student and also the concerns of the Greater Lansing Branch Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union which has been focusing on addressing allegations of abuse of the school disciplinary process in the Greater Lansing Michigan area (where Okemos is a suburb) in a branch project entitiled the "School to Prison Pipeline." The ACLU is concerned that school districts are misapplying "zero tolerance" expulsion policy inappropriately and contrary to guidelines from both the state and federal departments of education when discharging students - especially young men of color. The mother contracted for the videographer, and the video and audio are not excellent given the fact that the school district did not have microphones set up to capture the discussion. At the end of this first segment presented, The high school principal has just begun to attempt to explain her decision to expel the student rather than to use lesser disciplinary punishments short of expulsion. There is an introductory segment from the attorney for the student posted on YouTube to provide insight (from his perspective) about what was going on at the disciplinary/expulsion hearing, and about some of the dynamics of the Okemos School Board decision making process which became evident during the 4+ hours that the hearing lasted. Readers are encouraged to view that introductory statement before reviewing the actual footage of the hearing itself. The anticipation is that the video of this real, live hearing can be useful to help train student advocates in Michigan who may want to assist students being subjected to discipline and possible expulsion.