Maybe stop calling the cops on your students

One could argue this is all part of preparing kids for life in the over-policed future they're graduating into but let's maybe not lean into that if we can help it.  Here's Jarvis Deberry last week.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation in the press release is the claim that the students were not only warned not to go through with their planned prank, but that they were specifically warned that the police had been made aware of their plans.

What?

Some adult from Sophie B. Wright better step forward to say that they thought the students were planning something more nefarious because any adult who warns an understaffed New Orleans Police Department that teenagers are about to have a water fight isn’t mature enough to be watching children.

Over the last year, social media feeds have been full of stories of busybodies who got stuck with alliterative nicknames after summoning the police for trifling reasons. In most, if not all, of those cases, the tattletale has been white. Barbecue Becky reported a black man using a charcoal grill in a restricted area in a park. Permit Patty reported an 8-year-old black girl selling bottled water on the sidewalk without a permit. Coupon Carl accused a black woman, wrongly, of trying to use a counterfeit coupon at the drugstore. 

Clark is black, as are 91 percent of Sophie B. Wright’s students, but if she called the police to say that this particular prank was imminent, we might have to call her Water Fight Wanda, Super Soaker Sally or Water Balloon Beulah.

Jarvis also points out Clark has a history of bullying students in particularly cruel ways.  Here is a story from a few years back where she held homeless students out of class because their uniforms weren't monogrammed.

Anyway, yesterday the school rescinded the suspensions after a week or so of bad publicity. It looks like they don't get to go to graduation, though. That's harsh but it's not unheard of in the context of most school disciplinary policies regarding stuff like this. What is disturbing is the impulse to call the cops on students. They really have no place in any of this.  But we do love to be policed more and more so it's hard to be surprised when something like this happens.

Oh also here is something else to note.

Wright school attorney Tracie Washington Tuesday told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that the administration Monday night received notice via a third party email that attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center had been engaged as counsel for the students to contest the validity of Tuesday’s proceedings.

When Tracie Washington isn't vigorously lobbying to turn the city's housing stock into Airbnbs, she's defending a charter school that calls the cops on kids.  Makes sense.