Prison Pipe Line

By Armando Gonzalez

Parents must be vigilant and very carefull with how the teachers and principals treat our children in school.In the short time that I taught High School in two different area Schools, and observed teachers and campuses I saw the In School Suspension rooms. These rooms were, and are filled by mostly Hispanic and Black students. A person can visit any area school and find that a majority of them are filled with Chicanos and Blacks. I beleive that this is an ongoing conscientious effort by some of the School District’s teachers to make it hard for minority students to graduate from High School. There are attorney’s organizations and some educators organizations that are actively studying the phenomenon of the

“SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE”. Texas Appleseed Scholarship Committee is one of those. Another organization is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In my understanding it starts with a child going to ISS. After ISS, or for absences,or any other student code violation, they can be sent to Project Intercept, Stars Program and even to the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice

Center where they are removed from the custodial parent(s) by the State and students as young as ten years old are encarcerated. If they continue to be non-conformists

(that is not obeying and resisting institutionalization)they can then be sent to The Texas Youth Commission, which is a juvenile prison system, after a CRIMINAL COURT HEARING. Since Columbine, 1995, School Districts and society in general have become intolerant of any misbehavior in the school system. As usual, when fear surfaces among the Anglo establishment the Hispanic, and Black children are the ones that are held to the fire moreso than any other ethnic group(s). It is important to understand that with this fear a whole new beaurocracy and a whole newsystem of inner, soveriegn government has been created. The School Districts answer to no one. Federal Courts and State Courts are slow to usurp or circumvent the Districts authority and power. Open, clear, and flagrant violations against the Constitution are the ones that are scrutinized by the Courts. This means that they can do just about anything they want without being held accountable. In other Southwestern States, like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, the ACLU has taken ...