Jerry Wilson, Policy and Advocacy Director for Center for Racial Equity in Education, discusses the Represent! Campaign. (Photo: Ahmed Jallow)
At least 14 North Carolina school districts let students appeal some or all short-term suspensions. The Freedom Hill Coalition, a network of 16 nonprofits focused on educational equity, is hoping to increase that number as one of their primary goals of their campaign this year.
Called the “ Represent! Campaign, ” which kicked off Thursday in Raleigh, organizers will work in the next sixteen months to engage public schools and policymakers to address what they say are the needs of students, parents, educators, and communities of color.
“It is an effort to make sure that all children in North Carolina are receiving the high-quality education that they deserve,” said Jerry Wilson, policy and advocacy director for the Center for Racial Equity in Education .
Wilson said too often representation becomes a checkbox rather than a meaningful commitment to change. “It’s principled around the idea that representation is not enough, representation in the noun form is not enough, because too often it’s just a box that people check and then proceed to forget about those that they are supposed to be representing, and we want to change that.”
One of the key goals of the campaign is to expand the number of North Carolina school districts that give students the opportunity to appeal short-term suspensions by the end of the 2024-25 school year.
Wilson said the coalition has identified three districts to target in the campaign, though he declined to name them. He added that the group is also compiling data to determine where racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions are most pronounced.
In June, Republican Senator Steve Jarvis of Davidson County introduced a bill aimed at addressing this issue. House Bill 207, which received bipartisan support but has since stalled, would allow North Carolina high school students to appeal short-term suspensions.
North Carolina students can appeal long-term suspensions but not those shorter than 10 days. The bill would allow appeals for short-term suspensions of at least five days. Students would have 14 days to appeal.
During the 2022-23 school year, North Carolina handed out 247,454 short-term suspensions in grades K-12 for an average of just more than three days per suspension, according to North Carolina Department of Public Instruction data.
Out of the 84,539 high school short-term suspensions, nearly 67,000 lasted longer than 6-10 days, according to Sen. Jarvis. More than 17,000 cases lasted five days.
NC Newsline has previously reported that Black students in North Carolina are suspending at four times the rate of their white peers.
During these 16 months, the coalition will also advocate for investing in holistic support services, such as counselors, social workers, and psychologists, and for eliminating suspensions and expulsions for Pre-K through 3rd grade students in North Carolina public schools by December 2025.
Another objective is to collect 100 stories from marginalized students, parents, educators, and community members by January 2025 to highlight the need for increased representation in public schools.
Additionally, the campaign aims to mobilize 10,000 North Carolinians to support equitable public school funding, to guarantee every child receives a high-quality education by December 2025.
“We want to use these stories to leverage policy change alongside the signatures,” said Lucia Lozano Robledo, program and curriculum specialist at Latinx Ed, a nonprofit focused on educational equity in North Carolina.
To learn more, visit the Represent! Campaign page.
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