This youth team called itself SUCCESS (Students United to Create a Climate of Engagement Support and Safety), and we did a tremendous amount of research over the past few years.
With support from The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, organizations like The kNOw Youth Media and Youth Leadership Institute held focus groups with Fresno Unified students, parents and teachers to find out how they really feel about their schools.
The consensus — Fresno Unified’s discipline system needed some dramatic changes.
Our focus groups told us that Fresno Unified’s current discipline practices and policies are unfair and inconsistent, impede healthy adult-student relationships and hinder academic achievement.
[pullquote_right]So SUCCESS set out on a mission to rally youth and adults — particularly Superintendent Michael Hanson — to bring restorative justice to Fresno Unified.[/pullquote_right]So SUCCESS set out on a mission to rally youth and adults — particularly Superintendent Michael Hanson — to bring restorative justice to Fresno Unified. Restorative justice is an alternative to the no-tolerance policies that use suspension and expulsion to discipline kids.
Instead, restorative justice uses forgiveness and mediation to repair the harm a student has caused, restore relationships between adults and kids in school, and teach young people how to avoid repeating their mistakes. It works in other school districts, and we know it could work in Fresno Unified.
We held conferences, met with the superintendent and talked to restorative justice experts across the state. We were convinced we had found a solution. When the Fresno Unified Graduation Task Force was put together, SUCCESS jumped at the opportunity to have a seat at the table and give students a voice in reforming our school district. We had a representative on the task force, rallied before a school board meeting and talked with the media. And it worked — the task force recommendations call for introducing restorative justice in schools. Change is happening.
I just started my senior year at Edison High School, and many of these changes will come long after I’m gone. But I’m hopeful that Fresno Unified remains committed to restorative justice and that the efforts of SUCCESS help students for years to come. Young people need this change to have a better shot at graduating and going to college, and with their success, the whole city will have a brighter future.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
