Are there racial disparities in Bay Area schools for Black children? If so, what do they look like? It’s something we went to find out in our Justice for All coverage. 

What we uncovered were issues that date back to the 1960’s where several Bay Area school districts were fought in court in desegregation lawsuits. Civil rights attorneys point out that desegregation isn’t just about black students going to school with white students. They say it’s about those black students being treated fairly in those schools. 

But 50 years later there are still some obvious disparities, particularly when it comes to student discipline. 

“If you start talking about school suspensions, particularly out of school suspensions, black students are four times more likely to find themselves suspended,” Pinellas County Schools District Monitoring Advisory Chair, Trenia Cox said. 

Cox said the student discipline problem it at the heart of the school to prison pipeline. “The issue of school discipline is seriously a concern of mine because many times the entry into the juvenile justice system begins with a school referral and unfortunately many times a school referral is for a non violent act and it’s really for a school misconduct that’s being criminalized,” Cox said.

We requested this data from Pinellas, Polk, Manatee, Hillsborough and Pasco County school districts. 

Pinellas sent us these numbers. In Pinellas County Schools there were 101,427 students as of 2019. More than half of those students are white and nearly 19 percent are Black. Hispanic children make up nearly 18 percent and Asian students make up nearly five percent.

Now let's look at how discipline is being dished out to those students. The number of Black elementary aged students suspended from school over a two-year period increased from 342 to 380 Their white counterparts decreased from 130 to 104.

Polk County released their latest numbers. Their school district is among the 30 largest school districts in the U.S. with more than 104,000 students. Of those students, 40% are white, 20.6% are black, 34.4% are Hispanic and are 1.6% Asian. 

During the 2018-2019 school year more than 33,000 black students were disciplined compared to their white counterparts at just over 24,000. Hispanic students also had high numbers. 

When it comes to arrests, 105 black students were arrested compared to their white counterparts with 66 arrests. In 2020 there’s a decrease in the numbers but there’s months of numbers missing because schools shut down early because of Covid-19.

Here’s the breakdown on their student discipline numbers from 2018-19 school year to 2019-20 school year.

This chart from Polk County includes their school arrest numbers. Pinellas County released their numbers too and there is a significant difference with arrests when you compare black students to their white counterparts.

Polk and Pinellas County both reported school discipline and arrests for students based on race over the course of two years.  Those numbers were also higher for Black students. 

So what are school districts doing to reduce these numbers?

In Pinellas, school district leaders said they’re working to reduce those numbers by using initiatives they launched in the last five years like Restorative Practices and Positive Behavior Intervention and Support. https://www.pcsb.org/rp

“Restorative Practice is one tool we use. PBIS is one tool we use but we are constantly working on the training whether it’s implicit bias or others with our schools to make sure our laser focus is that we don’t have any disparity gaps,” said Pinellas County Schools Area Three Superintendent, Bob Poth said. 

“When you see the numbers still going down and the thing we’re still focused on and have not achieved yet is that risk ratio that there is still grater likelihood that a black student would receive a suspension more times or to a greater degree than an non black student. And so our work is not in any way done. And that’s why we’ve expanded our equity work to a larger umbrella,” Poth explained.

Polk County School Officials said at the start of the 2019-20 school year, Polk County Public Schools also implemented our new comprehensive plan for addressing student behavior but it’s not mandatory for schools to participate.

You can learn more about the School Discipline and Student Behavior Response Plan at the following link: https://polkschoolsfl.com/newsrelease/update-on-the-pcps-school-discipline-and-student-behavior-response-plan/

We’re still waiting on numbers from Pasco, Hillsborough, and Manatee County Schools.