NJ Students Will Rally In Newark To Demand School Budget Changes

NEWARK, NJ — They want “counselors, not cops.”

A coalition of New Jersey youth are planning to hold a rally in Newark on Tuesday, May 4 to decry “overpolicing and a lack of support staff and programming” in school districts with a majority of Black and Brown students.

The rally is also being held to protest the recent deaths of Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, Adam Toledo, 13, Anthony J. Thompson, 17, and Daunte Wright, 20, four Black and Brown youth “who also lacked supportive services in their schools,” according to a statement from organizers.

Uniting under the #CounselorsNotCops banner, the youth activists plan to gather at 3 p.m. at Lincoln Park across from Essex Plaza. Learn more here.

Organizers with Make the Road New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice are expected to be among the speakers, as well as local high school students and their families.

According to organizers, activists are calling for the New Jersey Legislature to pass a law to redefine the state’s hundreds of millions of dollars in annual “categorical security aid” to prioritize student supports instead of security guard salaries. They are also calling on local school districts to focus American Rescue Plan funds on mental health staff and programming for students, not additional police.

Activists pointed out that in a 2019 report, the American Civil Liberties Union found that schools with police reported 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police, with Black students disproportionately detained.

“The higher likelihood of arrest — coupled with a lack of emotional and mental-health resources in low-income schools — fuels what is known as the “school-to-prison” pipeline,” organizers said. “Students of color are more likely to get arrested, suspended or expelled, so they fall behind in school and are more vulnerable to problems later in life.”

Across the nation, Black and Brown students are more likely to be removed from classrooms for what teachers deem poor conduct. But New Jersey has among the widest racial gaps in the United States, suspending these students at far greater rates than white peers, federal data shows.

The statistics on school discipline in New Jersey are striking. Black students were 5.4 times more likely to face out-of-school suspension compared with white students, while Hispanic students were 2.4 times more likely, according to a ProPublica analysis of 2015-16 federal data.

New Jersey’s disparities outpace national disparities: nationally, Black students were 3.9 times more likely to be suspended, and Hispanic students were 1.3 times more likely, the 2015-16 data showed.

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