Public health equity.

One student at a time.

Every student this time.

School Equity > Family Health > Community Health

 

Racism, Equity, & Public Health

Equity: when everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from has the opportunity to thrive.

Addressing inequity requires eliminating barriers like poverty and repairing injustices in systems such as education, health, criminal justice and transportation.

“Racism is a public health crisis that affects all Coloradans.”

When government agencies officially recognize an issue as a “crisis,” so broad as to affect the entire state, and so debilitating to public health as to preclude intervention, it’s time for Coloradans to take notice.

“A Colorado free from injury & violence is not possible without also abolishing systemic racism and white supremacy.”

-Colorado Dept. Public Health & Environment

Exclusionary Discipline

Definition: Any action by school authorities that removes or excludes a student from their regularly scheduled educational setting.

In-school suspension (ISS), out of school suspension (OSS), and “shadow” suspension - when school officials informally dismiss students or request caregivers pick them up early in order to remove them from the school premises. These age-old school discipline practices exacerbate trauma and impair a child’s natural ability to develop behavior self-regulation skills.

When schools conflate exclusion with accountability they have a recipe for student alienation: Kids become disconnected from their learning community, which prevents children from developing a sense of partnership with educators, and prevents internal ownership in their education that is essential for learning..

The School to Prison Pipeline

Definition: “The policies and practices that push schoolchildren out of classrooms and into juvenile & criminal justice systems.”

Missing just one class block can create a feedback loop of disconnection that many children never overcome: when kids are pulled or excluded from class they can easily fall behind or develop shame that inhibits their re-connection with the content, the teacher, and their class. Disconnection, shame, and falling behind can lead to further classroom behavior problems…which leads to further disconnection. This cycle is a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

Given the demographic composition of the body of professional educators, contrasted with the majority-minority student body, and Racial bias becomes inherent to the system. In this light we see how the use of Exclusionary Discipline transforms schools into pipelines feeding the American criminal justice system.

Eliminating Educational Inequity

The Denver Board of Education (BoE) has recognized that building and sustaining a culture of equity are essential paths to closing the racially disproportionate opportunity gap in Denver Public Schools (DPS). Furthermore, DPS has formally recognized that, as Educators entrusted by our community with the duty to educate the next generation of Denver, state, and national leaders, Educational Equity is our collective responsibility.

Recognizing the relationship between school discipline inequity and the School to Prison Pipeline, in 2017 the Denver BoE resolved that Denver Public Schools is a Trauma-informed school district “committed to eliminating the use of suspension and expulsion for our students, including our youngest learners, and providing restorative practices, social emotional learning, and skill building opportunities to support” all DPS students.

It is clear that Denver Public Schools go farther than most large American organizations that tend to offer passive or performative assertions of institutional equity: DPS has gone so far as to codify preventative measures against systemic racism & institutional inequity in their schools by removing SROs and terminating contracts with the Denver Police Department that provided them.

Organizing for Prevention

Project DIVERT! is a movement centered on the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) mission to create & enhance conditions in which all Colorado residents can achieve personal health and remain safe from violence and disease. The CDPHE-funded Communities Organizing for Prevention (COFP) model uses Prevention Science to provide tailored public health solutions to across the broad variety of Colorado communities.

The equity-centered COFP model teaches local constituencies to identify the upstream risk and protective factors affecting youth in their communities so that local change agents can choose from a menu of evidence-based interventions that are proven effective.

Community Mobilizers support the implementation of the interventions and track their progress over time. This allows for efficacy review and modification in order to deliver the most effective solutions possible for the community. With the COFP model, local people wield local power to devise & lead attacks on the root causes of public health disparities, upstream from the symptomatic health problems they are too often familiar with..

Instituting Equity in Discipline

It is clear from the decades-long movement for trauma-informed school culture & discipline reform that the will of the Denver community is present and thoughtfully attempting to protect area students from racism. It is also clear from the myriad resolutions and proactive policies over the last two decades that the Board of Education has been responsive to local concerns, thus devoting study, time, resources and training to implement policies and guidance that promote institutional Equity.

So what’s the missing link? Unfortunately, the fact remains, The School to Prison Pipeline continues to thrive in conditions of unrecognized bias & unacknowledged racism.

The Project DIVERT Coalition is a movement to interrupt the application of bias in school discipline: we must remove the age-old and traumatic practices of Exclusionary Discipline from all Denver public schools. Only then will we truly establish school equity. Only then will we successfully improve family, community, public health, and safety for all Denverites.

By joining in coalition, together we can and we will DIVERT the S2PP pipeline.

DIVERT Community Mobilizer

  • "Healing communities & institutionalizing equity through trauma-informed evidence-based practices." Omar believes deeply that "it takes a village" to raise healthy families and heal our harmed communities.

    A first-generation college graduate, Omar is the son of seasonal migrant workers and single mothers. He was raised in New England, and alternatively-schooled in poverty, through foster care, and in spite of the American criminal justice system. As an adolescent navigating juvenile justice-, social service-, and various other systems, Omar dreamed of becoming a teacher someday in order to "be part of the solution, not the problem.”

    Omar began his career as an educator over two decades ago as a stipended undergraduate serving Kindergartners and 1st Graders in the America Reads Program. Since then he has had the pleasure of supporting academic persistence and student success as a tutor, teacher, counselor, and mentor, from rural to urban settings, from elementary to high schools, from Maine to Colorado.

    As the Social Studies teacher at Futures Academy (Aurora, CO) Omar feels fortunate to have received comprehensive independent training in Anti-Bias, Restorative- and Trauma-informed practices in education, which ultimately became the cornerstones of his professional passion and areas of expertise.

    Omar joined DPS at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic in the summer of 2020 as a school-based Restorative Practice Counselor, and his specialized training and experience as a trauma-informed classroom teacher and counselor being highly sought after, in 2021 Omar was invited to a district-wide role as the Diversion and Substance Use Prevention Program Manager. There Omar was tasked to develop a coalition of DPS students, families, educators, and other stakeholders from across Denver (Project DIVERT) to support the implementation of the Board of Education’s school discipline diversion initiatives, and to facilitate public input informing the adoption of “next generation” trauma-informed school discipline policies meant to end the School to Prison Pipeline for Denver students.

    In late-2023 Omar oversaw the transition of the Community Organizing for Prevention program (Project DIVERT) from Denver Public Schools to a new backbone organization, the Transformative Justice Project of Colorado (formerly Colorado Juvenile Defense Center). Omar is grateful to have learned from some of the most brilliant youth and educators of our time, and is exuberant for his current opportunity to bring wisdom and experience as a trauma-informed educator and DIVERT Coalition community organizer to the TJP Colorado family.