Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 34

the work, and fidelity to the model. Because we were
seeing such strong results at Cole Middle School,
one of the RJOY board members, who is also an
Oakland Unified School Board Member, offered a
Board Resolution, which would launch a district-wide
RJ initiative. Youth also did organizing work around
it. In January 2010, OUSD passed the RJ resolution
unanimously, and OUSD supported the policy by
hiring a full time RJ Manager and Coordinators at an
increasing number of sites over the years since.

How does RJOY help a school implement the RJ
policy?
We have a conference with administration
and discuss RJOY’s responsibilities, school
site administrative responsibilities, teacher
responsibilities, and the outcomes that the school
wants. People from the district also come to this
conference at the school. We make sure we all have a
meeting of minds before the school year begins.

receptive, then the school coordinator can leave the
school and school administration can carry on the
work.

What setbacks have RJOY or School Coordinators
experienced after instituting RJ at a school site?
The intellectual buy-in of school site administrators is
tested when violence happens or drugs are found at
a school and, out of habit, leadership might revert to
punitive retributive justice models. Using RJ requires
a transformation in thoughts about school discipline
and a lot of mindfulness to make change. It’s not
enough to attend training and return to your school;
it’s about what you do with the things that you’ve
learned and how you respond in the moment in often
very challenging situations where the pressure is on
to take strong action.

What type of RJ training do you provide at the
three school sites that RJOY serves?

We then write a letter of understanding that
memorializes everyone’s responsibilities and desired
outcomes. This letter sets out the responsibilities
and roles of the school site administration and the
RJOY school coordinator. For example, a school
might arrange for all staff to receive RJ training
and regular continuing education, create an RJ site
leadership team, and create an RJ discipline matrix
with protocols for classroom managed versus office
managed discipline. The RJOY school coordinator’s
duties include assisting in data collection to help
the school administration make informed discipline
decisions and assisting in crisis intervention to
resolve critical incidents.

During the first two to three years at a school site,
with a population of 200-500 students, we provide
one full-time RJ coordinator, who facilitates or cofacilitates training, implements circles, integrates RJ
into the daily school functions, engages in intentional
relationship-building with every member of the
school community, and collects and evaluates data.
There should also be a part-time RJ coach who builds
implementation capacity with the school staff, but in
most cases, this is also the work of the Coordinator.
Ideally, eighty percent of the school staff and a
significant number of students receive 16-20 hours of
training in RJ.

When the school year begins, the RJOY school
coordinator works in the school to actively and
intentionally create relationships with every student
and staff member at the school. That coordinator
also facilitates proactive circles that build community
and restorative circles that repair harm. Additionally,
I stay in contact and check in at all times to see how
things are going.

We have three tiers of training. Tier 1 involves
everyone in the school. We train teachers, school
security officers, and administrators in community
building circles and proactive restorative strategies.
There is a continuum of restorative strategies, such
as in class, value circles, where students and teacher
work with one another to come up with values that
will guide the classroom. During this phase, we are
constantly coaching the school in implementation.

Is the success of a Restorative Justice program
tied to the effectiveness of the RJOY School
Coordinator?
At the beginning, yes; however, if we do our job
properly and the school site administration is

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How we can fix school discipline

Tier 2 involves training about facilitating conflict
circles to repair harm. This is an alternative method
to suspension and expulsion. It is not necessarily for
teachers because it takes a lot of time to get buy-in
from the person who was harmed, the person who
did the harm, their parents, and any other people