Approximately 65 youth from Hope Street Youth Development (HSYD) along with leaders from the Wichita NAACP crashed the Wichita School Board meeting on Jan. 12 and demanded changes to the school districts destructive zero-tolerance policy.

At issue is school board policy 1462 which mandates a required 186 day expulsion for any student who hits a school district employee regardless if it was intentional or unintentional.
HSYD leader Ti’Juana Hardwell gave an impassioned speech explaining the faults in the policy in which she said, “Not every case is the same, so cookie-cutter policies that do not consider all the factors are inappropriate. Each case should be solved in the best interest of all parties involved. That’s not called leniency, that’s called justice.”

HSYD has been at the center of media attention because of their involvement in appealing a controversial school expulsion of a Wichita Sophomore.

“Recently a student came to us for help because she was scared,” Hardwell said. “She was scared because a group of people she thought were her friends beat her. She was scared because she was going to be expelled because while fleeing for her life she accidentally hit an administrator thinking it was her attackers that approached her from behind and grabbed her unannounced. But mainly she was scared because she couldn’t participate in the things she loved like basketball and JROTC and now her ambitions for college seemed gone as well. In short, this student was scared because of policy 1462.”

After HSYD intervened the student won her appeal and was able to return to school after having missed over two months. The community was outraged with the way the school district handled the student's case.

“Policy 1462 does not make our schools safer, it only makes the streets more dangerous,” HSYD leader, Marcus Genosky, explained. “You can not kick youth out of school without considering each case on its own merits. I believe that principals and other administrators are fully capable of making the correct and fair disciplinary decision, but the school board refuses to give them that power. I trust my principal to make the right decisio., Why doesn’t the school board?"

Hope Street’s actions were covered by all local television, print, and radio news, when at the meeting the school board promised to take up the issue of zero-tolerance. Hope Street Youth are pleased to have forced the issue, but will not stop until zero-tolerance is gone and in Hardwell’s words, “school officials can make wise decisions based on common sense”