A Schenectady activist who serves on the city school district’s Board of Education says a December presentation is evidence of systemic racism within the educational institution.
Black students were more likely to be subject to school suspension than non-Black students. That’s according to data from the 2024 to 2025 academic school year.
And Jamaica Miles, who has served on the Schenectady City School District Board of Education since 2021 and is a co-founder of All of Us – a Black advocacy group – says the data shows Black students are being disproportionately suspended when compared to other groups.
“For the last school year Black students were twice as likely to be suspended and white students were actually underrepresented,” Miles said.
The data shows that Black students had the highest chance of being suspended, with Hispanic and white students having the second and third highest chance. Asian students and students who fell into two or more of those groups were least likely to be suspended.
Miles says the numbers are evidence of systemic racism within the school district.
“It’s the same thing that we have been talking about for years, because when we recognize that Black students make up about 25 percent of the population, so do Hispanic students, so do Asian students. So, if it was purely about the numbers, if it was because of the size of the population then we would see the exact same relative risk regardless of race, but we don’t see that,” Miles said.
In October, Miles’ daughter was suspended for going to a classroom to observe a fight that never actually happened.
At the time, Miles spoke publicly about her disapproval of her daughter’s suspension and now says it needs to be investigated along with all of the other suspensions this year in light of the data.
“If we don’t do something now, it’s going to continue to get worse, we can’t simply keep saying ‘Oh, we’re going to look again next year,’ no what are we going to do this year, to ensure that it doesn’t keep happening, because it is happening, it happened to my child, it happened to other people’s children and it needs to stop,” Miles said.
At the Dec. 3 Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Student Support Services Andrea Tote-Freeman, said the school has already made strides in reducing the number of Black secondary school students who are suspended for six or more days for serious code of character violations.
The district considers a six-day-or-more suspension long term.
She said those violations most often involve physical violence, weapons or drugs.
According to the presentation, Black students’ risk of being suspended was also the highest when it came to suspensions of six or more days in the 2024 to 2025 school year. Tote-Freeman said the district is working to decrease the disparity between each group when it comes to suspensions.
“By ensuring students have the supports that they need and that we are increasing protective factors,” Tote-Freeman said.
Tote-Freeman said that diversion programs are also offered to students who are serving long-term suspensions.
“We began using a diversion program model for students back in 2016, but it has significantly evolved over the years, students previously were suspended for longer periods of time, often measured in weeks rather than days,” Tote-Freeman said.
Miles is calling for the school to explore an external audit to help the district even out the risk numbers for students.
“That is going to be able to potentially take a deeper dive and be critical without their being that personal attachment for lack of a better phrase,” Miles said.
