Facing a jury of their middle school peers
Nina Otero Community School program seeks to apply restorative justice — and keep children out of ‘schoolto-prison pipeline’
Fourth graders at Nina Otero Community School caught cheating on a math quiz or mouthing off to a history teacher must face a panel of disciplinarians whose opinions matter more than any principal’s would.
After being accused of classroom or hallway infractions, younger students sit across from several eighth graders and tell their side of the story. They are asked to answer questions about what might have led to an offense: Are you being funny to get attention? Is there anyone at home to help you?
This jury of peers, guided by the idea that mischief diminishes the school, deliberates and eventually hands down a penalty of community service aimed at undoing some of the harm the offending student has caused. The wrongdoer must sign a contract agreeing to the deal.
Nina Otero, which serves kids in prekindergarten to eighth grade, is avoiding the use of suspensions and detentions for minor violations of students in fourth grade and above. Instead, it has turned to a practice known as restorative justice. This peer-based approach to addressing misbehavior is designed to help students build conflict resolution skills and — on a broader scale — block a school-toprison pipeline that experts say often starts with detention.
“The younger kids, they look up to us. They see us as role models,” eighth grader and peer panelist Edgar Galindo Zamarripa said. “So it makes kids think twice about getting in trouble when they know they have to come back and talk to us.”
Students and teachers said Nino Otero’s culture has shifted for the better since the program began in 2018-19.
“We didn’t have a fight first semester. For a middle school, that is kind of amazing,” said eighth grade English teacher Karrye Ramos, who has taught at Nino Otero since it opened in 2014. “We had to try to do something different. The traditional style, it just doesn’t work.
“The schools that we went to, they don’t exist anymore,” Ramos added. “These kids have way more complex issues. We have to adjust and grow with that.”
Dean of Students Jessica Garcia oversees discipline for Nina Otero’s roughly 750 students and teaches a restorative justice elective class for 13 eighth graders who serve on the peer panel.
While administrators deal with more serious issues involving physical harm, drugs and other major offenses, teachers refer students to the peer panel for issues such as tardiness and academic dishonesty.
“When kids are given the choice between solving a conflict or having a fight, what we’ve noticed is the kids are choosing to want to solve the conflict first,” Principal Angelia Moore said.
“If you’re sitting in your math class and you’re worried about conflict, then you’re not focused on academics,” she added. “If you go home upset because you’re not happy about how you’re being treated, it’s hard to get up and come back to school.”
Mary Louise Romero-Betancourt, who coordinates a new restorative justice program for the Santa Fe school district’s middle and high schools, previously was the director of an alternative detention program for the Santa Fe Regional Juvenile Justice Board. She saw firsthand the difference such an intervention could make in a kid’s life.
“I always prayed for an opportunity to be proactive for students who are showing signs of worrying behavior,” Romero-Betancourt said. “The school-to-prison pipeline was happening right before my eyes, and I was serving around 70 students a year to help them avoid the adult system.”
Through her role with the districtwide program, which began just over a year ago, she checks in with parents and meets with anyone involved in a disciplinary incident. She has met with more than 300 students in the past year in restorative justice mediation sessions between victims and perpetrators.
The effort has helped cut down on suspensions, she said, and she hopes to see an increase in school attendance and graduation rates.
The American Civil Liberties Union describes the school-toprison pipeline as a national trend in which students — most of them minorities — are funneled out of schools and into the criminal justice system, often through punitive practices that isolate students rather than address their learning disabilities and histories of poverty, abuse and neglect.
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, Latino students across the nation are 1½ times more likely to be suspended and twice as likely to be expelled from school than their white peers. Research by Stanford University shows dropouts are 3½ times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates, and 68 percent of males in prison do not have a high school diploma.
“I’ve seen plenty of kids pushed through the school-toprison pipeline, but restorative justice practices are speed bumps where we can slow things down and step in,” said Layla Dehaiman with Albuquerque Public Schools. She oversees restorative justice programs at elementary and middle schools with fewer than 600 students.
Romero-Betancourt said, “It can be easier to connect with kids who have looked down the pipeline.”
She asks students referred to her program if they’ve ever had a friend on probation or know someone who has been required to get a weekly urinalysis.
“When you come through the restorative justice process, you get to keep your power,” she tells students. “In the criminal justice system, you give up power to the judge. Right now, working with me allows you to keep power.”