Urgent CAIR-GA Action Alert HB 268

Petition Details

Dear ####rep####

I’m reaching out to ask to you oppose HB 268 because of the disproportionate harm it will bring to Muslim, Black, and Brown students in Georgia.
HB 268 would codify existing disparities in school discipline and hamper their right to an education.

We all want kids to be safe at school so they can focus on learning. Unfortunately, anti-Muslim sentiment interferes with our children getting an education. All too often, Muslim students suffer bullying from their peers eendure educators turning a blind eye to it, and face profiling and punitive measures from school professionals.
Black students, too, are further endangered by this bill - in most Georgia school districts, they are up to 3 times as likely to be disciplined as their White peers. In one district, they are more than 8 times as likely to be punished.

HB 268’s new Office of Student Safety, threat management processes, and S3 database would reinforce longstanding challenges faced by Muslim, Black, and Brown students, making them even harder to deal with. Existing biases will be institutionalized into a new and more complicated system, one with the power to create lasting state records about our children.

Here are just a few examples of the things Muslims deal with in the school system, as reported to the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:

• A teacher calling a high school student a “junior terrorist” to other students.
• A teacher calling a high school student a “junior terrorist” to other students.
• A teacher turning a blind eye to multiple reports of anti-Muslim bullying, but punishing the bullied student when his bullies planted contraband in his bag in clear view of the teacher.
• Students making false allegations that a Muslim boy was planning to conduct a school shooting on 9/11. The accused student was detained by a police officer and read his rights upon arriving to school. When the school investigated, they found nothing to corroborate the accusation.
• A high school student getting pulled out of class, interrogated by a vice principal and police officer, and forced to sign a witness statement about a threatening photo sent between two different students based on the ‘brown hand’ in the photo that the principal insisted ‘looked like’ the student’s.

I have no reason to believe that these same biases wouldn’t be both present and more forceful in this new disciplinary system. I do not trust that the threat assessments would be fair to Muslim, Black, and Brown students. Experience tells us that the S3 database will end up full of Muslim names, and that Muslim, Black, and Brown children will be tracked by this new government office, labeled as potential threats, and targeted for inappropriate behavioral interventions.

All students deserve to be safe at school. I appreciate that there are good things in this bill, such as more mental health training and resources. Unfortunately, the discipline and surveillance measures would pose a unique harm to Muslim, Black, and Brown students. Please don’t sacrifice some children’s wellbeing for the safety of others. Oppose student surveillance in HB 268.

Thanks,
###name###
###email###