$25,000 / 2018
http://www.cadre-la.org/core/
CADRE, a multi-racial parent led organization in South Los Angeles, was founded in 2001. Led by African American and Latino parents and caregivers whose children attend neighborhood schools in the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD), CADRE merges a community organizing strategy with a human rights framework. This renewal grant will enable CADRE to develop parent leadership from within South Central Los Angeles communities to hold public schools accountable for providing quality opportunities to learn, regardless of race and class and end school push-outs/dropouts. In 2011, CADRE expanded its target outreach to the local teachers’ union (UTLA) to obtain their support and buy-in of the full implementation of the LAUSD comprehensive school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) school discipline policy. Since then, suspension rates in LAUSD have dropped District-wide, while racial disparities still persist. CADRE’s Shadow Report, published in October 2017, shows the continued need to demand increased investments in school climate, the elimination of disproportionality in suspensions for African American students, an end to the criminalization of African American and Latino youth, and the recognition of parents as full stakeholders. Over the next year, CADRE will leverage the Report findings to win transformative practice and power-sharing shifts in the involvement of African American and Latino parents in designing racially just school climates.