Punishing Distress,Policing Belonging: A Case of Colonial Logics of the School-to-Prison Nexus

Abstract

This case examines the school-to-prison nexus (STPN) through the experiences of Sarah, an eighth-grader at a borderlands middle school in El Paso. Using coloniality of knowing, emotions, and being as an analytic frame, the case illustrates how trauma signals—fight, dysregulation, and affiliation with older peers—are criminalized through zero-tolerance policies, surveillance, and alternative placement. It situates contemporary practices within longer histories of missionization, annexation, and segregation, showing how white-normed expectations shape discipline and access to opportunity. Teaching notes synthesize evidence on trauma-informed, restorative, and equity-oriented approaches. Discussion questions and activities guide leaders in redesigning policy, practice, and measurement, shifting from exclusion to coordinated supports, stabilizing enrichment, and building community trust through historical acknowledgment and co-design.

Introduction

U.S. public schools have long been sites where discipline, race, language, and poverty intersect, producing exclusionary outcomes for students from racialized communities (Skiba et al., 2011; Sun & Liou, 2025; Welsh & Little, 2018). A central manifestation is the school-to-prison nexus (STPN) (Meiners, 2007), whereby punitive responses—such as suspension, expulsion, and law enforcement referrals—remove students from classrooms and normalize contact with carceral systems (Annamma et al., 2014; Hirschfield, 2008; Skiba et al., 2014). These patterns disproportionately affect African American and Latiné students, emergent bilinguals, students with disabilities, and youth navigating adverse childhood experiences (Anyon et al., 2014; Bryan, 2020; Valencia, 2008).

Since the late 20th century, zero-tolerance laws and policies have framed misbehavior as individual failure, often ignoring structural inequities and the impact of trauma on student behavior (Curran, 2016; Dutil, 2020). Research shows that exposure to violence, economic precarity, and family instability undermine students’ ability to regulate emotions and engage in school (Sanders et al., 2023; Zinsser et al., 2022). Rather than providing culturally responsive, trauma-informed supports, schools punish distress, exacerbating disengagement and pushing students toward the juvenile justice system (Cruz et al., 2021; Gregory et al., 2017). Innovative approaches, such as restorative practice and trauma-informed interventions, exist (Baroni et al., 2020; Dutil, 2020), yet their implementation remains inconsistent and under-resourced (Cruz et al., 2021; Welsh & Little, 2018). Building on Petrone and Stanton’s (2021) critique, this case treats schools as potential sites of support and as institutions that can produce trauma through surveillance, exclusion, and deficit sensemaking. Accordingly, the goal is not simply “trauma-informed” practice as a compliance label, but trauma-reducing leadership that interrogates how school routines and disciplinary logics can actively harm students and families.

The dynamics of school discipline can be understood through the analysis of coloniality: the enduring logics of control, hierarchy, and dehumanization that persist beyond formal colonial rules (Mignolo, 2011; Quijano, 2000; Sun & Liou, 2025). Within schools, the coloniality of knowing determines whose perspectives count as legitimate knowledge in shaping policy and practice. Student data—attendance rates, test scores, and behavioral reports—are used to represent the lived experiences of students and families, reducing complex realities to deficit framing (Irby, 2014). This narrows the possibility for intervention to technical compliance rather than relational or structural change, reinforcing the template of White Being (Rodríguez, 2018) as the assumed norm for student behavior and academic engagement (Sun & Liou, 2025).

In this case study, the template of White Being refers to the historically produced norms of personhood and behavior treated as universal in schools. These norms include self-control, compliance, deference to authority, and middle-class ways of speaking and engaging. Racialized students are judged and disciplined against these expectations (Rodríguez, 2018; Sun & Liou, 2025). Disciplinary practices are also shaped by coloniality of emotions, where the feelings of teachers, administrators, and White or middle-class stakeholders are validated, while the frustration, grief, or resistance of racialized students is dismissed as defiance or pathology (Kennedy & Junker, 2024; Yancy, 2017). The coloniality of being renders students’ humanity conditional; belonging in schools is extended only if students conform to behavioral expectations rooted in whiteness. When students fail to meet the norms, they are disciplined and positioned outside the community of those deemed “educable” and worthy of care (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Ramey, 2015; Williams, 2024). These colonial dimensions explain why the STPN functions less as an accidental outcome of policy and more as an inherited system that criminalizes distress rather than addressing harm (Owens, 2022; Welsh et al., 2025; Wiley & Middleton, 2025).

This case centers on Sarah, an eighth-grader at Río Vista Middle School near the Franklin Mountains in El Paso. Her experiences—running away from home, arrest for marijuana possession, and placement in an alternative education program—illustrate how trauma signals are criminalized and how surveillance and exclusion can eclipse care and coordinated supports. In Texas, placement in an alternative education program is regulated by district codes of conduct under state law (Texas Education Code [TEC], 2023, Chapter 37), with mandatory placement required for serious offenses (e.g., assault on school personnel, drug possession, and felony conduct) and discretionary placements applied to less severe misbehaviors. Consistent with Petrone and Stanton’s (2021) call, the case invites leaders to examine how schooling itself can reproduce trauma and to redesign organizational routines toward trauma-reducing, culturally responsive, and equity-oriented supports—particularly by centering student and family knowledge in decision-making. Reading this case through coloniality of knowing, emotions, and being invites leaders to disrupt the STPN by redesigning policy, practice, and resource flows toward trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and equity-oriented supports.

Case Narrative

Case Disclosure

This case is based on a real set of events; identifying details—including names, locations, and timelines—have been modified to protect confidentiality while preserving the analytic and pedagogical integrity of the case.

Colonial Context of Río Vista Middle School

Río Vista Middle School, located near the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, Texas, is a community deeply shaped by historical and contemporary inequities. Established in the mid-20th century, the school reflects more than just the growth of public education in the region. The land on which it stands carries centuries of layered history: the presence of the Manso, Suma, and Jumano peoples; the later movements of Mescalero Apache and Comanche groups; and the forced relocation of the Tigua (Tiwa) after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which created the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo community that persists today (Reséndez, 2016). While the area’s Indigenous histories often remain unacknowledged, their significance reverberates through the colonial legacies of schooling.

Public education in El Paso developed as a mechanism of assimilation, first through missionization under Spanish colonization (De León, 1983) and later through U.S. annexation and racially segregated schooling (Valencia, 2008). Río Vista’s Spanish Colonial–style architecture mirrors the imprint of colonial aesthetics, symbolically embedding the template of White Being into the school environment. These legacies legitimize surveillance as a “safety” proxy while obscuring structural needs. In the present day, these histories are echoed in the school’s disproportionate disciplinary practices, where racialized students—particularly emergent bilinguals and economically disadvantaged youth—are policed and excluded at higher rates (Annamma et al., 2014; Skiba et al., 2011).

The case of Río Vista Middle School invites consideration of the STPN not as a contemporary phenomenon but as part of a longer trajectory of coloniality. The racialized disciplinary practices that push students out of classrooms and into contact with law enforcement can be understood through the coloniality of knowing (what and whose knowledge counts), the coloniality of emotions (whose feelings are validated or suppressed), and the coloniality of being (who is deemed fully human within educational institutions).

Río Vista Middle School is situated in a neighborhood with strong cultural traditions and multilingual families, many of whom balance demanding work schedules, educational aspirations, and transnational ties. Nearly half of the school’s students (49.7%) are identified as emergent bilinguals, well above the district average (37.9%) and more than double the state average (24.4%). Almost half (47.8%) participate in bilingual/ESL programs, reflecting the community’s deep linguistic diversity. The vast majority of students (88.6%) are identified as economically disadvantaged, compared with 75.2% across the district and 62.3% statewide. More than three-quarters (77.3%) are considered at risk of dropping out, a designation that reflects systemic inequities—such as inconsistent access to health care, transportation, or stable housing—rather than students’ capacities or aspirations.

The school’s gifted and talented enrollment, at 4.2%, is well below the district’s (12%) and state’s (8.5%) levels, raising questions about identification practices and whether students’ strengths are being fully recognized. The school’s accountability rating has recently improved. After 3 years of receiving an “F” rating from the Texas Education Agency, the campus now holds a “C.”

This progress coincided with the appointment of a new principal, who previously served as an assistant principal at the same school. Her familiarity with the staff and families has helped sustain trust, yet she also leads a campus where external scrutiny remains intense. Two assistant principals, one in her third year at this campus and the other in his fifth, also help manage administrative responsibilities. The teaching staff brings significant experience, averaging 14.2 years in the profession, higher than the district average of 13.5 and the state average of 11.1. Many teachers are alumni of the school themselves, returning to contribute to the community that shaped them. This continuity fosters strong connections with families and a deep sense of commitment. At the same time, generational traditions within the staff influence the ways discipline and classroom management are approached, sometimes privileging order over relational engagement. The school has also faced heightened visibility after a tragic incident in which a special education student left campus unsupervised and was struck by a car, leading to his death. The event, widely covered in local media, raised urgent questions about supervision and safety. For staff, it was a moment of collective grief and reflection, prompting renewed conversations about workload, staffing, and protocols.

The campus struggles with attendance, with 56.4% of students chronically absent in the 2022–2023 school year, nearly double the district rate (31.2%) and almost triple the state rate (20.3%). Among Latiné students—the majority population—the rate was 58.8%. These patterns highlight not student indifference but the challenges many families navigate in balancing school with work, health, caregiving, and transportation demands. Opportunities for enrichment are both valued and fragile. For instance, the school was recently awarded a robotics program designed to spark interest in the STEM field. Students expressed initial excitement, but when the only teacher certified to run the program left the campus, administrators decided to return the equipment to the district. This decision highlights the significant dependence of student opportunities on individual staff capacity and how difficult it can be to sustain innovative programs without long-term investment.

Within this environment, professional culture carries both pride and complexity. A newly hired Latiné teacher shared that colleagues told him, “Kids in this school need male role models,” implying that men—particularly racialized men—carry additional responsibilities for shaping student behavior. This comment illustrates how gendered and racialized expectations are layered onto teaching roles, reflecting broader cultural narratives about authority and leadership.

Physically, the campus is a mix of warmth and constraint. Student artwork and bilingual posters brighten the hallways, while aging facilities, crowded classrooms, and visible surveillance systems signal the structural challenges of underfunded schools. A school resource officer, recently assigned in response to district-wide concerns about youth violence, has become a regular presence. Some families see this as reassurance, while others raise concerns that it reinforces the STPN.

Seen through the lens of coloniality of knowing, the school is defined primarily by its data—attendance figures, accountability ratings, and discipline reports—while the lived realities of students and families often remain invisible. Through the lens of coloniality of emotions, expressions of frustration, advocacy, or disengagement are interpreted as disruptions to be managed rather than legitimate responses to inequitable conditions. And through the lens of coloniality of being, belonging is conditional: Programs like robotics vanish when staff leave, and students like Sarah risk being positioned outside the bounds of community when their behaviors fall short of institutional norms.

Sarah’s Background

Sarah is a 14-year-old eighth-grade student in a six to eight middle school serving 1,096 students in an urban community in El Paso. Sarah lives with her mother, older brother, and younger sister in a household that has adapted to her father’s long-term absence. Her mother balances caregiving responsibilities with educational and work commitments, which shape the family’s routines and resources. Prior to enrolling at Río Vista, Sarah had attended three schools in 5 years due to family moves and caregiving shifts, a pattern associated with disrupted peer ties and uneven access to services.

Running Away From Home: The First Crisis

Cumulative school changes—elementary to two different middle schools before Río Vista—left gaps in Sarah’s records and services (e.g., counseling referrals and bilingual support), amplifying staff reliance on behavioral data over contextual understanding. The first major crisis that drew Sarah into sharper focus for her school and community occurred when she ran away from home. It began after what her mother described as a normal disagreement about school attendance and household responsibilities. For Sarah, the argument reflected her frustration at being told she was “falling behind again.” For her mother, the conversation was one more attempt to balance her daughter’s education with the daily pressures of raising three children while also working toward her Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certification. When Sarah did not come home that evening, her mother immediately reached out for help. She contacted the school counselor and the local police department, explaining that Sarah had been increasingly restless and spending more time with friends who were several years older.

The next morning, when Sarah was still missing, her absence became part of the faculty conversation in the principal’s office. Teachers expressed concern, some recalling her frequent absences and classroom disengagement. For the administration, the incident marked the moment when Sarah’s story shifted from being seen as “another student struggling with attendance” to a crisis that demanded coordinated action.

Sarah was located 3 days later. She had been staying with a group of older peers who welcomed her into their homes and introduced her to vaping and other high-risk behaviors. Sarah later explained that being with them felt easier than being at home or at school, where she often felt misunderstood or unwanted. With her peers, she felt a sense of belonging, even if the choices they made together carried significant risks. The school and her family responded with urgency. The counselor scheduled a meeting between Sarah and her mother, urging them to consider outside resources for support.

Sarah was admitted to a behavioral health facility soon after, where she was evaluated and diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and depression. Although clinicians prescribed medication and offered short-term therapy, Sarah was reluctant to engage. After 2 weeks, she was released with a minimal follow-up plan that placed much of the responsibility on her mother to seek additional services. In the weeks preceding the first crisis, Sarah’s frequent absences, irritability, and unmet support needs—yet the school’s routine sensemaking interpreted them primarily as noncompliance and defiance.

This moment revealed the complexity of Sarah’s needs and the limitations of institutional responses. From the perspective of the coloniality of emotions, Sarah’s act of running away was interpreted by some staff as rebellion rather than as a signal of distress. Her longing for connection was obscured by the school’s focus on attendance records and disciplinary history. Her mother’s exhaustion, rooted in the structural demands of work, school, and caregiving, was too easily framed as a failure of parenting rather than as evidence of systemic pressures that stretched the family thin. The crisis also underscores the school’s position at the intersection of education, family, and community. Faculty debated whether Sarah’s case reflected a “discipline issue” or a “support issue.” Administrators worried about liability and accountability, while her mother pleaded for help in finding consistent care. For Sarah, however, the act of running away was not a rejection of family or school but an expression of her search for belonging—an attempt to find community in the only place she felt she could.

Arrest for Marijuana Possession: The Second Crisis

Only a few weeks after returning home from her short stay at the behavioral health facility, Sarah experienced another turning point that deepened her entanglement with school discipline and the juvenile justice system. One evening, while spending time with the same group of older peers, she was stopped by police during what they described as a “routine stop-and-search.” In her backpack, officers discovered a small amount of marijuana. Sarah was taken into custody and spent several days in juvenile detention. For her mother, the phone call from the authorities was devastating. She had hoped that the hospital stay, however brief, might have offered Sarah a chance at stabilization. Instead, she found herself navigating the unfamiliar terrain of juvenile court while trying to keep her own studies and household together.

At the school, news of Sarah’s arrest spread quickly. Some faculty voiced concerns about the influence of her older peers and framed the arrest as confirmation that Sarah was “on the wrong path.” Others questioned what role the school could play in helping her rebuild trust and reengage with learning. The principal found herself caught between district policies—which required expulsion for drug-related offenses—and her awareness that exclusion would likely sever Sarah’s last remaining ties to formal education. The district ultimately reassigned Sarah to an alternative education program, citing both policy compliance and concerns for safety. The program promised smaller class sizes, individualized instruction, and access to counseling. Yet, from the outset, Sarah resisted the placement. She attended sporadically, skipped classes, and clashed with staff when confronted. The structure of the program, with its emphasis on surveillance and compliance, left little space for Sarah to feel affirmed or heard.

The second crisis illustrates the coloniality of being. Sarah’s place in the educational community became conditional: she was permitted to remain only if she complied with rigid behavioral expectations. Her misstep with marijuana—serious, but relatively minor in scale—was treated as grounds for exclusion rather than as an opportunity for restoration. In this way, the school’s response mirrors the larger STPN, where disciplinary infractions accelerate a young person’s contact with the justice system. For Sarah, the arrest was less about drugs than about belonging. She had turned to her peers for affirmation, seeking the community she struggled to find at home or at school. For her mother, the arrest was not just a legal crisis but another reminder of how thinly stretched she was in her efforts to support her daughter. For the school, it represented a moment of decision: Would leadership continue to interpret Sarah through the lens of compliance and discipline, or could they imagine innovative approaches that centered care, belonging, and possibility?

Transition to Alternative School: Struggles With Belonging

After the district expelled Sarah from her middle school for the marijuana possession charge, she was assigned to an alternative education program. On paper, the alternative program is designed to support students facing academic, behavioral, or legal challenges. Promotional materials emphasize smaller class sizes, individualized instruction, and access to counseling services. For the leadership team at Sarah’s home campus, the transfer provided reassurance: Sarah would remain enrolled in school, but in a setting that promised greater structure and support. For Sarah, however, the transition represented another rupture.

On her first day, she arrived late and stood outside the classroom door for several minutes before entering. She looked around at the small group of students already seated and whispered to a classmate she recognized from her neighborhood, “I don’t belong here.” While staff members encouraged her to give the program a chance, Sarah struggled to adjust. She resisted the strict dress code, arrived late to classes, and disengaged from assignments. When encouraged to participate in counseling sessions, she often refused, telling the school social worker, “I’m not crazy. I just don’t like being here.”

Her mother expressed concern but also fatigue. “She doesn’t want to go, and I can’t force her every day,” she explained in a phone call with the assistant principal. The demands of work and her CNA program left little room for daily battles over attendance. Despite the program’s promise of individualized care, much of the responsibility for monitoring Sarah’s participation fell back on her mother, who felt isolated in her efforts. Within a month, Sarah’s attendance dropped sharply. By mid-semester, Sarah had recorded 45 absences, reflecting broader attendance challenges across the school while also intersecting with her unfolding personal circumstances. By the semester’s end, the number of days she missed outpaced those she attended, underscoring how crisis and school structures combined to disrupt her engagement. For teachers at the alternative program, Sarah’s disengagement reinforced a narrative they had seen before: Students who arrived resistant often left entirely. For administrators, the case raised pressing questions about how to reengage students once they had been placed outside the traditional school community.

This phase of Sarah’s story highlights the coloniality of being most starkly. Her inclusion in the educational system was now conditional on adherence to strict behavioral norms. Rather than affirming her humanity and creating opportunities for belonging, the alternative program’s structures emphasized surveillance, compliance, and exclusion. The very space intended to provide a fresh start replicated the same dynamics that had alienated her on her home campus: rigid expectations with little acknowledgment of her lived experiences, interests, or needs. The loss of enrichment opportunities underscored these dynamics. Sarah had once expressed interest in robotics, but when the teacher leading the program left the campus, the materials were returned to the district. Without sustained investment in extracurricular activities, programs that might have drawn Sarah back into school life disappeared. Opportunities for engagement were not absent because students lacked ability or motivation; they were absent because institutional supports were fragile, tied to individuals rather than embedded into the fabric of the school.

For school leaders, Sarah’s struggles in the alternative program raised a dilemma: How could they ensure that placements meant to provide support did not become holding spaces on the path toward permanent disconnection? How could they create systems that affirmed students’ right to belong, rather than reinforcing a trajectory toward the margins of education and into the STPN?

Leadership Dilemmas: A Campus at the Crossroads

By midyear, Sarah’s situation had become a recurring topic in leadership meetings. The principal, still in her first year, found herself walking a tightrope between district policy, faculty expectations, parental concerns, and her own sense of what leadership required. Though she had worked on the campus before her promotion, the shift from being assistant principal to being principal placed her in the unfamiliar position of being the final decision-maker. Teachers were vocal in their frustration. Several argued that allowing Sarah to return to general education classes sent “the wrong message” to other students. One teacher said during a faculty meeting, “If she gets away with this, what does that say to the kids who follow the rules?” Another insisted that keeping Sarah in their classroom was “a risk to everyone else’s learning,” citing altercations from the previous year. For many faculty, Sarah’s presence was framed as a test of whether the administration truly valued safety and order.

In leadership discussions, Sarah’s identity was summarized through metrics—“45 absences,” “drug offense,” and “alternative placement”—while the reasons beneath those numbers (housing instability, caregiving strain, and unmet mental-health supports) remained largely unspoken. Attendance and referral counts became proxies for character and risk, narrowing the range of “appropriate” responses to compliance management rather than coordinated care (Irby, 2014).

At the district level, central office administrators pointed to state policy and board directives that emphasized zero tolerance for drug-related offenses. Sarah’s arrest, they noted, fit squarely within the guidelines for alternative placement. The message was clear: Exceptions could create liability for the school and undermine the district’s stance on discipline.

Families in the community voiced a different set of concerns. Sarah’s mother pleaded for more support, explaining that she felt overwhelmed but did not want her daughter pushed out of school entirely. A group of parents who had heard about the situation through the grapevine expressed sympathy but also unease, asking whether the school could guarantee that their own children would remain safe.

The principal herself struggled with the moral weight of the situation. She understood the consequences of exclusion: Once students disengaged fully, they were far more likely to leave school altogether. She also recognized how exclusionary practices disproportionately impacted racialized students, multilingual learners, and those experiencing economic hardship. Yet she was also aware of her fragile position as a new leader on a campus that had just moved up from years of “F” accountability ratings. A single high-profile incident could erode community trust or draw district scrutiny. The assistant principals were equally divided. One argued for a strict adherence to policy: “If we bend here, it undermines our whole discipline system.” The other advocated for a restorative approach, suggesting that Sarah’s behaviors be reframed as signals of trauma rather than defiance. Their disagreement highlights the broader tension between compliance-oriented and equity-oriented leadership practices.

From the lens of coloniality of knowing, Sarah’s identity within these discussions was defined almost entirely by institutional data: her absences, her arrest, and her placement record. Missing from the conversations were her own voice and her knowledge of her lived experiences, including her search for belonging and her untapped strengths. From the lens of coloniality of emotions, faculty concerns about safety and frustration with Sarah’s resistance were treated as more legitimate than Sarah’s own expressions of distress or her mother’s exhaustion. Emotions within the system were hierarchized, with institutional comfort prioritized over relational repair. And from the lens of the coloniality of being, Sarah’s belonging in the school community was conditional. She was permitted to remain only if she conformed to institutional expectations of orderliness and compliance. Any deviation risked pushing her further into the STPN, where surveillance and exclusion replace affirmation and care. The leadership team now faces a defining question: Should they enforce exclusion in the name of order, reintegrate Sarah despite faculty resistance, or attempt to create an innovative path that balances accountability with belonging? The answer will not only determine Sarah’s trajectory but also signal to the entire community what kind of leadership would guide the school’s future.

Teaching Notes

Colonial foundations profoundly shape schooling in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Mission schools in the 17th century sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples, erasing languages and cultural practices (De León, 1983; Reséndez, 2016). Later, U.S. annexation and racially segregated schooling entrenched whiteness as the template for being (Valencia, 2008). Today, schools like Río Vista reproduce these patterns when conformity to white, middle-class norms becomes the measure of success (Sun & Liou, 2025). These historical continuities remind us that contemporary discipline practices are not neutral responses to behavior but expressions of long-standing colonial logics. The STPN should therefore be understood as an organizational practice rather than an accidental outcome that criminalizes student distress. Exclusionary responses—suspensions, expulsions, and law-enforcement referrals—remove students from classrooms and normalize carceral contact (Annamma et al., 2014; Hirschfield, 2008; Skiba et al., 2014). Zero-tolerance laws deepen these logics, framing misbehavior as individual failure rather than systemic inequity (Curran, 2016). As Owens (2022) and Welsh and Little (2018) argue, structural conditions such as poverty or linguistic marginalization are converted into disciplinary codes rather than support systems. This process criminalizes distress and frames inequities as deficits within students rather than as responsibilities of institutions. Sarah demonstrates notable strengths: adaptability across multiple school transitions, bilingual and bicultural navigation, and a strong capacity for peer connection and belonging-seeking—assets that could be leveraged through mentoring, restorative circles, and interest-based enrichment rather than treated solely as risk. Though Sarah’s running away, disengagement, and affiliation with older peers are read as survival-oriented coping and belonging-seeking behaviors, the school reads these as willful misbehaviors, trauma is pathologized and subsequently criminalized through exclusion.

Coloniality provides critical insight into how these logics persist. The coloniality of knowing privileges attendance and discipline data over lived knowledge, narrowing interventions to compliance (Irby, 2014; Sun & Liou, 2025). Quantitative indicators are treated as neutral truths that render disciplinary decisions inevitable, while displacing student voice, family knowledge, and contextual explanations of behavior. This data-centric framing constrains leadership action to compliance and exclusion rather than care, repair, and reengagement. This data-centric framing enables schools to produce rather than reduce trauma by obscuring how institutional routines contribute to student harm (Petrone & Stanton, 2021). The coloniality of emotions validates adult frustrations while pathologizing trauma-expressive student behaviors such as running away or affiliating with older peers (Kennedy & Junker, 2024). The coloniality of being renders recognition conditional: Students are treated as “educable” only if they conform to white-normed expectations (Ramey, 2015; Williams, 2024). Research on trauma shows how exposure to violence, instability, or economic hardship undermines emotional regulation and engagement (Sanders et al., 2023; Zinsser et al., 2022). When schools misread trauma signals as defiance, exclusion becomes the response (Dutil, 2020). In this way, coloniality and trauma intersect: Schools discipline behaviors that are survival strategies, compounding harm instead of facilitating healing. Centering student voice—through listening conferences, reflective narratives, or participatory sensemaking—reorients decision-making toward care, repair, and belonging, aligning leadership practice with trauma-reducing rather than trauma-producing logics (Petrone & Stanton, 2021).

Evidence-informed approaches exist, but they require more than slogans. Restorative practices reduce suspensions by centering accountability and repair when implemented with fidelity (Cruz et al., 2021; Gregory et al., 2017). Trauma-informed interventions such as “monarch rooms” offer de-escalation without exclusion, especially for court-involved youth (Baroni et al., 2020). “Monarch rooms” are designated de-escalation spaces staffed for brief, supportive removal from instruction where students can regulate emotions, access coping tools, and reconnect through check-ins—serving as an alternative to suspension when implemented with clear protocols. Yet, as Dutil (2020) warns, trauma-informed approaches without racial-equity analysis risk medicalizing racism and recentering surveillance. A sustainable evidence-based approach integrates trauma-informed care, culturally responsive leadership, and equity-oriented practices, ensuring that care replaces compliance as the institutional default. Equity also extends beyond discipline to access to enrichment. The discontinuation of Río Vista’s robotics program illustrates how opportunities are fragile when tied to a single teacher. Schools that serve emergent bilingual and economically disadvantaged students face uneven access to advanced programs (Emerick, 2022; Welch & Payne, 2018). These program gaps matter for both academic outcomes and behavioral ones: Students disconnected from enrichment are more likely to disengage from school altogether, making punitive responses both more likely and more harmful. Ensuring sustainability requires structural commitments—staffing pipelines, cross-training, and long-term funding—rather than reliance on individual educators.

For principals, dilemmas emerge at the intersection of policy, safety, and equity. District mandates enforce zero tolerance for drug offenses, but exclusion accelerates disengagement. Leaders should replace default exclusion with default supports: restorative conferences, harm-reduction counseling, and wraparound plans before removal (Cruz et al., 2021; Gregory et al., 2010). Tracking leading indicators—disaggregated referral reasons, mental-health service timelines, participation in enrichment, and fidelity to de-escalation protocols—offers various measures of school health. These forms of measurement push leaders to monitor not just compliance but whether schools are reducing harm and increasing care. Finally, trust is not built through compliance alone but through historical acknowledgment and co-design. Families in El Paso carry memories of displacement, segregation, and surveillance in schools (Reséndez, 2016; Wiley & Middleton, 2025). Building authentic trust requires leaders to name these histories, validate family knowledge, and establish transparent accountability processes. Strategies include multilingual family advisories, community partnerships for behavioral health, and public reporting on equity indicators. When schools center family voices and community histories, they disrupt colonial logics of erasure and create possibilities for leadership rooted in repair rather than punishment.

Discussion Questions

1. How do the region’s colonial histories shape what “appropriate behavior” means at Río Vista today?

2. Where do you see coloniality of knowing, emotions, and being in the school’s expectations, data practices, or disciplinary responses?

3. Which structural conditions (poverty, linguistic marginalization, or trauma) are being disciplined rather than supported in Sarah’s case?

4. If you replaced suspension/alternative placement with a restoration-and-supports pathway, what would the first 30 days look like?

5. What does the discontinued robotics program reveal about opportunity sustainability? Name two design fixes that would outlast staff turnover.

6. How might equitable access to enrichment intersect with reductions in discipline referrals and chronic absence?

7. What knowledge and emotions were centered in leadership deliberations, and whose were sidelined? How would you re-center them?

8. What two actions could the principal take this month to build trust with families while acknowledging colonial legacies?

9. What leading indicators (beyond test scores) would you track to assess belonging, safety, and reengagement?

10. What district-level policies help or hinder campus leaders from interrupting the STPN?

11. How might the juvenile justice system better collaborate with educators?

12. How can leaders acknowledge colonial histories to foster belonging?

Class Activities

Activity 1—Mapping Colonial Layers (20–25 min)

Provide a regional map (with the Franklin Mountains and Río Vista). In pairs, annotate Indigenous presences, missions, annexation, segregation, and current school boundaries. Conclude with quick share-outs with this prompt: Identify two historical continuities in present disciplinary norms.

Activity 2—Role-Play: Two Pathways (35–40 min)

Groups receive Sarah’s timeline and choose one of two approaches: (1) exclusionary/zero-tolerance or (2) restoration and supports. Have them plan a 30-day response (including people, practices, and progress checks). Debrief using the three coloniality lenses: Whose knowledge/emotions/being are recognized?

Activity 3—Micro Equity Audit Programs (25–30 min)

Teams build a one-page audit for enrichment sustainability (staffing pipelines, cross-training, funding, participation equity by subgroup, transportation/access, and scheduling). Ask them to propose two district supports that would stabilize offerings like robotics.

Activity 4—Community Forum Simulation (30–35 min)

Assign roles (students, emergent bilingual families, teachers, school resource officer, principal, and board member). Each role prepares a 60-s statement and a concrete request. Facilitate a forum; debrief on how trust was built or eroded and what shared commitments emerged.

Activity 5—Praxis Memo (10–12 min + take-home)

Students engage in individual write-ups with the following prompt: As a leader, what will I do in the next 60 days to interrupt the STPN at my campus? Require one action for belonging, one for program equity, and one for policy advocacy. Collect, and (optionally) have students peer review each other’s write-ups.