Durell Green said he is all-too-familiar with the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Green, who is African American, said he had trouble integrating with other students in school, was labeled as a ‘bad element’ and wound up being arrested for the first time when he was 14. He said he later wound up in prison at age 18.

Green, now 30, has since gotten his life on a better track and mentors high school students at his church. He was one of several speakers at the “Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline” conference which was part of the 24th annual Kitsap County Human Rights Conference on Dec. 5.

Green said he was home-schooled until he was 11 years old and scored high as a student. But since he lacked regular interaction with other students, he had difficulty integrating into the regular school system and was labeled “anti-social.” And those labels had an impact.

“My parents said I’m bad, so I must be bad,” he said. “In school, I’m being disruptive in class (and) my teacher thinks I’m bad. I must be bad. Then you get kicked out of school. Now you’re really bad … you’re saying you’re bad yourself. And what happens to bad people in our society? They go to jail.”

“When you’re at that age you’re very impressionable and you can go a whole lot of different ways. If no one is there to provide you a positive alternative to what you see because your perspective is so negative at that age then you’re going to go with you’re gut and go with what feels right. And what feels right ain’t always right. We have to have more mentors.”

A panel of four educators had thoughts on how to help students who might be facing the same life challenges that Green dealt with.

Joe Davalos, superintendent of education for the Suquamish Tribe, said helping kids early was the key.

“It doesn’t start when kids are 12 or in the eighth grade. It starts in the womb and continues on. And you need to do all the interventions you can before they get to be 9 years old. If they’re not reading by then … we need to do something drastic about that,” Davalos said.

Small class sizes, providing mentors for every child, and providing child care were important he said.

“What is the cost of having someone in prison for one year? $50,000?,” Davalos asked.

“School districts average between $5,000 to $6,000 to maybe $7,000 a year per child … the entire time they’re in K-12 it may cost the same for 12 years (of school) it does one year for somebody in prison,” Davalos said.

The school system deals with larger issues in society such as homelessness, poverty and drug abuse, said Daniel Frederick, with the Coffee Oasis outreach program. Students dealing with these issues get stressed out and bring that stress with them to school.

Compassion was required to help those students, Frederick said. He said making libraries “sexy” could also help.

“When youth are in the juvenile detention center they read like crazy and when they get out they stop. We believe in ‘gateway books.’ People talk about gateway drugs. There are such things as gateway books where once a child finds that book it is their book that will open up a world of beautiful exploration and reading for them,” Frederick said.

Robert Boddie, executive Director of People Organized Working for Ethnic Reality, said racism was still an issue for children. Also, some children have kids of their own, he noted.

Boddie said he regularly mentors young adults and introduces them to engineers, electricians, financial advisors, professional athletes, doctors and lawyers. Boddie said vocational schools and the military also offered career paths.

Tim Stensager, Chair of Data Governance for Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction said students often struggled with English language arts, math and science classes when they reached the ninth grade.

“There’s like a perfect correlation with that metric and drop-out,” Stensager said.

“About 75 percent of ninth graders in the state of Washington pass those classes, but 25 percent don’t. And those 25 percent have negative outcomes along the way. It makes sense: If you’re struggling to matriculate through the system and you’re losing credits early something is going on.”

Suspensions and expulsions from school were key indicators that could predict whether or not a student graduated from high school he said, so finding alternatives was important.

Such efforts could help at-risk youth enjoy successful lives.

Green himself now regularly works with the community and with police.

“I’m actually active in working with law enforcement now which is very ironic,” Green mused.