May 2021 – Page 2 – NAACP New Bedford

#SayHerName: Mikayla Miller

Mikayla Miller was a promising 16-year-old African American honors student-athlete at Hopkinton High School. She was a kind-hearted young lady who had dreams of attending an HBCU to study journalism. Her mother had just bought her a car. She had never been arrested or suspended from school. She was reportedly jumped by older white teenage boys on April 17 and found dead on April 18th, her body tied to a tree with a belt wrapped around her neck. Hopkinton has a Black population of 0.1%. Police have refused to investigate Mikayla's suspicious death as a murder, telling her mother that...

Statewide survey on Discipline and School Exclusion During COVID-19

The Chapter 222 Coalition, an alliance of educational advocates and attorneys and Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), a non-profit statewide advocacy organization, are concerned that schools may be excluding and disciplining students, particularly students of color and students with disabilities, during the pandemic. We are also concerned about schools filing 51A “child neglect” reports with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), and Child Requiring Assistance (CRA) truancy cases in juvenile court, if children are not able to access online school. If these things happen, we want to hear about them so that we can seek systemic and policy change...