Our History

In May of 2016, Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU) launched “Break the Pipeline”, a community action initiative to end the criminalization of youth of color by pressing for school, police, and juvenile justice reforms. With the help of Ready by 21 (RB21), Forward Through Ferguson, West County Community Action Network, Educators for Social Justice and FOCUS St Louis Impact Fellows, Break the Pipeline introduced “Keep Kids In Class”, an organizing campaign to push for the adoption of policies eliminating the use of out of school suspension in school districts across the region.

The collaborative work culminated in an event in November 2016 with nearly 600 community members and representatives from 20 school districts located across St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Charles County. District superintendents announced their interest in policy changes to reduce and eliminate out-of-school suspensions. Since this event, several school districts in the region have changed their policy: Maplewood Richmond Heights, Ladue, Normandy, St. Louis Public Schools, and Kirkwood. 

Following the #KeepKidsinClass campaign of 2016, organizations across the region continued work on issues related to disproportionality and the school to prison pipeline. Individual community leaders, local grassroots organizations and parent/student advocacy groups were no longer alone in their efforts to dismantle the local school to prison pipeline. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU) also took note, and in early 2017 began the first statewide advocacy initiative focused on the pipeline. In September of 2017, the ACLU of Missouri released a report titled “Missouri’s Pipeline of Injustice: From School to Prison”. This report follows up on the analysis conducted in the 2015 UCLA study, using data from 2011-2015. According to the ACLU report, Missouri’s black students were 4.5 times more likely to be suspended than white students. Alarmingly, they also found that between 2011 and 2014, the rate of Missouri students expelled from school had doubled. In 2015, Missouri still had the nation’s highest suspension rate of black students in elementary school. Additionally, the report showed Missouri schools also expel preschoolers more frequently than 42 other states.  

Due to the number of school districts and fragmented geopolitical design of the St. Louis Metropolitan area, many duplicative efforts were underway in order to push for policy changes in districts and jurisdictions across the region. The increased desire for collaboration among the various organizations pushing for progress led to a roundtable discussion in May of 2017. Many participants of the #KeepKidsinClass Campaign attended, along with a handful of additional agencies known to be working on the pipeline in St. Louis and across Missouri. By the end of 2017 the group had identified a unifying mission, and an agreement was made to continue the work of organizing to push for more progressive discipline policies and organizational changes in districts across the St. Louis region. The Keep Kids in Class Coalition was formally established as a collaborative effort of diverse organizations working in and around the education space, dedicated to creating equitable school learning environments where all children can recognize their fullest potential. The Coalition is led by a core team comprised of representatives from Forward Through Ferguson, ACLU of Missouri, Metropolitan Congregations United, Shut it Down, and West County Community Action Network (WE CAN).