Rethinking behavioral reassignment in school systems: A restorative model for holistic intervention.

Growing evidence over the last few decades has highlighted that punitive approaches in schools perpetuate violence, furthering inequities, deepening issues of safety, and negatively impacting young people’s development. These impacts are particularly felt in under-resourced urban schools situated in contexts of community violence. Partially, in response, an increasing number of schools and school districts are engaging in restorative practices. This trauma-informed, strengths-based framework focuses on relationships, healing, and accountability. This article contributes to the growing literature on the potential of restorative justice to promote equity in urban schools and educational systems by outlining the development and model of a restorative alternative to the behavioral reassignment schools’ model that has been used in Milwaukee Public Schools. We describe how this initiative, the Milwaukee Public Schools Success Center (SC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, employs a restorative framework to intervene with highrisk students with holistic, supportive, and healing-centered strategies. The model focuses on addressing student needs to move beyond pathologizing “at-risk” youth in urban contexts and truly support their thriving. In the article, we detail the background and conceptualization of the SC, examine how the tenets of restorative philosophy are infused throughout the SC, and illustrate key elements with examples. We situate the SC within the broader literature on ecological systems, development, and peacebuilding. This foundation is operationalized concretely through three main goals across socioecological levels: student empowerment and psychosocial well-being (individual-level), relationship building (interpersonal- and communal-level), and addressing racial gaps and inequities in education (systemic-level). Each of these levels draws on research and theory about building cultures of peace through schools as part of an ecological systems approach. The goals are intentionally not centered on behavior change; instead, they situate behaviors and attitudes that are often seen as problematic within social–emotional dynamics across levels, applying an ecological perspective on risk and resilience for urban students. The article ends with lessons learned that may be applicable in other settings, as well as our next steps in the process of evaluating the efficacy of this initiative. We present this model not as one to be copied directly to other settings but rather to be reimagined within the particular social, cultural, and local ecological contexts to effectively address trauma, distrust, and broken relationships that sustain inequities and cultural and structural violence in urban educational systems. Furthermore, the SC integrates repair and restoration with trauma-informed work to address the psychosocial needs of the urban students and families served in Milwaukee. To this end, it offers an extension for thinking about the role of trauma-informed practices at the intersection of development, peacebuilding, schools, and community violence. The SC and its restorative approach can offer a general framework for policymakers and educators who are interested in a more holistic and therapeutic approach to addressing individuals who are often termed “troubled” or “high-risk” students.