Transforming Our Community
The OUSD Restorative Justice (RJ) initiative is dedicated to transforming OUSD into a healthier community that is rooted in racial and gender equity. By working in partnership with all members of the community we intentionally build meaningful relationships, repair harm, and welcome new and returning members.
In OUSD, Restorative Justice is a set of principles and practices inspired by indigenous values used to build community, respond to harm/conflict and provide individual circles of support for students. By building, maintaining and restoring relationships between members of the entire school community, we help to create an environment where all students can thrive. Our program is implemented through a 3-tier, school-wide model.
3 Tier, School-Wide Model
- Tier I RELATE:
RJ Facilitator trains and coaches teachers and students on restorative practices for community building - Tier II REPAIR:
RJ Facilitator provides restorative conversations, harm circles - Tier III RESTORE:
RJ Facilitator conducts re-entry circles and individualized circles of support
Restorative Justice Outcomes
Since we started keeping data in 2015, students have used restorative processes over 250,000 times. This data only reflects input from RJ staff and doesn’t include circles done by teachers or administrators. The actual number is much larger.
Restorative Justice works because:
- Students need to feel safe and engaged in order to learn
- It helps students build skills: social-emotional, conflict resolution and listening, effective communication
- Students learn how to view conflict as an opportunity and handle it effectively instead of negatively through social media
- Discipline should be a learning process and provide healing for all those involved.
Restorative Justice is proven to work in:
- Reducing dropout rates and chronic absence
- Improving graduation rates and school climate
- Resolving issues so students can return to the learning
Program Staffing
The OUSD RJ program staffing consists of 18 site-based RJ Facilitators, 6 Restorative Community School Managers at the elementary level, 4 RJ Program Managers and 1 RJ Program Coordinator.
Peer RJ
In the 2019-2020 school year the RJ Program at OUSD expects to train approximately 400 youth across the district at all age levels to be RJ circle keepers. These youth will facilitate circles to build community in their classrooms and schools as well as for healing harm and responding to conflict among their peers.
