For Students, By Students — A Student Bill of Rights
A NextGen Impact Lab initiative in partnership with LA Unified School District
On June 23, 2020, the nation's second-largest school district unanimously passed a Bill of Rights authored by students.
American public schooling, as documented by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, has long delivered profoundly unequal opportunity to students. Policy reform has been slow, top-down, and chronically disconnected from the actual experiences of the people it most affects.
A student team at HATCH Montana's Lab Sprint took on that challenge directly — drafting a Student Bill of Rights built not by administrators or policy experts, but by students themselves. Fifteen students from JSA and the Alliance Public Schools network in Los Angeles joined the HATCH NextGen cohort.
Outcomes
On June 23rd, 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District — the second-largest school district in the nation — unanimously passed the Student Bill of Rights.