Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth-led organization that works to create safer and more equitable learning environments throughout the city of Chicago (VOYCE, 2014). One of their campaigns, “Educate, Don’t Incarcerate,” focuses on the reallocation of school funds from police officers to mental health professionals and restorative justice practitioners (VOYCE, 2015). VOYCE achieved their first major win for this campaign in 2015 with the passage of SB 100, ending the use of zero tolerance policies in all public schools throughout Illinois (VOYCE, 2015).

Since then, VOYCE has been focusing on the passage of the “Safe Schools and Healthy Learning Environment” Act which would create “an optional grant program for school districts that wish to reallocate funding for school-based law enforcement personnel toward restorative justice programs, the increased use of school psychologists, social workers, and other mental and behavioral health specialists, and other strategies for creating safe and healthy learning environments” (VOYCE, 2015). Citing the statistics contained in the infographic below, VOYCE argues that rather than continue to invest in harsh disciplinary measures, schools should focus on reallocating funding towards services that create environments actually conducive to learning and work actively to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline (VOYCE, 2015).