Join the youth-led movement to end the school to prison pipeline.
☼ Los Angeles, CA
students deserve
● About
Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Students Deserve is a multi-racial, intergenerational youth-led movement that centers Black students to end the school-to-prison pipeline. We uplift the voices, lived experiences, and demands of students, parents, and educators in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to end student criminalization and school push out.
For decades, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has refused to fund adequate resources and supports for students and instead invested millions in treating us like criminals. Black students have been disproportionately criminalized and pushed out of LAUSD by practices like: daily random searches, use of pepper spray against students, school police presence on campus, and more. We are fighting to end the school-to-prison pipeline and transform public education!
students deserve care not cops
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students deserve care not cops *
● Our Mission
OUR MISSION
Students Deserve is a youth-led organization working towards making Black Lives Matter in schools. With over 30 chapters across the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the United States, Students Deserve has shaped policies for police-free schools, community schools, and investment in Black students.
We want schools to divest from criminalization and policing. We want schools to invest in us as Black, Muslim, undocumented, Indigenous, and queer youth in poor and working class communities of color. We follow the lead of Black Lives Matter in demanding that our schools defund the police and defend Black life.
OUR IMPACT
Since our founding in 2013, Students Deserve has reimagined public education across the Los Angeles Unified School District to make Black lives matter in schools. Students Deserve and our partners have won:
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Since 2020, $25 million is divested annually from the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD)
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Since 2020, $120 million is annually invested in resources & supports for Black youth & families through the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP)
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By 2025, there will be 70 community schools established in the Los Angeles Unified School District
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As of 2025. there are over 30 Students Deserve chapters across the Los Angeles Unified School District
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Students Deserve and our partners have achieved the largest divestment amount from school police in the nation
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With our coalition partners, Students Deserve has ended school policing like daily "random" searches and school police use of pepper spray against students in LAUSD
● Contact
TAP IN WITH STUDENTS DESERVE
Whether you’re curious about ways to get involved, our upcoming campaigns, or looking to bring your talents to our team, we’re here to build community power.