Does Doug DeVos and the West Michigan Policy Forum really want to change the prison system in Michigan?

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

We have been monitoring the West Michigan Policy Reform (WMPF) group, ever since it came into being in 2008.

This group is made up of the West Michigan power structure, like the DeVos family, Peter Seechia, John Kennedy, Michael Jandernoa and other CEOs and politicians that have been supporting and lobbying on state policies since they were founded in 2008. 

The West Michigan Policy Reform has already been instrumental in pushing through state policy that benefits businesses on taxes, they were a force in making Michigan a Right to Work state, pushing for education policies that expand Charter Schools and last year got legislation passed to eliminate traditional public sector employees and public teacher pensions.

Now the group is taking on what they refer to as Criminal Justice Reform.

Over the past several weeks, the West Michigan Policy Forum has been posting pieces on their Facebook page, pushing what…

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Betsy DeVos Wants to Reverse Efforts to Bring Some Degree of Racial Justice to School Discipline

janresseger

Donald Trump’s administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have been rolling back Obama-era regulations in the Department of Education along with weakening investigations by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Using the terrible Parkland, Florida school shooting as an excuse, Trump and DeVos are now threatening to throw out Obama era guidance designed to reduce zero-tolerance school discipline policies. Designed to block the school to prison pipeline, the Obama rules reversed school discipline practices that overly suspended and expelled African American students and and put too many of these students on a path into the criminal justice system.  It is essential that Trump and DeVos be stopped from undermining efforts to bring more humane and fairer discipline policies to public schools.

The 2014 guidance policies DeVos and Trump are threatening to eliminate were designed to address the fact that for a long time black and brown students, poor students, and…

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