Open Austin Honored with Pro Bono Leadership Award from Texas Appleseed
Many Texans see the evidence of the school-to-prison pipeline in their daily lives – sometimes because a video goes viral or because they are a parent, grandparent, or advocate for a child they love. Texas Appleseed has long been involved in working to address systemic problems related to zero-tolerance school disciplinary policies and hostile school climates – and they wanted a new forum to reach people and expand the dialogue around the issue.
Texas Appleseed is a public interest justice center. This nonprofit works to change unjust laws and policies that prevent Texans from realizing their full potential.
Texas Appleseed approached us at Open Austin with the idea to create a website that would bring together advocates, students, parents, and educators in Texas who are interested in improving educational opportunities and outcomes for youth. Our volunteers stepped up to help, donating more than a year of pro bono time by building a new website, Texas School Discipline Lab, from scratch. Volunteers also designed and gathered data for several interactive maps that feature discipline data from over 1,200 school districts across Texas, while offering their expertise on the best way to present data that would make it easy to understand, visually appealing, and accessible to various audiences.
On Thursday, November 17, Open Austin representatives were presented with the Pro Bono Leadership Award at Texas Appleseed’s 20th Annual Good Apple Dinner. Open Austin is honored to support Texas Appleseed in one small aspect of this important work that will improve the lives of children.
Source Code for the School District Discipline Maps can be found on Github.
Contributors to this project include:
- Patricia Silva
- John Tyree
- Carissa Melanson
- Harold Jackson
- Diego Hernandez
- Michelle Schulze
- Matt Carey
- David Infortunio
- Yamanda Wright
- Mateo Clarke
- and many more