Hearing the phone ring during school hours used to send Destiny Huff into panic mode. 

She worried it would be her son’s school calling to say he was suspended again– a constant reality for Huff and her husband when her son began kindergarten at a Louisiana school in 2021. 

Huff said her five-year-old son “would come back from suspension– the school day started at 7:45– and by nine o’clock, they'd already called me and he’d been suspended again.”