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

She worried it would be Benjamin Ashfordher 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.”