McKinney already knew that Dasani had landed a two-month “superintendent’s suspension” in Staten Island, after fighting the girls who were bullying Nana. This meant that Dasani would have to report to a “suspension site.” There are thirty-seven such schools in New York City, with around eight thousand students passing through this academic year—the majority of them Black, consigned to a system known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The setting of Dasani’s suspension site, Mount Loretto in Staten Island, has its origins in the first Gilded Age, when a Catholic priest took up the cause of
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