A student in Wake County Public School System arrested March 7 for allegedly fighting on a school bus has been held in the jail on Hammond Road in Raleigh for nearly two weeks.
17-year old Selina Garcia, a senior at Southeast Raleigh High School, was arrested and taken to jail by a school resource officer “to learn a lesson” following allegations of Level II misconduct— “physical aggression/fighting” and “class activity/disturbance.”
Garcia is in foster care and no one has yet come to pick her up from the county detention center.
No bail has been set for Garcia’s release.
Garcia wrote in a letter to members of NC HEAT—a student advocacy group for civil justice in public schools— that her time in jail “isn’t going to slow me down nor stop me.”
“In here I am no longer Selina Marie Garcia,” she wrote. “I am #34. Not a human being but a caged animal.”
Members of NC HEAT showed up to a Wake County school board meeting Tuesday evening in orange prison jumpsuits, pleading with board members to do something about the school-to-prison pipeline that has claimed another student in Wake County.
Garcia said she is falling behind in her school work and her arrest could cause her to lose scholarship grants from the North Carolina Division of Social Services that would provide her with a way to pay for college.
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