Debra Mayes Pane, Ph.D.
Founder & President

Debra Mayes Pane, Ph.D. is Founding President of Eradicating the School-to-Prison Pipeline Foundation, Inc. (E-SToPP), a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to building a grass-roots network of transformative schools and educational opportunities for youth at risk of or already involved in suspension, expulsion, incarceration, and/or reentering to family, school, and community. Ultimately, E-SToPP seeks to transform systems, policies, and mindsets that disproportionately funnel youth out of school and into prison.

For over 20 years, Dr. Pane has been a teacher, teacher educator, curriculum developer, and researcher in Miami-Dade County from elementary through university graduate levels. She was Lead Reading Teacher for 9 years at TROY Community Academy, a Miami-Dade County Public Educational Alternative Outreach Program for youth in the juvenile justice system. She is the 1998 Teacher-of-the-Year for M-DCPS Educational Alternative Outreach Program.

Her research agenda focuses on transformative literacy and teacher education, critical communities of practice, power relationships, empowering praxis, and critical qualitative research methods that inform social justice to transform the educational outcomes and lives of disenfranchised youth. The book, Transforming the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Lessons from the Classroom (2014), by Debra M. Pane and Tonette S. Rocco, explores aspects of critical multicultural teaching and learning in oppressive educational settings.