As Deputy Director for School Justice Project, Tayo supervises all programmatic areas of SJP’s work. Tayo’s systemic work aims to mitigate the consequences of the juvenile and criminal legal systems by using special education laws to promote education throughout all periods of court involvement and reentry.

Tayo serves as lead counsel in Charles H. v. District of Columbia, a class action challenging the denial of education to students incarcerated at the DC Jail during the COVID-19 pandemic and Barnes v. District of Columbia, a class action challenging the lack of special education for DC students in Federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities. Tayo leads SJP’s systemic advocacy efforts aimed at improving correctional education and advocating for the effective implementation of special education laws.Before joining SJP, Tayo was a Staff Attorney at Advocates for Children of New York representing individual students with special education needs.

Tayo was also an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of New York, where she advocated for statewide and local policies to address school discipline and safety issues and assisted with education-related federal litigation. During Tayo’s tenure with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, she served as the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Fellow. She was part of the team that successfully challenged the Federal Railroad Administration to increase contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses resulting in a nationwide change to the standard contract. 

During law school, Tayo was a legal intern for the Honorable Ann Williams (Ret.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City where she worked on education issues. Prior to law school, Tayo was a Staff Assistant for United States Senator Robert P. Casey. Tayo holds a B.A. in Political Science from The Ohio State University and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

Tayo is an attorney admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and New York. Tayo can be reached at: tbelle@sjpdc.org.