The school-to-prison pipeline has been an ongoing phenomenon for many decades that disproportionately and negatively impacts students of color. Due to research suggesting school principals play a critical role in the student disciplinary decision-making process, the present study aimed to better understand how principals make discipline decisions and to learn how social justice leadership plays a role in the disruption of the school-to-prison pipeline. The purpose of this qualitative, single case study was to investigate how an exemplar middle school principal of Latino and economically disadvantaged majority school led her campus. The study sought to address a gap in the literature by exploring effective examples used by the participant as she worked not only to narrow the achievement gap but also managed to maintain low numbers of student disciplinary placements for at least three consecutive school years. Hence addressing the disruption of the school-to-prison pipeline by replacing zero tolerance disciplinary practices with restorative justice practices. Leaders like this exemplar principal are critical to the future of public education, therefore the end goal was to shed light on how principals use their practices and beliefs to lead a socially just school. Social justice leadership theory guided the exploratory process of the study. Purposeful sampling was used to select the participant with specific criteria. The primary source of the data collection was in-depth semi-structured interviews. A reflective journal and public documents were also used to collect data for this study. As part of the coding process, the data was reorganized and reanalyzed to construct themes for the purpose of obtaining a thorough narrative. The data was investigated through key concepts in the theoretical framework. A themes and subthemes model was created to demonstrate the interconnectedness amongst all elements of a socially just school. The social justice leadership conceptual model was developed to illustrate the four main emergent themes: Care and Connectedness, Restorative Practices and Relationships, School Capacity and Parental Engagement, and Data Driven. Within these tenets of Social Justice Leadership were implications for practice and policy that contribute to the implementation of leading a socially just school. Although the findings of this study are not generalizable, there is a lot to learn from a middle school exemplar principal who leads a school where Latino and economically disadvantaged students are thriving academically, socially, and emotionally. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]