Tag: school to prison pipeline

How to Stop the School –> Prison –> Pipeline

Too many students are being diverted from school into the criminal justice system.

The school-to-prison pipeline “is one of our nation’s most formidable challenges, states the report.” “It arises from low expectations; low academic achievement; incorrect referral or categorization in special education; and overly harsh discipline, including suspension, expulsion, referral to law enforcement, arrest and treatment in the juvenile justice system.”  And, the report notes, “Throughout these causes runs evidence of implicitly biased discretionary decisions, which, unintentionally, bring about these results.”

What the report fails to mention is that the causes are not generally biased discretionary decisions, but policies imposed on schools by legislators, regulators and school boards.  There has been a movement across the country that takes the authority away from individual schools.  Individual schools often no longer have the authority to make discipline, safety, educational or treatment decisions as their discretion has been usurped by policy makers and people removed from the classroom.

The result, while, perhaps, unintentional, was absolutely foreseeable.

When you take the authority and ability to maintain a safe and effective educational environment away from the school and educators, and place the authority in the hands of law enforcement, there will be a rise in the number of students entering the school –> to –> prison pipeline.

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CA. Los Angeles Judge Objects to School Police Getting Millions Reserved for Students: Routine School Disciplinary Matters Should Be Handled By Schools, Not Police

Los Angeles’ top juvenile court judge is objecting to a planned diversion of $13 million to school police there from state funds earmarked to provide special learning assistance to disadvantaged kids.

In a June 6th letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles County Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash said this particular pot of money should not be diverted to support the L.A. district’s own school police force, which has an annual budget of around $57 million.

Nash expressed “great respect” for recent efforts to reduce school suspensions and referrals to police, but said he did “not see a reasonable nexus between law enforcement and specifically improving the educational experience and outcomes for our most vulnerable student populations.”

“On the contrary,” the judge said, “there has been a wealth of research that indicates that aggressive security measures produce alienation and mistrust among students which, in turn, can disrupt the learning environment.”

“This explains why, as part of a nationwide discipline reform process that has gained significant traction of late, there is a specific focus on reducing police involvement in routine school discipline matters,” Nash wrote.

Nash presides over one of the biggest juvenile courts in the country and was a recent president of the National Council of Juvenile Court Judges. In that role he also wrote to the White House expressing concerns about schools rushing to obtain federal money to put more school police on campuses.

Judge Nash has been involved in efforts in Los Angeles to rein in the use of school police on campuses; practices were leading to the annual ticketing of tens of thousands  students for tardiness, truancy, schoolyard fights and other minor infractions.

Nash argues that excessive use of police in essentially school discipline matters — and matters he said were better addressed through counseling and family support — were contributing to a “school-to-prison pipeline” putting kids at risk of greater, not less, trouble with the criminal justice system.

Other interest groups concerned with the school to prison pipeline in California include:  Children’s Defense Fund, ACLU of Southern California, Youth Justice Coalition, CADRE, Community Rights Campaign of the Labor Community Strategy Center in LA and Public Counsel (the nation’s largest pro bono law firm focused on rolling back school-police ticketing in Los Angeles), National Council of Juvenile Court Judges and the Center for Public Integrity.

Other California School Districts considering using money reserved for vulnerable students to supplement school police include Sacramento, Long Beach and Kern Union High School District, a Central Valley district with a record of high rates of student expulsion or transfers.

Handle With Care will be writing the California Unified School Districts and interest groups mentioned above.  What is happening in California is that the Counties rather than the school are dictating policy and programming, and the policies and programming being provided are not meeting the real needs of the schools.  As a result the counties have unintentionally created a school to prison pipeline. What needs to happen is that the power to choose programming needs to revert back to the Local School Boards and Schools.  The fact is that the prison pipeline will dry up as soon as schools regain and demand the right to choose programming and policy that suits the real needs of the school, its educators and its students.

US. Government offers recommendations to discipline to slow school-to-prison pipeline

Today the Feds will be issuing recommendations to stop the school-to-prison pipeline encouraging schools to deal with disciplinary infractions internally, rather than involving law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

The Government’s recommendation encourage schools to ensure that:

– school personnel are trained in classroom management, conflict resolution and approaches to de-escalate classroom disruptions.

– there are clear distinctions about the responsibilities of school security personnel.

– schools establish procedures on how to distinguish between disciplinary infractions appropriately handled by school officials compared with major threats to school safety.

We’ve been warning that the laws and rules being passed restricting the ability of teachers and people in direct contact with students to maintain a safe and effective learning environment would result in an increased use of law enforcement and perpetuation of the school-to-prison pipeline. Just look at NYC schools.

New York City Schools have a strict hands off policy for teachers. So rather than schools handling the behavior, law enforcement is called when students (including 5-year-olds) have behavioral issues or emotional meltdowns.

Teachers and school staff need to be trained how to manage a specialized population and need to act diligently and responsibly to ensure that the school is a safe and conducive learning environment. Relying solely on law enforcement and not having access to effective and safe behavior modification measures can create more risk for students and staff. Not intervening when a therapeutic response is called for is not so much prevention of restraint as it is an abdication of adult responsibility.

What is completely ironic is that the restraint-free movement, whose policies and ideology have necessitated the increased use of law enforcement are now calling the manifestations of their own policies “inconsistent with any notion of how we should be dealing with children.”

In the words of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, when it comes to routine discipline the “first instinct should not be to call 911 when there’s a problem.”

State Senator Asks Why Are School Police Department Disciplining Students and Not Teachers

A report released today by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Public Research Institute of Texas A&M University, found that police not teachers were routinely put in charge of disciplining students.

Calling the findings disturbing, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and state Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire said they intend to investigate solutions to the problem.

“The report tells us that more than 1 in 7 Texas middle and high school students have been involved with the juvenile justice system,” said Jefferson, who said he intends to convene a panel to study the findings.

“We should ask whether teachers and principals, rather than police officers and judges, are best suited to discipline kids who commit minor infractions.”

“I’ve also got to question why school police departments are handling a lot of these things like crimes, and why we’re not letting school officials take care of discipline,” Whitmire said. “If we want our kids to do better in school and reduce their involvement in the juvenile justice system, we in the Legislature need to continue looking into how teachers can be better supported and how the school discipline system can be improved.”

“We see so many kids getting removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons, often repeatedly, demonstrating that we’re not getting the desired changes in behavior,” Thompson said.

The report, the first of its kind for Texas students, examined in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions and placement of students in specialty programs called the Disciplinary Alternative Education Program and the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program.

As to Senator Whitmire’s Question: Why Are School Police Departments Handling Petty Crimes, Not Teachers?

The Answer: is because legislative and agency policies have restricted teacher involvement and ability to maintain a structured environment to such an extent that the only option left to teachers is to call the police.

Schools are so afraid of advocates, lobbyists and bad press that teachers are opting out of maintaining a structured learning environment and are simply calling for law enforcement.  This is bad for  the teacher, the school and the student.

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