Twelve years old arrested for doodling (New York)

[bobalot]

It's a waste of police resources isn't it? This would never happen in Australia. The police officer would tell the principal he's a dickhead and then leave.

[RedImperator]

It's a waste of police resources isn't it? This would never happen in Australia. The police officer would tell the principal he's a dickhead and then leave.

Are you just trying to troll a reaction out of me or something? Go back, read the thread, read what I wrote about this--I addressed everything, including how police departments react to frivolous calls from school districts.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'll do it.

IF THE SCHOOL TELLS THE POLICE THE STUDENT HAS DONE SOMETHING THAT MERITS ARREST, THE POLICE MUST TAKE THE WORD OF THE SCHOOL AND ACT ACCORDINGLY. THE POLICE ARE NOT THERE TO INVESTIGATE THE SEVERITY OF THE CRIME THE STUDENT IS ACCUSED OF. IT IS THEIR JOB TO REMOVE STUDENTS THE SCHOOL CANNOT HANDLE.

Let's hope giant red text penetrates the walls of incomprehension that seem to be afflicting posters in this thread.

[Kamakazie Sith]

A question for the US members (Red in particular); what was the purpose behind these zero tolerance policies? Because from the outside looking in, it looks like a way to keep folks out of trouble by removing their ability to exercise their own judgment.

You hit it on the head. It's the same with the handcuffs being required for some departments even in cases such as this. It's due to the ridiculous law suits that are filed, and through crafty arguing won.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I understand just fine, but this is petty vandalism at best. Calling out the cops for this is like calling out the army to clear your backyard of mice or other vermin.

If the kid was setting fire to the building on purpouse or defacitaing it or going apeshit with a sledgehammer... you would have a point. But this? I don't even think so.

I agree that it is petty. Which is again why I would like to know the history, or if there's a history with this child. If she is known for scribbling on her desks despite being told not to then it might warrant other action. Like I said before the juvenile courts can obtain parent involvment in a way that the schools can't.

Though personally, even if this was an ongoing problem the fact that it is washable shows a breakdown in the school itself.

*Edit* However, like Red said the officer isn't going to walk into the classroom and inspect the damaged property and take pictures.

[Molyneux]

I was in error; your point.

I still find it hard to believe that there were absolutely no other courses of action that the AP could have taken.

Honest question here: have you actually read the thread at all? Because I said like three times that I think it's likely the AP either misinterpreted the policy or acted like a dickhole. If you hadn't started bloviating that teachers and administrators should risk their jobs to protect students from draconian policies, even when the consequences for the student are far less damaging than the consequences for the teacher, all of this could have been avoided.

Yes, I have read the thread - I just didn't realize that it was you who had said those. Didn't connect the posts with the name.

[Simon_Jester]

A question for the US members (Red in particular); what was the purpose behind these zero tolerance policies? Because from the outside looking in, it looks like a way to keep folks out of trouble by removing their ability to exercise their own judgment.

Yes. It's also intended to intimidate students into line. We're at the low end of the developed world in a lot of ways, and the social problems that result from that mean that there are a lot of unruly students, kids who don't care much about school, and/or whose parents aren't monitoring them closely enough to discipline them.

Since teachers are effectively forbidden to discipline students directly by lawsuits, and since even the school administrators can't do much but suspend or expel students (which, if you don't care about school, isn't really a punishment)... there's not much they can do. Their options are limited, and one way to respond to that is to do more of whatever things you can do, use the punishments you're allowed to use more heavily. It's not a good tactic, but I think a lot of school districts are getting desperate. The large minority of disruptive students in some areas really undermine the ability of the school to teach the remainder.

I'll do it.

IF THE SCHOOL TELLS THE POLICE THE STUDENT HAS DONE SOMETHING THAT MERITS ARREST, THE POLICE MUST TAKE THE WORD OF THE SCHOOL AND ACT ACCORDINGLY. THE POLICE ARE NOT THERE TO INVESTIGATE THE SEVERITY OF THE CRIME THE STUDENT IS ACCUSED OF. IT IS THEIR JOB TO REMOVE STUDENTS THE SCHOOL CANNOT HANDLE.

(De-emphasis added)

True. Though if this happens a lot, or if it gets the police tangled up in embarrassing high-profile fiascos like this, they should probably have a word with the school after the arrest.

[Darth Wong]

A question for the US members (Red in particular); what was the purpose behind these zero tolerance policies? Because from the outside looking in, it looks like a way to keep folks out of trouble by removing their ability to exercise their own judgment.

Yes. It's also intended to intimidate students into line. We're at the low end of the developed world in a lot of ways, and the social problems that result from that mean that there are a lot of unruly students, kids who don't care much about school, and/or whose parents aren't monitoring them closely enough to discipline them.

Actually, I think it's more a function of right-wing (read: American general public) hatred and distrust of all people in the civil service (apart from military personnel, who are to be worshiped as gods among men). If you have convinced yourself that all civil service employees are fundamentally corrupt and/or immoral (which, as preposterous as it sounds, seems to be the reigning position among right-wingers), then it makes sense to tie their hands and limit their individual judgment as much as possible.

Hence, the right-wing (again, read: the general American public) wants to micro-manage the living fuck out of the civil service, by taking all sorts of judgment calls out of their hands and turning them into ironclad legislation.

[Zed Snardbody]

A lot of schools now maintain their own sworn police departments for just such occasions.


Fun anecdote:

They dragged my step brother out of the house at one point because he was truant and my mother called them. Dragged him in cuffs out of the house, put him in the back of a cop car, and walked him to class and sat him down.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Fun anecdote:

They dragged my step brother out of the house at one point because he was truant and my mother called them. Dragged him in cuffs out of the house, put him in the back of a cop car, and walked him to class and sat him down.

Holy crap, they still had truancy officers when you were growing up?

[Zed Snardbody]

Fun anecdote:

They dragged my step brother out of the house at one point because he was truant and my mother called them. Dragged him in cuffs out of the house, put him in the back of a cop car, and walked him to class and sat him down.

Holy crap, they still had truancy officers when you were growing up?

The Clark County School District maintains a full blown police force for shit like that: truancy, fights on campus, speeders in school zones, all kinds of stuff so the local PD doesn't have to deal with it. I think they enjoyed it, probably the most fun they've had on a call in a while.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, I think it's more a function of right-wing (read: American general public) hatred and distrust of all people in the civil service (apart from military personnel, who are to be worshiped as gods among men). If you have convinced yourself that all civil service employees are fundamentally corrupt and/or immoral (which, as preposterous as it sounds, seems to be the reigning position among right-wingers), then it makes sense to tie their hands and limit their individual judgment as much as possible.

Hence, the right-wing (again, read: the general American public) wants to micro-manage the living fuck out of the civil service, by taking all sorts of judgment calls out of their hands and turning them into ironclad legislation.

...Not sure. First of all, a lot of this is internal school policy, not legislation imposed by an outside body. The civil servants in the schools choose zero-tolerance policies a lot more often than you seem to be expecting, if I understand your position.

This would be worth checking with of people with experience teaching American schools, though.

[RedImperator]

In urban school districts, zero-tolerance policies are something of a nuclear option used by the school district to try to get a serious problem under control, typically violence. They necessarily have to be imposed from the district level, because individual principals don't have the authority to make new expulsion offenses. Also keep in mind, getting expelled from a school in an urban district just means you get transferred to a different school in the district. Depending on the situation, you can go from a charter or magnet school to a general school, from one general school to another, or from any regular school to an "alternative" (read: disciplinary) school. It's very rare that a student will be expelled from the district entirely; I don't know if it even happens, since any offense that would be that bad would be more than enough to send the kid to juvy.

Police involvement, as I've said before, usually only comes when a serious crime has been committed. The most common arrests were kids caught trying to smuggle contraband into the building; mostly drugs, some weapons. The next most were assaults. I don't remember the school calling the police for regular fistfights if it was a first offense, but if a kid got jumped and beaten to a pulp, or the administration suspected it was gang related, or a teacher or staff member got assaulted, the police came.

Note this is pretty specific to Philadelphia. I don't know how other big city districts do it or how authority is divided between local principals and the central office.

One thing that did strike me is that SDP's "zero tolerance" policies were a lot more flexible than the crazy policies you hear about in the news. SDP has serious problems with drugs and violence (and 10 million other things), but you'd never see a student strip-searched for Advil or a first-grader suspended for a squirt gun. That seems to be the bailiwick of suburban districts.

[Bakustra]

In urban school districts, zero-tolerance policies are something of a nuclear option used by the school district to try to get a serious problem under control, typically violence. They necessarily have to be imposed from the district level, because individual principals don't have the authority to make new expulsion offenses. Also keep in mind, getting expelled from a school in an urban district just means you get transferred to a different school in the district. Depending on the situation, you can go from a charter or magnet school to a general school, from one general school to another, or from any regular school to an "alternative" (read: disciplinary) school. It's very rare that a student will be expelled from the district entirely; I don't know if it even happens, since any offense that would be that bad would be more than enough to send the kid to juvy.

Police involvement, as I've said before, usually only comes when a serious crime has been committed. The most common arrests were kids caught trying to smuggle contraband into the building; mostly drugs, some weapons. The next most were assaults. I don't remember the school calling the police for regular fistfights if it was a first offense, but if a kid got jumped and beaten to a pulp, or the administration suspected it was gang related, or a teacher or staff member got assaulted, the police came.

Note this is pretty specific to Philadelphia. I don't know how other big city districts do it or how authority is divided between local principals and the central office.

One thing that did strike me is that SDP's "zero tolerance" policies were a lot more flexible than the crazy policies you hear about in the news. SDP has serious problems with drugs and violence (and 10 million other things), but you'd never see a student strip-searched for Advil or a first-grader suspended for a squirt gun. That seems to be the bailiwick of suburban districts.

Suburban/exurban districts rarely have sufficient schools in-district to shuffle expelled kids between, from my experience (granted this was as an interested customer) and so generally foist the child off on another school in the same county. One of the charter schools near where I grew up became known as a dumping-ground for expelled kids, since they didn't have residency requirements or any particular standards. This differs sometimes, because many suburban school districts will have multiple elementaries or middle schools, and larger ones might have more than one high school, but the only one in our area had all three of its high schools on the same campus.

Part of the relative harshness of suburban/exurban schools may come from differences in the makeup of the school board. The school board at my old high school was 11 parents and one grandparent, but we were on the fringes of the suburbs. All of them, however, served as board members almost purely on a part-time basis, and were otherwise employed. How do school boards in urban schools differ. Another part may be that parents in suburban and exurban districts often tend to respond more harshly and call for stricter regulations in response to a situation than would an urban or rural schools.

[Soontir C'boath]

According to the NYC BoE Discipline Code.PDF on page 6/31:

NOTE: The Principal or the Principal’s designee must report all infractions to parents. When a student is believed to have committed a crime, the police must be summoned and parents must be contacted (see Chancellor’s Regulation A-412).

On page 20/31, vandalism's worse disciplinary action is 6-10 days of superintendent's suspension and if serious damage was cause, then it can be extended by 30-90 days.

I have also found that a student can only be expelled if of age 17 or older if anyone is wondering.

[ArmorPierce]

Man, schools in that part of America must've been really shit, or students must've been really bad, for protocols involving the calling of police and the arrest of students to have been put in place and used. It sounds pretty damn bad.

It's a low income district in an urban area (just outside New York). A lot of schools in similar places have similar problems- the interaction between the youth gang culture and the operation of the schools.

Actually most of Forest Hills is a high income area. I lived there fore a few years during elementarty and middle school but attended the junior high school in the area (there are two). School is as bad as far as bad schools get.

[ArmorPierce]

Who I didn't make any sense there. Feel free in editing it:

Actually most of Forest Hills is a high income area. I lived there fore a few years during elementary and middle school but attended the OTHER junior high school in the area (there are two). THE schoolS AREN'T bad as far as bad schools get.

[RedImperator]

The City of Philadelphia's school board was abolished about ten years ago and replaced by an appointed "School Reform Commission", with half the membership chosen by the state. To the city and state's credit, they've made an effort to appoint professional educators to it, not demagogues (it probably helps that none of the positions on it are elected). I think New York did the same thing; the school district is run directly by the city without a school board or a strictly "advisory" board (which in Bloomberg-land, means absolutely nothing).

[Bakustra]

The City of Philadelphia's school board was abolished about ten years ago and replaced by an appointed "School Reform Commission", with half the membership chosen by the state. To the city and state's credit, they've made an effort to appoint professional educators to it, not demagogues (it probably helps that none of the positions on it are elected). I think New York did the same thing; the school district is run directly by the city without a school board or a strictly "advisory" board (which in Bloomberg-land, means absolutely nothing).

Interesting. Do you know why they decided to abolish the school board?

[RedImperator]

The City of Philadelphia's school board was abolished about ten years ago and replaced by an appointed "School Reform Commission", with half the membership chosen by the state. To the city and state's credit, they've made an effort to appoint professional educators to it, not demagogues (it probably helps that none of the positions on it are elected). I think New York did the same thing; the school district is run directly by the city without a school board or a strictly "advisory" board (which in Bloomberg-land, means absolutely nothing).

Interesting. Do you know why they decided to abolish the school board?

Because the schools were a catastrofuck, so they turned to the one body everybody knows can fix any complicated problem: the state legislature.