The agreement with Broward County Public Schools in Florida announced Tuesday is one of the first comprehensive plans bringing together district officials, police and the state attorney’s office to create an alternative to the zero-tolerance policies prevalent in many schools. It charges principals rather than school resource officers with being the primary decision makers in responding to student misbehavior.
The move is designed to cut down on what has become known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” where students accused of offenses like disrupting class or loitering are suspended, arrested and charged with crimes.
Broward, the nation’s sixth-largest district, had the highest number of school-related arrests in Florida in the 2011-2012 school year, according to state data. Seventy-one percent of the 1,062 arrests made were for misdemeanor offenses.
In this South Florida district and others across the country, minority students have been disproportionately arrested, sometimes for offenses that resulted in only a warning for their white peers. Nationwide, more than 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or law enforcement referrals are Black or Hispanic, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
“It’s pretty rare,” Michael Krezmien, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said of the agreement. “I think if every other school district did it that would be a great step forward.”
The new policy creates a matrix for district officials and school resource officers to follow when a student misbehaves. For non-violent misdemeanors like trespassing, harassment, incidents related to alcohol, possession of a misdemeanor amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, administrators are instructed to try and resolve the situation without an arrest. A variety of alternatives, like participation in a week-long counseling program, are designed to address and correct the student’s behavior.
