The Center for Public Integrity

The school expulsion capital of California, Kern County, continues to debate whether changes are needed to reduce the number of students that are removed.  

In a May 7 opinion piece in the local Bakersfield Californian newspaper, California State Sen. Michael Rubio called for “an expulsion roundtable” to be held Friday at the Bakersfield City School District offices. Rubio’s piece touches on revelations in a Center for Public Integrity report published last December that included an analysis of California state discipline data for the 2010-2011 school year.

“According to the Center for Public Integrity,” Rubio, who wrote, “most expulsions in Kern County were actually discretionary to school district officials, such as for defiance of authority or using obscenity or vulgarity — not for "zero tolerance" violations, such as bringing a gun to school or selling controlled substances on campus.”

“Students who break a ‘zero tolerance’ rule should never be tolerated, but when relatively small Kern County is expelling more kids than huge Los Angeles County, our expulsion process should be closely examined,” said Rubio, who represents part of Kern. The county is in California’s Central Valley, and is an agricultural and oil-production center.

In response to simmering concerns over reported abuses, the U.S. Department of Education issued multiple guidelines Tuesday for how schools can avoid going overboard in restraining or isolating disruptive students.  

“As education leaders, our first responsibility must be to make sure that schools foster learning in a safe environment for all of our children and teachers,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement accompanying the release of “Restraint and Seclusion: Resource Document.”

“I believe this document is an important step toward this goal. I also want to salute leaders in Congress for their vigilance on this issue,” Duncan said.

Duncan said 15 principles described in the document “come down to common sense.” He called on districts and schools to consider incorporating them into written policies that make standards clear to staff and parents.

The department’s guidelines state that restraint or seclusion should never be used as punishment, and should never be used at all unless a child’s behavior poses behavior poses “imminent danger” of serious physical harm to the child or others. The principles also warn that such policies should apply to all students, not just disabled children, and that parents and staff should be informed of policies. In addition, parents should be immediately told when a child has been subject to restraint or seclusion.

Congress has wrestled over whether to adopt national standards for secluding students in rooms alone, or restraining students, which can be defined as staff holding down children or restraining them with straps or other devices. 

Los Angeles public-school students rallied Thursday against the large volume of court citations they have been issued for seemingly minor infractions, including tardiness, having a marker or “tool” for graffiti and for acting disruptive.  

The citations, issued by the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department, have been the subject of recent stories by the Center for Public Integrity. Television station KTLA in Los Angeles covered the rally, posting on its website that: “The Center for Public Integrity took a closer look at exactly how school policing is being done, and their findings are raising some major concerns.” KTLA describes some of the Center’s findings from an analysis of three years’ worth of citations recently released by the school district police.

More than 40 percent of 33,500 court summonses issued to students between 10 and 18 went to students 14 and younger.  African American students, 10 percent of enrollment, were 15 percent of those cited last year and 20 percent in 2010. The district’s school police force, with 340 sworn officers and staff, is the largest in the nation.

In a new report by KPCC public radio and the Center for Public Integrity, Los Angeles’ school police chief voices his thoughts on why officers who patrol the region’s schools issue a large volume of tickets to middle-school students.

“They typically are the age group that we find violates certain things that we enforce more often than some of the kids who are in high school, whether it is possession of (marijuana and cigarette) paraphernalia, vandalism, fighting,” Chief Steven Zipperman told Southern California-based KPCC. “They can be a variety of different things.”

The Center recently obtained and analyzed 2009-2011 data for all low-level citations issued by Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department officers. The department of 340 officers and staff is the nation’s largest school police force.

The Center’s analysis found that more than 33,500 citations were issued in three years, with more than 40 percent going to children 14 years and younger. One of the more frequent reasons for citing a student was an allegation of disturbing the peace, which can range from fisticuffs to disruptive or threatening language. These citations often includes fines, and require students to appear in court, during school hours, along with at least one parent or guardian. 

In written responses attributed to Zipperman, the school district told the Center that with citations “hopefully the contact (with police) is positive and the student learns from whatever mistake was made.”

As a national debate heats up over appropriate student discipline, new data from Los Angeles reveal that school police there issued more than 33,500 court summonses to youths between 10 and 18 in three years — with more than 40 percent of those tickets going to children 14 and younger.

The data obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that officers of the nation’s largest school police force issued the equivalent of 28 tickets every day to students during the 2011 calendar year. The Los Angeles Unified School District totals almost 680,000 pupils; the district’s police force has 340 sworn officers and support staff.  

Students ticketed in 2009 through 2011 were disproportionately Latino or African American. Last year, black students represented about 10 percent of the Los Angeles Unified School District but 15 percent of those ticketed. In 2010, black students were 20 percent of those cited.

Latinos, about 73 percent of the district enrollment, represented 77 percent of those cited last year. White students, nine percent of enrollment, were about 3 percent of those ticketed.

This sheer volume of citations, the racial and ethnic statistics and the number of younger children cited have all contributed to a brewing controversy over the role of police in public schools in Los Angeles. 

Among those who have expressed concern is Judge Michael Nash, who presides over Los Angeles’ juvenile courts, and has actively supported reforms to reduce police citations for incidents he believes should be handled in schools or through counseling or meetings with parents outside court.

“How much time do our courts have to deal with these kids? I don’t think this has been effective, and it has dealt with them in a superficial way,” Nash said.

Please check out a provocative conversation about “Stand Your Ground”  laws on the national radio talk show “To the Point” with Warren Olney. The Center for Public Integrity’s Susan Ferriss talked about how the National Rifle Association has framed this self-defense concept and promoted it in various states since 2005.

The NRA has also made significant donations to state politicians pushing “Stand Your Ground” measures. The “To the Point” chat also included gun-rights and gun-control advocates and attorneys explaining the concept’s ramifications. Florida’s law, the first the NRA promoted, is under scrutiny now following the February shooting death of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, who is claiming self-defense.

Persuaded that school discipline policies are far too harsh, California lawmakers are moving closer to enacting reforms aimed at stemming a rising tide of suspensions and expulsions in the nation’s largest state.

“I have seen too many children removed from school under the mandatory suspension and expulsion regime, when an application of common sense and an alternative punishment or appropriate interventions could have kept them on track and corrected their behavior,” Tim McKinley, a former FBI agent-turned-lawyer in Bakersfield, Calif., said Wednesday during testimony before California Assembly members.

McKinley, who investigated criminal gangs at the bureau, was testifying before the state Assembly Education Committee. Speaking in favor of a proposal to reform zero-tolerance policies in California schools, McKinley recounted the case of an 11-year-old boy he defended whose fight against expulsion for sexual battery was featured in a Center for Public Integrity report last December.

On Wednesday, members of the Education Committee passed several bills designed to push school counseling as an alternative to removing students, who, mounting research shows, fall behind academically and end up more at risk for committing serious delinquent acts. The proposals will now continue their path through the state legislative process.

A California attorney featured in a Center for Public Integrity investigation into school discipline will testify at a hearing at the Golden State’s Capitol in Sacramento on April 11. 

California’s Legislature is considering a number of proposals aimed at reducing student suspensions and expulsions, and paving the way for more use of alternatives to removing students.

Attorney Tim McKinley of Kern County, California, represented students whose experiences were recounted in the Center’s report on Kern, whose schools expelled more students than anywhere else in the state last year. The Center story included data showing that Kern’s schools expelled students at a rate four times greater than the California average and more than seven times the national average. 

Kern’s schools also had one of California’s highest rates of student suspension, a punishment that often paves the way for expulsion. Statistics released in March by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection showed high rates of suspension and expulsion of black students, in particular, from Kern’s schools. Latino students are the largest ethnic group in Kern schools and are suspended and expelled at high rates as well.

Laura Faer, an attorney with the Los Angeles-based pro bono law group Public Counsel, helped organize witnesses to testify on April 11 before the California Assembly Education Committee. The group is sponsoring some of the discipline-related proposals before the Legislature, Faer said, and McKinley’s clients’ experiences illustrate a need for reforms.

A new report is adding fuel to a growing debate over the impact of deportations of illegal immigrants who have roots in communities and U.S.-born children.  Between January and June of 2011, immigration officials deported more than 46,400 people who said they were parents of children who were born in the U.S. and therefore U.S. citizens, according to a new study for Congress prepared by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

No solid information exists to measure what happens to deported parents’ children. Some leave with their parents, others remain here with family members or on their own and some may go into foster care.

In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report with an estimate that about 100,000 parents of U.S. children were deported over the course of a decade between 1998 and 2007.

Congress directed ICE to begin tracking numbers to better gauge the extent of this phenomenon. The agency is complying, but officials say they do not verify each claim that a deportee has citizen children.

The new report, obtained by iWatch News from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, prompted some Democratic Latino lawmakers to attack the Obama Administration over continuing deportations of people with children who are U.S. citizens.  

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Charles Gonzalez, a Texas congressman, said in a statement that many deportees are members of “mixed status” families, where a spouse, not just a child, may be a legal resident or a U.S. citizen.

In a report released this month, the Children’s Defense Fund has analyzed recent national data on gunfire deaths and produced some alarming figures on child casualties.  

The report also criticizes a wave of new state gun-rights laws that the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group argues put children in ever more peril.

The nonprofit advocacy group dedicated its report, “Protect Kids, Not Guns 2012,” to Florida teen Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

George Zimmerman, 28, disregarded police advice and followed the unarmed Martin, 17, because Zimmerman thought the boy looked “suspicious.” Zimmerman killed Martin, who was walking to his father’s girlfriend’s home, during a confrontation and claims he acted in self-defense.

The Children’s Defense Fund report, which was released March 23, is based largely on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2008 and 2009. The group’s analysis found that 2,947 children and teens died from gunfire in 2008 and 2,793 died in 2009.

Over time, the report’s charts show, child gunfire deaths rose from the early 1980s to a peak of 3,625 in the homicide category alone in 1993. Gun deaths of children overall began falling until 2004, when homicides and suicides again began to fluctuate.

The group acknowledges that its analysis found that the total number of children and teens injured by gunfire fell in 2009 to 13,791 from a high over the last decade of 20,596 in 2008.   

Among the report’s other findings: