With more police in schools, Texas kids get more tickets
Spike in tickets for kids as young as 6 as number of campus officers has increased
By TERRENCE STUTZ
Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Students in Dallas and other urban school districts in Texas are increasingly being charged with Class C misdemeanors for less-serious infractions that used to be handled with a trip to the principal’s office, according to a new study.
The report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed examined student disciplinary data on 22 of the largest school districts in the state. It found that most have sharply increased the number of campus police officers – resulting in far more misdemeanor tickets being handed out to students.
“Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights and truancy once meant a trip to the principal’s office. Today, such misbehavior results in a Class C misdemeanor ticket and a trip to court for thousands of Texas students and their families each year,” the group said in the report, Texas’ School-to-Prison Pipeline.
“Criminalization of student misbehavior extends to even the youngest students,” the report said. “In Texas, students as young as 6 have been ticketed at school in the past five years, and it is not uncommon for elementary school students to be ticketed by school-based law enforcement.”
Black students have been disproportionately ticketed. During a recent school year in the Dallas school district, 62 percent of misdemeanor tickets were issued to black students, even though they make up 30 percent of enrollment.
Texas Appleseed offered several recommendations, including removing class disruption and misbehavior on school buses from the penal code.The group also said ticketing students under 14 should be banned and ticketing older students should occur only as a last resort.
From the the Dallas Morning News.
