Schools increasingly sending discipline issues to court

Mic Smith
The Post and Courier

Judge Jack Landis confers with attorneys at his bench during a juvenile hearing.

COLUMBIA — When then-seventh-grader Carlton Solomon Jr. threw a lit firecracker into the boys bathroom at school last year, he lost his phone privileges for a month and his father made him wake up at 8 o'clock the next few Saturday mornings to cut the grass.

Carlton, now 13, also was suspended from James Island Middle School for the misbehavior and received a criminal charge. The courts referred him to an arbitration program that required him to write the school a letter of apology, finish 14 hours of community service and take part in a program in which incarcerated youths share their stories to teach others the consequences of juvenile crime.

"I thought it was a bit extreme," said his father, Carlton Solomon of Johns Island, who retired from the Army after 24 years. "I don't know if the incident itself was so great it should have caused all that to happen, but I want to say that was an eye-opener for Carlton."

Schools here and across the country are referring what some people suggest are discipline matters — not criminal ones — to the courts. Judges in Florida recently began calling their courtrooms "the principal's office," and students in Connecticut were ticketed for swearing in school.

After a 10-year decline, school violence has slowly crept up nationally but remains much lower today than it was in the 1990s.

But the number of lesser crimes reported to authorities climbs higher and higher, said Bill Byars, director of the state Department of Juvenile Justice.

Teens such as Carlton are being thrown into the juvenile justice system for a food fight in the cafeteria, a slammed locker door or acting obnoxiously in class because of zero-tolerance policies and the fear of violence, Byars said. This exacerbates a bottleneck that leaves serious criminals on the streets longer, he said.

Mic Smith
The Post and Courier

Judge Jack Landis listens to a juvenile in his courtroom at the courthouse on Broad Street.

"The question is, in view of the fact that there are limited resources, is it the best use to have the minor cases — you might say normal teenage misbehavior — go through the criminal justice system where you involve the Department of Juvenile Justice, solicitors, public defenders, judges and court personnel?" asked Byars, who served as a longtime family court judge and former Kershaw County school board member.

Defensive teaching

Michael Heitzler, who retired in 2006 after 39 years in Goose Creek schools, said that when he started teaching in the late 1960s, school discipline problems were handled in the principal's office. At that time, educators were discouraged from bringing matters before law enforcement, he said.

Now, the problem seems to be too much bureaucracy and a resistance to applying common sense, Heitzler said.

"The litigious society we live in, sadly, has cornered us into this box of zero tolerance, and it's a shame," said Heitzler, who is also longtime mayor of Goose Creek. "I think common sense will swing that pendulum back into the middle."

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Carlton Solomon says football instills discipline, helps in learning to listen and follow directions, and teaches that "everything doesn't always go your way." He sometimes goes into the locker room to help his son Carlton, Jr. suit up and keeps an eye on his son's surroundings, especially after the middle-schooler got into trouble. His other son, six-year-old Hunter, goes with them to the St. John's High School locker room before jv football practice.

Dina Hasiotis is director of education policies for Common Good, a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition that bills itself as a group focused on common sense approaches to legal reform. She said the trend of criminally prosecuting school disciplinary infractions across the nation is a sign that something is wrong.

Zero tolerance was first adopted as a way to handle guns, violence and drugs in schools, but these days it's applied a lot more liberally, Hasiotis said. In South Carolina, school discipline policies are drafted at the school district level and enforcement varies greatly between schools. That means a definition of zero tolerance and punishable behavior changes from one school to the next.

Hasiotis said top-down edicts and cumbersome policies, in many cases designed out of a fear of lawsuits, prevent teachers and principals from using their best judgment and in some cases even common sense to handle discipline.

The New York City-based organization commissioned a national survey in 2004 of 500 teachers and 301 principals; 82 percent of teachers surveyed and 77 percent of principals surveyed agreed decisions are motivated by a desire to avoid legal challenges, a concept known as "defensive teaching."

Experts also say the fear of a Columbine-style attack contributes to more discipline cases being handled outside of school because educators worry they will miss a warning sign. The mass killings at the Colorado high school in 1999 led to the installation of law enforcement officers at many schools across the country.

Cpl. J. T. Judy, school resource officer at Givhans Alternative Program in Ridgeville, said he sees his role as an educator first, then counselor, mentor and law enforcement officer.

"Police officer is my least favorite role," he said. "It is the last option."

But knowing that situations can become violent more quickly now than in the past, he said law enforcement has a place in the schools. Givhans serves students in grades six through 12 as an alternative to expulsion or dropping out.

In recent weeks, Judy arrested a student after the boy said "he hoped the teacher liked the smell and taste of hot lead because he was going to shoot her house up."

'The community's children'

Oakbrook Middle School teacher Gloria Landsman looked out into the faces of her sixth-graders as she asked them to sign their names to a pledge they wouldn't bring a weapon to school.

In her more than 30 years in the classroom, Landsman could never have imagined a day when she'd have to do that. Two days later, a 14-year-old student in Ohio walked into his Cleveland school and shot four others before he killed himself.

"We have an epidemic," she said. "These problems are escalating. You can talk about throwing money into programs. We have programs in place.

"We can't keep up with the amount of children with problems anymore. It's insurmountable. It's like the growth in Summerville."

Denise Nusom, director of prevention and intervention services for Charleston County Schools, said students are dealing with many more issues now than they have in the past. They don't always come to school ready to learn, she said.

"They are sometimes hungry or sleepless," she said. "They may not be supervised at night. They may be witnesses to disturbing events."

Landsman said schools have become the "superglue" that holds children together because of a lack of parenting.

The hearts of the children haven't changed, she said. It's everything else that has.

"We can put after-school programs in place and before-school programs in place but if there's nobody at home, there's nothing we can do," Landsman said.

Archie Franchini, administrative supervisor of secondary schools for Berkeley County schools, reflected on what all educators recognize.

"We reflect society; we have the community's children," Franchini said.

Almost everyone agrees that more discipline cases are being referred to the courts, but the trouble comes in trying to define what cases are better handled in the school.

Byars wants the Legislature to set statewide discipline policies and set up an approach that demands parental involvement. He also wants lawmakers to remove the word "obnoxious" from the disturbing, or disrupting, schools statute, which many believe is a catchall for misbehavior. Disturbing school consistently ranks as the most frequent offense committed by children and teens, according to Juvenile Justice Department statistics.

"It's hard because one administrator will define it differently than another," said Kenneth Farrell, principal of DuBose Middle School in Summerville. "Disturbing schools is a big umbrella for a loss of instruction. What is the value of a loss of instruction?"

Farrell said educators don't want to have students arrested but that they also are responsible to report it when laws are broken.

"Everyone is looking for the silver bullet, the quick answer," Farrell said. "In our profession we deal with individuals. No individual is the same.

"It sounds good in the papers that we need to quit, but what disturbance is acceptable and what disturbance isn't acceptable? Who's going to say that?"

In the example of a food fight leading to a criminal charge, Farrell said a food fight that doesn't do much more than create a mess in the cafeteria is a school discipline matter. On the other hand, what is described in a police report as a food fight could have in reality caused a major disturbance by involving a large group of students, which can lead to "spin-off" problems and take time away from instruction as teachers try to calm students, Farrell said.

In most local schools, unless the situation is imminently dangerous, teachers must consult the principal before involving law enforcement.

School districts in the Lowcountry have developed research-based programs to respond to the changing student population. That includes alternative schools like Givhans in Dorchester District 2; programs aimed at teaching students proper responses to situations; volunteers who patrol school hallways; teams that work to find tailor-made alternatives for student expulsions; and law enforcement officers stationed in the schools.

In some cases, Judy, the school resource officer at Givhans Alternative Program, and others believe criminally charging a student who hasn't responded to in-school intervention can have its benefits. The juvenile justice system can give authorities more leverage over parents than the schools can by, for example, ordering counseling.

Educators also say that some lesser incidents can be referred to law enforcement if the school's exhausted all of its available remedial efforts in the case of a specific student.

"Arrests can only be made if the police determine an arrest can be made," added Nusom, the prevention and intervention services director. "That's (the officer's) call, not the principal's."

Avoiding the judicial system

Juvenile Justice Department officials argue that schools are the appropriate place to handle discipline and that if policies were better defined at the state level, the courts would see less referrals.

Overcrowding in the court system has led to calls for systemic reform, including a state Senate task force that's been studying improvement measures for more than a year.

The state's Circuit Court judges have more than twice the national average of cases, according to an August address by Chief Justice Jean Toal. Judges in Massachusetts have the smallest case load at 370 cases per judge. With 4,167 filings per judge, South Carolina ranks 49th in the country.

When a minor is charged, the Juvenile Justice Department becomes involved. An intake officer evaluates the incident. Solicitors decide to prosecute, dismiss the case or send it to arbitration, which allows first-time, nonviolent offenders to clear their record.

"The intake officers may have armed robberies, drug-pushing, assault and battery with intent to kill, and then here comes this case of a spitball, of yelling in school, and it takes up a lot of the same amount of time," Byars said.

Arbitration programs sprang up as a way to address the cases coming before the courts. In general, arbitration is considered a benefit because it removes lesser crimes from the docket and allows courts to focus on more serious and violent cases.

Between 2000 and 2005, the latest year for which data is available, 140,184 juvenile cases were reported in the state. Out of that, an average of about 4,500 were referred to arbitration.

Additionally, educators and criminal justice officials said discipline of children and teens is most effective the sooner it takes place. In the courts, a case can take months to come up. That delay means the punishment isn't always an effective deterrent.

Ruffin Middle School Principal Harry Jenkins said he also is very concerned about the effect a criminal charge can have on a child's future, with the potential to limit their aspirations in terms of a job or military career. He also said that once students enter the juvenile system, it is difficult for them to get out.

While middle schools nationally tend to have a higher rate of violence than elementary or high schools, in Jenkins' rural Colleton County middle school of 360 students, where he taught many of the students' parents, almost all discipline is handled in school, he said. The level of parental involvement is in direct correlation with the success of in-school discipline measures.

"I think the solution is, it takes the whole village to raise the child," Jenkins said. "Until we get those pieces in place, it's going to continue to be a problem. We have to do the best we can with what we've got to work with."

One simple place to start is to make sure students know what's expected of them, said Noah Moore, director of juvenile diversion for the 9th Circuit, which includes Charleston and Berkeley counties. In arbitration, juveniles take a test on the school code of conduct and Moore said he'd like to see all schools test their students.

"You'd get some kids who just wouldn't care or wouldn't get it, but then you'd get those kids who just wouldn't make that stupid mistake," Moore said.

Likewise, it sounds simple, Moore said, but the solicitor's office has a fair number of cases that are resolved with a phone call. They talk to the parent and determine that the student might have had a bad day.

David Pascoe, solicitor for the 1st Circuit, which includes Dorchester County, said his office sees it's fair share of cases that could seemingly be handled in school. But if school officials believe keeping schools safe means sending students to the court system, Pascoe said he can't get upset.

"Everybody's got to be involved," Pascoe said. "We just can't rely on the schools to do all the work. They're overburdened. DJJ is overburdened. Law enforcement is overburdened. My staff has to work extra hours. But all it's taken is extra work, and the kids are well worth it."

College of Charleston sociologist Heath Hoffmann agrees that the most effective way of dealing with juvenile crime and misbehavior involves a mix of family, mentors, peers and sanctions. Kids can't shoulder all the blame, but neither can schools.

"The uncomfortable answer is there is only so much we can do, so much we can prevent, so much we can control," Hoffman said. "Schools are damned if they do and damned if they don't."

Reach Yvonne M. Wenger at ywenger@postandcourier.com or 803-799-9051.