Decriminalizing School Misbehavior: Alternatives to School Referrals and Arrests

Decriminalizing School Misbehavior:

Alternatives to School

Referrals and Arrests

Tatyana Hopkins,

JohnR.LewisSocialJusticeFellow

Introduction

Nationwide, school administrators are given wide discretion to use a range of exclusionary disciplinary tools that may have negative consequences for students, including referrals to law enforcement and arrests. During the 2017-2018 school year, nearly 230,000 students across the country were referred to law enforcement by schools, and about 25% of those referrals led to arrests.1

In the 1970s, exclusionary discipline, like out-of-school suspension was rare, with less than 4% of students experiencing a suspension in 1973.2 However, growing concern about crime and violence in schools through the 80s and 90s led school districts to adopt zero-tolerance policies that required students to be suspended for some offenses. Today, the suspension rate for all students has nearly doubled since the 1970s, with disproportionately high increases for Black and Hispanic students.3 Concurrently, the number of School Resource Officers (“SROs”) have increased by nearly a third between 1997 and 2007, and expulsions and school-related arrests are on the rise.4

Born out of the War on Drugs, zero-tolerance legislation began in the 1980s, as the nation saw the rise of mass incarceration and disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration of people of color.5 Continued through the 1990s, which saw the passing of harsh federal sentencing laws such as three strikes and mandatory minimums, President Bill Clinton signed a zero-tolerance policy that mandated expulsion from school into law. In 1994, the Gun-Free Schools Act mandated a year-long suspension for any student that bought a “weapon” to school.

Today, in the school context, zero-tolerance policies involve removal from school for a range of school-based infractions that range from violent behavior to dress code violations. Broadly interpreting the meaning of weapon, schools have had students arrested for offenses such as doodling on a desk, using a toddler-proof butter knife to cut a peach to share with friends, and having a food fight.6 As zero-tolerance policies are increasingly applied to misunderstandings and common childhood misbehavior, the convergence between schools and the criminal legal system has grown.

Outsourcing Discipline

State law gives schools wide discretion to make referrals to law enforcement.

State law requires schools to make referrals for any offense that violates its criminal code.

State law requires local districts to establish formal procedures regarding school referrals to law enforcement.

While there was an overall decrease in exclusionary discipline practices at public schools across the United States between the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 school years, three types of exclusionary disciplinary practices have increased—expulsions, schoolrelated arrests, and referrals to law enforcement.7 Black children and students with disabilities are disproportionately affected. Nationwide, both groups were referred to law enforcement at nearly twice their share of the overall student population.8 For example, despite making up about only 15% of the student population, Black students comprised 28.7% of all students referred to law enforcement and 31.6% of all students arrested at school in the 2017-2018 school year.9 Similarly, students with disabilities make up about 15% of the overall student population but 29.7% and 29.5% of referrals and school arrests, respectively.10

Source: National Association of State Boards of Education. (2019)

Misbehavior: Alternatives to School Referrals and Arrests

In 2014, the Obama administration opened investigations into the civil rights implications of school discipline policies that targeted students of color and issued guidance urging districts to find alternatives to exclusionary disciplinary practices.11 The administration also warned schools that they could violate Title IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which relates to fair and nondiscriminatory treatment in schools receiving federal aid) if their disciplinary policies had “disparate impact” on certain racial or ethnic groups. This meant that even without discriminatory intent (mention of race), disciplinary policies could violate civil rights laws if they led to higher rates of discipline for only some groups of students. However, in 2018, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidance.12

School referrals to law enforcement and arrests are more common at schools with SROs. With an estimated $2 billion in federal and state funds spent on SROs since 1999, partnerships between local leaders and local law enforcement place 14,000-20,000 sworn officers in schools across the nation at any given time.13

Because serious crime rarely occurs on school grounds, these SROs spend most of their time investigating minor incidents.14 Even controlling for poverty level, schools with SROs have double the amount of school-based arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without them.15

With the practice of school referrals to law enforcement on the rise, so are the number of children being arrested, charged, and locked up without regard for the long-term emotional, social, and developmental impacts and harms such punishment can have on students. While zero-tolerance policies have had no measurable impact on school safety, the negative impacts of such policies on students are well documented. 16

Disrupting Education

During the 2017-2018 school year, students missed 11,205,797 total days of school due to out-of-school-suspensions.17

Like suspensions, arrests and expulsions can critically jeopardize students’ educational attainment. School arrests and referrals can have negative impacts on school achievement and engagement as well as young adult outcomes. When schools punish students for minor infractions with harsh penalties, those students suffer from declines in attendance and test scores.18 One study found that a student’s odds of graduating high school can be reduced by over 70% due to police encounters, ranging from simple contact to arrests.19

The achievement gap—the difference in the average standardized test scores of white and Black students—has long been a measure of persistent racial inequities in educational outcomes across the country. Such racial disparities in school achievement have been linked to disparities in school discipline.20 An increase in either the discipline gap or the academic achievement gap between Black and white students can predict a jump in the other. School completion represents a critical transition to adulthood and is an increasingly important factor in social stratification.

Racial disparities in young adult criminal justice outcomes, food stamp assistance, and college completion can be traced to disparate exposure to school discipline.21 Therefore, delays and disruptions to education can dramatically alter life trajectories related to work and family.22

One study found that a student’s odds of graduating high school can be reduced by over 70% due to police encounters, ranging from simple contact to arrests.

The School-to-Prison-Pipeline

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to a growing pattern of tracking students out of educational institutions, primarily through zero-tolerance policies, and into the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems. When schools refer students to law enforcement, they are directly turning students over to the criminal legal system, particularly students of color and those with disabilities. Even when schools do not directly send students into the criminal system, certain types of discipline can make it more likely that they will end up there. Students in schools with higher-than-average suspension rates are 15 to 20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults.23 The 229,470 referrals to law enforcement and 54,321 school arrests in the 2017-2018 school year have fueled the school-to-prison pipeline.24 And this pipeline starts early. Between 2000 and 2019, there have been more than 2,600 school arrests of students between the ages of 5 and 9 years old.25 Many of these school-based arrests are for minor violations that do not pose a serious or ongoing threat to school safety and can be addressed without help from the police or courts.26 Harsh disciplinary penalties for minor offenses such as talking back or being disruptive shorten the path from school to prison. Students who are expelled or suspended are more likely to commit crimes and drop out of school, leading to a cycle of poverty and criminality that is often difficult to break.

School discipline can have long-term impacts on a child’s social outcomes. Today, the net worth of white households is 10 times higher than Black households, and these economic disparities flow directly from racial injustices in the nation’s criminal legal system.27 The over representation of Black and Latino people in the criminal system has concentrated the negative economic impacts of system involvement, including lifetime wage losses, in those communities.28

Mental Health Impacts

Today, students are experiencing record levels of depression and anxiety and many forms of trauma.29 However, schools have invested few funds to serve students’ mental health needs, but instead have invested more dollars into putting police in schools.30

Schools with mental health services see improved attendance rates, better academic achievement, and higher graduation rates as well as lower rates of suspension, expulsion, and other disciplinary incidents. School-based mental health providers improve outcomes for students and overall school safety.31 Yet, public schools face a critical shortage of

counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers, and even schools offering some mental health services are severely understaffed. In contrast, while there is no evidence that police presence in schools improve school safety, 14 million students are in schools with police but no counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker.32 In fact, data suggests that law enforcement in schools creates harm, including student alienation and creating a more threatening school climate.33

The combination of deficient in-school mental health services and the growing number of school-based law enforcement has funneled the most vulnerable students into the pipeline to prison. School referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests shift a student’s focus from learning and leave them vulnerable to removal from class, physical restraint, interrogation, and risks to their constitutional rights. Even just a slight interaction with law enforcement can have an impact on their long-term mental and physical health.34

Restorative Justice

Oakland Unified School District, a public education school district in California serving more than 35,000 students in about 80 schools, has been funding restorative justice initiatives in some of its schools for over two decades. However, a $2.5 million investment in 2017 took the practice district-wide.35

Restorative justice—also known as positive discipline or responsive classroom—serves as an alternative to traditional discipline. It attempts to break the cycle of violence by addressing its underlying cause, which is often a traumatic experience for the offending individual. In schools, it focuses on fostering a sense of community within classrooms to prevent conflict and reacts to misconduct by encouraging students to accept responsibility for the harm caused by their misbehavior to rebuild relationships. In Oakland, restorative justice is implemented through a three-tier, school-wide model.36 Under the model, all students in the district participate in community building practices such as conversation circles, where students talk about their emotions or how an incident affected them. This first tier of the model aims to prevent conflict by helping students learn to relate and respect each other, build friendships, and take responsibility for their actions. About 15% of Oakland students participate in the second tier, restorative practices, which is characterized by non-punitive responses to conflict. With the goal of intervening and repairing harm, this tier responds to disciplinary issues with harm circles, mediation, or family-group conferencing with the hope of addressing the root cause of harm, supporting accountability for the offending student, and promoting healing for the victim and school community. Another 5% of students participate in the model’s third tier,

activities supporting re-entry to the school community following suspension, truancy, expulsion, or incarceration. This tier is implemented on an individual basis to welcome youth back to school by providing wraparound services.

The Oakland Unified School District has seen positive results implementing restorative practices at its schools. In 2008, the district began a pilot program using restorative justice practices at Cole Middle School, where it saw an 87% reduction in suspensions and a complete 100% drop in expulsions.37 Over the past five years of implementation of its comprehensive restorative program, the district’s Fremont High School has transformed from a school with the some of the highest discipline rates and lowest attendance in the city to seeing a 20% jump in its enrollments and a tripling the number of its students qualified for college admission.38

Overall, school suspension rates in the district’s schools dropped about 20% within three years of hiring a restorative justice coordinator. Between the 2015-2016 and 2019–2020 school years, the number of Oakland students suspended declined by nearly 31%.39 Further, 88% of teachers in the district report that restorative justice practices are very or somewhat helpful and managing difficult student behavior in classrooms.40 The Oakland Unified School District provides a toolkit and a host of other resources for implementing restorative justice practices, and the International Institute for Restorative, the world’s first accredited restorative justice graduate school program, consults with districts across the country to transform school climates.

DISCIPLINE REFORM SNAPSHOTS

• Des Moines, Iowa: In the 2021-2022 school year, Des Moines Public Schools became one of the first districts to concurrently remove SROs and implement restorative justice practices. Prompted by the protests related to the death of George Floyd, the school district ended its relationship with SROs in 2020. With the $750,000 save from the broken contract with local police, the district hired 20 new staff trained in restorative practices across five of its public schools. It even invites students to participate in the hiring process. Within a year, district wide school arrests dropped from 538 to 98.

• Dallas, Texas: In August 2021, the Dallas Independent School District opened Reset Centers, which allow students to de-escalate and discuss their behaviors with trained staff for a period ranging from hours to days (depending on the offense). These dedicated classroom spaces with seating for restorative circles, calming colors, flexible seating, and stress squeeze balls, and fidget tools. In 2022, the district reported significant drops in suspension rates a year after implementing the new approach. The district also set goals for strengthening tiered student behavior supports based on consideration of first, second or third offenses; increased teacher classroom management training; and improved discipline data collection. The school district spent $4 million from its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief allocation for the discipline reforms but saw about $2 million in savings, since the Reset Centers reduced the number of out-of-school suspensions and Texas school districts are funded based on in-person daily average attendance.

• Chicago, Illinois: In 2020, rather than issue a blanket removal, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools officials informed local school councils that they could decide whether to keep their SROs. At the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, 19 of the city’s 91 high schools kept two full-time officers while 22 kept one officer. Within two years, the district cut the number of SROs in schools by about 30% and reduced SRO funding from $33 million in 2020 to $11 million in 2022. While it has been reported that more schools serving majority Black students kept their officers when compared to schools serving Latino and white students, in 2021, about $3.8 million was invested in policing alternatives such as professional devolvement for staff and mental health programs.

Misbehavior: Alternatives to School Referrals and Arrests

Remove Police from Schools or Limit Police Involvement through MOUs. 47 Law enforcement in schools should be avoided as much as possible. As the presence of police in schools has dramatically increased in the last several decades, so have the number of children being referred to law enforcement by schools and arrested for school-related misbehavior. In 2018, the Dignity in Schools Campaign developed an updated set of Model Policies to Fight Criminalization based on recommendations from its 2013 Model Code on Education & Dignity.48 The resources provide a framework for removing police from schools by offering legislative models and suggested language for policies that aim to decriminalize the physical school environment and infrastructure. For school districts that maintain relationships with local police, it suggests they adopt a publicly accessible Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that limits the role of any law enforcement personnel who come in to contact with schools by limiting their role to only conduct that threatens or results in serious bodily harm

Pass the Restorative Practices in Schools Act. 49 Introduced by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-9) in 2022, the Restorative Practices in Schools Act aims to help schools and districts build safe and inclusive learning environments by encouraging the use of restorative practices in place of punitive practices (like zerotolerance policies). The legislation would establish competitive grants to help schools implement restorative practices, hire support staff, provide training, and develop a curriculum. The bill would also establish school and student safety standards, which schools must meet before receiving a grant. Schools with the most demonstrated need would be prioritized. Under the legislation, the Government Accountability Office would also be required to conduct a study on the school-to-prison pipeline as well as evidence-based interventions, and ED would be required to establish a data-tracking system for the use of restorative practices in U.S. schools.

Shift Funding to Provide Mental Health Services. 50 SROs are police, not counselors. Students deserve trained mental health professionals in their schools. School counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists are frequently the first to see children who are sick or struggling with mental health issues, especially in low-income districts.51 Up to 80% of youth in need of mental health services do not receive such services in their communities because existing services are inadequate. However, 70% to 80% of youth who do receive mental health services receive them in their schools. While data shows that the presence of these school-based mental health providers can improve outcomes for students and overall school safety, funding for police in schools has been on the rise while most public-school districts face a critical shortage

of mental health services. Millions of students are in schools with law enforcement but no mental health support staff, despite evidence that increased police presence in schools can create less inclusive school climates and make students feel less safe.

Shift Funding to Teacher Pay and Training. 52 If misbehavior can be stopped or avoided within the classroom, then students may not encounter the criminal legal system. Teachers can play a larger role in preventing misbehavior by increasing a school’s capacity to manage classrooms and disruptive behavior.53 Further, investments in teacher salaries could improve the overall quality of the teaching workforce and teacher retention.54

Fund High-Quality After-School Activities. Research shows that afterschool programs, with consistent engagement, adequate staffing, and high-quality programming can improve education outcomes, school attendance, and social and emotional learning.55 Consistent participation in afterschool programs can lower dropout rates and reduce the achievement gap for low-income children.56 For older students, afterschool programs can reduce risk behavior and help them gain need college and work skills.57 However, roughly 25 million children are unable to access such programs due to barriers with availability, transportation, and accessibility.58

Conclusion

While progress has been made in recent years to reduce the use of suspensions in U.S. schools, the use of school referrals and arrests has not improved. Like suspensions and expulsions, the harmful impact of student referrals and arrests cannot be overstated. Referrals and arrests disrupt educational attainment, sow feelings of distrust and alienation, and tend to be unevenly applied to students of color. Rather than criminalize and remove them from the community, students deserve school discipline policies that support them in their school environments, improve public safety, and reduce systemic disparities.

ENDNOTES

1 Office of Civil Rights, An Overview of Exclusionary Disciplinary Practices in Public Schools for the 2017-18 School Year (2021). U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. Retrieved from https://ocrdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/crdcexclusionary-school-discipline.pdf.

2 Losen, D. J., & Skiba, R. J. (2010). (rep.). Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/Suspended_Education.pdf

3 Id.

4 Justice Policy Institute. (2011). (rep.). Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools. Retrieved from https:// justicepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/educationunderarrest_fullreport.pdf.

5 Hirji, R. J. (2018, January 16). 20 Years of Policy Advocacy Against Zero Tolerance: A Critical Review [web log]. Retrieved from https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/childrens-rights/articles/2018/winter2018-20-yearspolicy-advocacy-against-zero-tolerance-critical-review/#:~:text=ABA%20Efforts%20and%20Policy,student’s%20 history.%22%20Robert%20G.

6 Chen, S. (2010, February 18). Girl’s Arrest for Doodling Raises Concerns About Zero Tolerance. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html; Fox News. (2016, November 18). Florida school suspends girl for bringing butter knife to lunch. Fox News. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-schoolsuspends-girl-for-bringing-butter-knife-to-lunch. See also Bartosik, M. (2009, November 9). Kids Arrested for Food Fight. NBC Chicago. Retrieved from https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/kids-arrested-for-food-fight/1890025/.

7 Office of Civil Rights (2021), supra, note 1.

8 Mitchell, C. (2021). (rep.). What You Need to Know About School Policing. The Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved from https://publicintegrity.org/education/criminalizing-kids/what-you-need-to-know-about-school-policing/

9  Office of Civil Rights, Referrals to Law Enforcement and School-Related Arrests in U.S. Public Schools (2023). U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. Retrieved from https://ocrdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/Referrals_and_ Arrests_Part5.pdf.

10 Id.

11 Blad, E. (2014, January 8). New Federal School Discipline Guidance Addresses Discrimination, Suspensions. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/new-federal-school-discipline-guidance-addressesdiscrimination-suspensions/2014/01.

12 Id.

13Thurau, L. H., & Or, L. W. (2019). (rep.). Two Billion Dollars Later: States Begin to Regulate School Resource Officers in the Nation’s Schools A Survey of State Laws. Strategies for Youth. Retrieved from https://strategiesforyouth.org/sitefiles/ wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SFY-Two-Billion-Dollars-Later-Report-Oct2019.pdf. See also National Association of School Resource Officers. (2023). Frequently Asked Questions. National Association of School Resource Officers. Retrieved from https://www.nasro.org/faq/.

14 Kupchik, A. (2010). In Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear (pp. 44–84, 88). essay, NYU Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=BzacO6Vl1tQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&ots= 0hj0X16VLK&sig=y9LYJEwE3NU3PxPRzBLBrfb5odM#v=onepage&q&f=false.

15 Justice Policy Institute. (2010). (issue brief). The Presence of School Resource Officers (SROs) in America’s Schools. Retrieved from https://justicepolicy.org/research/policy-brief-2020-the-presence-of-school-resource-officers-sros-inamericas-schools/.

16 Heitzeg, N. A. (2009). Education Or Incarceration: Zero Tolerance Policies and The School to Prison Pipeline. Forum on Public Policy, 2009(2). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870076.

17 Office of Civil Rights (2021), supra, note 1.

18 Sorensen, L. C., Bushway, S. D., & Gifford, E. J. (2022). Getting Tough? The Effects of Discretionary Principal Discipline on Student Outcomes. Education Finance and Policy, 17(2), 255–284. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00341

19 Bernburg, J. G., & Krohn, M. D. (2003). Labeling, Life Chances, and Adult Crime: The Direct and Indirect Effects of Official Intervention in Adolescence on Crime in Early Adulthood. Criminology, 41(4), 1287–1318. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2003. tb01020.x

20 Pearman, F. A., Curran, F. C., Fisher, B., & Gardella, J. (2019). Are Achievement Gaps Related to Discipline Gaps? Evidence From National Data. AERA Open, 5(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419875440

21 Davison, M., Penner, A. M., Penner, E. K., Pharris-Ciurej, N., Porter, S. R., Rose, E. K., Shem-Tov, Y., & Yoo, P. (2021). School Discipline and Racial Disparities in Early Adulthood. Educational Researcher, 51(3), 231–234. https://doi. org/10.3102/0013189x211061732

22 Kirk, D. S., & Sampson, R. J. (2012). Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the Transition to Adulthood. Sociology of Education, 86(1), 36–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040712448862

23 Bacher-Hicks, A., Billings, S., & Deming, D. (2019). The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime. https://doi.org/10.3386/w26257

24  Office of Civil Rights (2023), supra, note 9.

25 Ball, A., Zhang, D., & Molloy, M. C. (2022, February 10). ‘She looks like a baby’: Why do kids as young as 5 or 6 still get arrested at schools? Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved from https://publicintegrity.org/education/criminalizing-kids/ young-kids-arrested-at-schools/

26 Heitzeg, N. A. (2009). Education Or Incarceration: Zero Tolerance Policies and The School to Prison Pipeline. Forum on Public Policy, 2009(2). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870076

27 Dionissi Aliprantis and Daniel Carroll, What Is Behind the Persistence of the Racial Wealth Gap?, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2019, 1, https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2019economic-commentaries/ec-201903-what-is-behind-the-persistence-of-the-racial-wealth-gap.aspx. See also William Darity Jr. et al., What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, April 2018, https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/what-we-get-wrong.pdf; Craigie, T.-A., Grawert, A., Kimble, C., & Stiglitz, J. E. (2020). (rep.). Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings: How Involvement with the Criminal Justice System Deepens Inequality. Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ research-reports/conviction-imprisonment-and-lost-earnings-how-involvement-criminal

28 Craigie, (2020), supra, note 27.

29 Whitaker, A., Torres-Guillen, S., Morton, M., Jordan, H., Coyle, S., Mann, A., & Sun, W.-L. (2019). (rep.). Cops and No Counselors. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/report/cops-and-no-counselors

34 Fernandes, A. D. (2019). How Far Up the River? Criminal Justice Contact and Health Outcomes. Social Currents, 7(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496519870216

35 Jones, C. (2022, June 16). At this Oakland High School, Restorative Justice Goes Far Beyond Discipline. Ed Source. Retrieved from https://edsource.org/2022/at-this-oakland-high-school-restorative-justice-goes-far-beyonddiscipline/673453

36 Oakland Unified School District. (n.d.). Restorative Justice Homepage. / Homepage. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://www.ousd.org/restorativejustice

37 Arnold, E. K. (2012, July 11). Oakland Leads Way as Restorative Justice Techniques Enter Education Mainstream. The Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved from https://publicintegrity.org/education/oakland-leads-way-as-restorative-justicetechniques-enter-education-mainstream/

38 Jones (2022), supra, note 35.

39 Results for America. (2022). School-Based Restorative Justice: Oakland, CA. Economic Mobility Catalog. Retrieved from https://catalog.results4america.org/case-studies/rj-in-schools-oakland#overview

40 Id.

41 Office of the Press Secretary, Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System (2016). Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/23/cea-report-economic-perspectives-incarceration-andcriminal-justice

42 Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Stullich, S., Morgan, I., & Schak, O., State and Local Expenditures on Corrections and Education (2016). U.S. Department of Education Policy and Program Studies Service. Retrieved from https:// www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/other/expenditures-corrections-education/brief.pdf

43  Thurau, L. H., & Or, L. W. (2019). (rep.). Two Billion Dollars Later: States Begin to Regulate School Resource Officers in the Nation’s Schools a Survey of State Laws. Strategies for Youth. Retrieved from https://strategiesforyouth.org/sitefiles/wp-content/ uploads/2019/10/SFY-Two-Billion-Dollars-Later-Report-Oct2019.pdf. See also, Hunt, H., & Nichol, G. (2021). (rep.). The Price of Poverty in North Carolina’s Juvenile Justice System. North Carolina Poverty Research Fund. Retrieved from https://law.unc.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2021/04/juvenilejustice-povertyreport2021.pdf

44 Blitzman, J. (2021, October 12). Shutting Down the School-to-Prison Pipeline. American Bar Association. American Bar Association. Retrieved from https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/empoweringyouth-at-risk/shutting-down-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/. See also Losen, (2010), supra, note 2.

45 National Association of State Boards of Education. (2019). (rep.). Limits on Referrals to Law Enforcement. Retrieved from https:// statepolicies.nasbe.org/health/categories/social-emotional-climate/limits-on-referrals-to-law-enforcement; See also Blitzman (2021), supra, note 44.

46 Id.

47 Dignity in Schools Campaign. (2018). (rep.). Model Policies to Fight Criminalization. Retrieved from https://dignityinschools.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ModelPolicies_FightCriminalization.pdf. See also Blitzman (2021), supra, note 44; Whitaker (2021), supra, note 29.

48 Dignity in Schools Campaign (2018), supra, note 47.

49 Bennet, Cohen Introduce Restorative Practices Legislation to Address the School-to-Prison Pipeline. (2022, March 21). Michael

M. Bennet: U.S. Senator for Colorado. Retrieved from https://www.bennet.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2022/3/bennet-cohenintroduce-restorative-practices-legislation-to-address-the-school-to-prison-pipeline

50 Cromer, D., Moses, M., Gordon, H., Manson, D., & Young, A. (2021). (issue brief). Reducing the School to Prison Pipeline in Maryland. UMBC Public Service Scholars Programs. Retrieved from https://publicservicescholars.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/ sites/448/2022/08/School-to-Prison-Pipeline-1.pdf. See also Whitaker (2021), supra, note 29; Whitaker, A., Cobb, J., Leung, V., & Nelson, L. (2021). (rep.). No Police in Schools: A Vision for Safe and Supportive Schools in California. American Civil Liberties Union Foundations. Retrieved from https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/no_police_in_schools_-_report_-_ aclu_-_082421.pdf

51 Whitaker (2021), supra, note 29.

52 Cromer, D., Moses, M., Gordon, H., Manson, D., & Young, A. (2021). (issue brief). Reducing the School to Prison Pipeline in Maryland. UMBC Public Service Scholars Programs. Retrieved from https://publicservicescholars.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/ sites/448/2022/08/School-to-Prison-Pipeline-1.pdf

53 Id.

54 Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development (2016), supra, note 42.

55 National Conference of State Legislatures. (2022). (rep.). Supporting Student Success Through Afterschool Programs. Retrieved from https://www.ncsl.org/education/supporting-student-success-through-afterschool-programs

56 Id.

57 Id.

58 Afterschool Alliance. (2022). (rep.). America After 3PM. Retrieved from http://afterschoolalliance.org/documents/AA3PM/AA3

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