For Immediate Release

April 20, 2006                                            

Contact: Sabrina Williams, 305-904-3960

                 Kay Shaw, 212-965-2271

REPORT REVEALS HARSH IMPACT OF ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES ON FLORIDA PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS

Today, the Florida State Conference NAACP, Advancement Project, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) released “Arresting Development: Addressing the School Discipline Crisis in Florida,” a report that reveals the findings of public hearings conducted last Fall throughout Florida on the increasingly harsh school discipline policies and practices in Florida’s public schools. A year ago this week, the nation was stunned by the release of video footage showing a 5-year-old St. Petersburg kindergarten student being arrested and handcuffed by police officers at school after having a temper tantrum.  The hearings were held in response to this incident and growing community discontent with unreasonable school discipline practices.

The hearings drew hundreds of parents, students, school administrators, juvenile justice personnel and other community members.  Hearing sponsors heard testimony from innumerable witnesses, including prosecutors and juvenile court judges, who expressed grave concerns that schools have turned away from education-based approaches to discipline and now handle far too many instances of typical student misbehavior by relying on law enforcement and the courts, and imposing punishments that needlessly remove students from school.

“At our hearings last Fall, one family member after another testified to their own school discipline nightmare: a daughter who was arrested when her epileptic seizure led her to flail her arm and allegedly strike a teacher; a grandson’s arrest for being in a schoolyard fight,” said Adora Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference NAACP.  “Throughout Florida, the over-use of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests has turned many schools into feeders for the juvenile and criminal justice systems.”

Arresting Development highlights six school districts—Pinellas, Hillsborough, Duval, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade—where large numbers of students are being pushed off an academic track and into the juvenile justice system because of the harsh penalties imposed by these “zero tolerance” approaches to school discipline.   

The report notes that statewide there were 26,990 school-related referrals to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice during the 2004-05 school year.  Over three-quarters of these referrals (76 percent) were for misdemeanor offenses such as disorderly conduct, trespassing, or assault and/or battery, which is usually nothing more than a schoolyard fight.

“It was clear from the hearings that Florida’s zero tolerance policy is being used to criminalize petty acts of childish misconduct,” said Monique Dixon, senior attorney, Advancement Project.  “Behavior once handled by a principal or a parent is now being handled by prosecutors and the police.”

In addition to turning to police and juveniles courts as disciplinarians, Florida schools are increasingly utilizing discipline methods that focus on removing students from the classroom instead of addressing underlying causes of behavioral problems and ensuring that those students continue to receive an education.  In fact, statewide there has been a 14 percent increase in the number of out-of-school suspensions issued in the last five years, leading to an astonishing 441,694 out-of-school suspensions in 2004-05. 

These punitive practices fall hardest on students of color and students with disabilities.  For example, in the 2004-05 school year, Black students received 46 percent of out-of-school suspensions and police referrals statewide, but comprised only 22.8 percent of the student population.  And state juvenile court administrators and education advocates have reported a growing number of children with disabilities being referred to the juvenile justice system.

“By documenting the overuse of harmful law enforcement approaches to typical student misbehavior and the disparate use of such approaches on Black students and students with disabilities, Arresting Development is intended to provide stakeholders with a roadmap to the problems in school discipline in Florida and encourage efforts towards reform,” said Olga Akselrod, LDF Assistant Counsel.  “Solutions must both reduce the overall number of arrests and suspensions as well as address the notable racial and special education disparities.”

In the final analysis, the report concludes that in each of the counties highlighted, school districts have spent millions of dollars for school police officers who spend most of their time disciplining students for conduct that should be addressed by school programs, counseling, and parental involvement.  The result is thousands of children who are needlessly saddled with criminal records and denied an education.  Ultimately, parents, students, educators, and other stakeholders must work collaboratively to reach an agreement on the best path to take to keep schools safe and stop the unnecessary criminalization of Florida’s students.  

“Students who engage in truly criminal behavior such as serious violence or the sale or possession of illicit drugs should be subjected to criminal charges – as they were even before zero tolerance became the watchword,” concluded President Nweze.  “However, students should not be deprived of an education and a future by being derailed into the juvenile justice system for minor acts. The criminalization of our children must be stopped.”   

For a copy of the report please visit www.advancementproject.org or www.naacpldf.org

###