Dangerous Discipline

Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children work to address the policies and practices that push Texas youth out of school, increasing the likelihood of grade retention, dropout, and a number of other negative consequences. These policies, practices, and consequences are part of the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a process through which harmful classroom removals, school police, and the justice system are used to address student behavior.

The data collected and presented in this report show that Texas school districts continue to rely on police officers, juvenile probation, and courts to address low-level, school-based behaviors, despite an ever-growing body of research showing the many ways these methods harm youth.  Youth of color and youth with disabilities are over-represented in school-based arrests, court referrals, use of force incidents, and referrals to juvenile probation, further demonstrating the need to address the system of overly-punitive discipline that is pervasive in Texas schools.

In the past five years, a number of new laws have impacted the school-to-prison pipeline.  In 2013, the Texas legislature eliminated two Class C misdemeanor offenses, Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation, for students at school. Further, the legislature prohibited police officers from writing tickets to youth on their home campuses, instead requiring that a more formal complaint process be followed in order to charge students with Class C misdemeanor offenses. In 2015, the legislature eliminated the criminal offense of Failure to Attend School and required that school police officers in districts with more than 30,000 students undergo youth-focused training.

These changes in the law have certainly reduced the number of tickets/complaints that are issued to Texas students and have provided some protections to the many students who attend schools where police officers patrol halls and classrooms. Still, the problems inherent in school policing and court interventions persist, highlighting the need for additional reform. Parents, students, educators, advocates, and lawmakers must continue to be vigilant and pass laws, address policies, and end practices that harm children.

The following report contextualizes the use of police and court interventions in schools within the larger world of criminal justice practices and reforms, highlights the improvements and enduring dangers of an overly-punitive school discipline system, and provides analysis from extensive data collection and research into the arrests, court referrals, use of force incidents, school climate, and juvenile probation referrals directly from schools that impact Texas students.

Major Findings

Research and data collected and analyzed by Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children show:

• Overall, school-based tickets, complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents dropped dramatically following historic shifts in the state’s treatment of non-violent classroom misbehavior in 2013, but have since largely plateaued.

• Statewide, 59,054 non-traffic Class C misdemeanor cases were filed against juveniles in 2015-16.

• Of the 59,637 arrests and referrals of youth to juvenile probation in calendar year 2015, at least 16,814, or 28%, resulted from behavior that occurred on campus or at a school-related event. That’s 5.3 arrests and referrals per 1,000 youth statewide.

Complaints Continue to be Issued in Schools, Usually for Low-Level Infractions:

• Between 2011 and 2015, the districts in the data set issued 41,304 tickets and complaints to students in schools.

• The vast majority of tickets and complaints issued by school police officers were for relatively low-level offenses, but carry high costs for students.

• The proportion of citations issued for Disorderly Conduct recently increased from 18% of school-based complaints in 2013-14 to 29% of school-based complaints in 2014-15. If left unchecked, school police could rely on Disorderly Conduct charges to effectively replace Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation—two school-based offenses prohibited by the legislature in 2013.

Most School-based Arrests are for Low-level Infractions:

• Between 2011 and 2015, students in the districts in the data set were arrested 29,136 times.

• About half of the arrests made by school police officers were for Class C misdemeanors, which are relatively low-level offenses, but which carry high costs for students.

Top 10 Highest Arrest Averages, All Offense Levels (2011-2015)

Despite Poor Data Collection, it is Clear that Districts of All Sizes Continue to Use Force Against Students:

• Use of force data were less available than ticketing, complaint, and arrest data, and record-keeping for this type of incident was inconsistent, even within districts.

• Based on available data, Ector County ISD, Aransas County ISD, and East Central ISD had the highest rates of use of force over the past four years.

Use of Force Incidents by District (2011-2015)

Schools and School Police are Over-reliant on Juvenile Probation to Address School Behavior:

• The most common offenses that lead youth to juvenile probation directly from school are misdemeanor drug offenses (e.g., possession of marijuana), misdemeanor assault (e.g., school yard fights), and “other misdemeanors,” which includes offenses like disruptive behavior at school (disrupting lawful assembly at school), harassment, and disorderly conduct with three priors, among others. These three offense categories alone make up more than half of all referrals to juvenile probation from schools.

• School districts in some counties refer youth to juvenile probation at rates that are much higher than the state average. Youth in three counties—Webb, Lubbock, and Brazos—were referred to juvenile probation for school-based behavior at a rate three times the statewide rate.

Youth of Color are Over-represented in Tickets/Complaints, Arrests, Juvenile Probation Referrals, and Use of Force Incidents:

• While Black and Latino students are not more likely to misbehave than their White peers, Black youth, and to a lesser degree Latino youth, are much more likely to have their behavior addressed by school police officers than their White peers.

• Black students received 32% of tickets and complaints, 22% of arrests, and 40% of use of force incidents from 2011-2015, though they comprise only 13% of total student enrollment in Texas.

• In many of the sampled districts with the highest rates of tickets and complaints, Black students received two to four times as many disciplinary actions as their representation in the student body from 2011 to 2015. In Austin ISD, for example, 20% of tickets and complaints went to Black students, who make up just 8% of the district’s students overall. In Dallas ISD 49% of tickets and complaints went to Black students, who make up about 23% of Dallas ISD’s student population.

• Of all youth who were referred to juvenile probation from schools in 2015, 25% were Black, 53% were Latino, 21% were White and 1% were classified as “Other.” Statewide population data show that, among youth ages 10 to 17, 14% are Black, 46% are Latino, 34% are White, and 6% are classified as “Other.”

• Statewide, Black youth were referred to juvenile probation for school-related offenses at a rate 2.86 times higher than their White peers. Statewide, Latino youth are referred to juvenile probation at a rate 1.87 times higher than their White peers.

Students with Disabilities are Over-represented in Tickets/Complaints, Arrests, and Use of Force Incidents in Schools:

• Only 14 school districts in our sample could provide data disaggregated by special education status, but the data we did receive show that students with disabilities were over-represented in tickets/complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents. Notably, youth with disabilities experienced more than twice as many arrests as their representation in the student body: 24% of arrests versus 9% of student enrollment.

Even Very Young Students are Policed and Referred to Courts and Probation:

• Elementary school students have received an increasing percentage of complaints/tickets, arrests, and use of force incidents over the four years for which data were collected. Middle school students have received as much as 36% of complaints/tickets, 33% of arrests, and 45% of use of force incidents—more than high schoolers in the data set.

• Since 2012, school districts have charged 10- and 11-year-olds with Class C misdemeanors 30 times, in clear violation of the 2011 law that prohibited these charges for students so young.

• Dallas ISD reported two use of force incidents by police against six-year-old students.

• Younger students who are referred to juvenile probation are even more likely to be referred for school-based behavior than older youth. In 2015, at least 46% of referrals to juvenile probation for 10- to 11-year-olds came from schools.

• While schools referred Latino and White 10-year-olds to probation at roughly the same rate, 11-, 12- and 13-year-old Latino youth were referred to probation at nearly double the rate of White youth.

• Black youth were referred to juvenile probation for school-based behavior at a rate of 2.5 to 3.5 times the rate of White youth in all age groups. In fact, statewide, 12-year-old Black youth were referred to juvenile probation for school-based offenses at the same rate as 15- and 16-year-old White youth.

Boys are Over-represented in Tickets/Complaints, Arrests, and Use of Force Incidents in Schools:

• Boys received approximately 74% of disciplinary actions in the data set, though they only represent approximately 51% of total student enrollment.

Students in Juvenile Facilities Report Previous, Negative Interactions with School Police:  

• Out of 425 currently-incarcerated youth who were surveyed, 64% reported being repeatedly stopped or questioned by school police before entering a Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) facility, beginning between ages 12 and 13 on average.

• 66% of youth surveyed had been ticketed or sent to court by a school police officer or school official at least once before entering a TJJD facility, and 35% of youth surveyed had been arrested by a school police officer before entering a TJJD facility.

• Most youth in the study reported seeing or interacting with police at school nearly every day (the mean response was 4 out of 5 days per week). However, rather than make students feel safer, survey participants reported overwhelmingly negative interactions with school police officers not just personally but also in their observations of officers’ interactions with their peers.

TJJD Youths’ Recent Firsthand Experiences with School Police Officers (2015)

• Youth reported rather unwelcoming and unsupportive school climates before entering TJJD facilities. After having mostly negative experiences with school police officers in the past, presently incarcerated youth hold largely negative attitudes toward police officers and are not particularly hopeful that they will make schools safe.

School Police Programs are Costly:

• Public school districts with internal police departments spend about $75 per student enrolled on school police programs each year, a figure that has been increasing steadily over the past four years despite research showing the harms of current school policing practices and decreasing crime rates statewide.

• Overall, Texans paid $79 million for school police programs across our relatively small sample of 53 school districts with financial data (out of 1,247 total districts in 2014-15). This means that, on average, each of the 53 school districts from the sample spent over $1.4 million on school police officer programs. This expenditure far exceeds the average amount spent on counselor salaries in each of Texas’ 1,247 school districts: approximately $534,000 per district.

Policy Recommendations

Based on the findings in this report, Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children recommend the following policy changes:

TEXAS LEGISLATURE

1. ELIMINATE THE CRIMINAL COMPONENTS OF CLASS C MISDEMEANORS FOR JUVENILES

The data in this report clearly show that students in Texas schools are still being arrested and sent to court for Class C misdemeanors frequently. In 2015, the Texas legislature decriminalized truancy. Now, truancy is a civil offense, still heard in Justice and Municipal courts, but without the fines and threat of a criminal record that the criminal offense carried. The legislature recognized the harms associated with fining youth and saddling them with criminal records.

The Texas legislature should eliminate fines for juveniles convicted of Class C misdemeanors and require automatic expunction of all records related to charges for Class C offenses. Common Class C offenses include Disorderly Conduct and Curfew Violation. Class C offenses could still be heard in Justice and Municipal courts, but the most harmful consequences of being charged with a criminal offense—fines and lasting criminal records—should be eliminated.

2. EXPAND YOUTH-FOCUSED TRAINING TO POLICE IN ALL TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Following the passage of House Bill 2684 in 2015, police officers in all school districts in Texas with more than 30,000 students are required to have at least 16 hours of youth-focused training, including training in child and adolescent psychology, research-based conflict resolution techniques, de-escalation techniques, the mental and behavioral needs of children with disabilities, and mental health crisis intervention. The hours required for this training are part of, not in addition to, the 40 hours of training that any officer in Texas is required to have in order to maintain his or her license. Unfortunately the law does not require training for officers in small- and medium-sized districts.

The Texas legislature should expand the youth-focused training requirements of HB 2684 so that they apply to officers who interact with students in all school districts in Texas.

3. IMPROVE DATA COLLECTION ON POLICE ACTIVITIES IN SCHOOLS

Currently there are no laws in Texas that require the collection and publication of data related to school-based arrests, use of force incidents, and citations/complaints. Students in Texas schools are restrained, come into contact with Tasers and pepper spray, and are sent to court, all without required disclosure to the public. It is impossible to understand the scope of the problem without mandatory, standardized data collection.

The Texas legislature should task the Texas Judicial Council with developing a system of data collection that will require school district police departments, local police departments that assign or send their officers to schools, and courts to collect and report data related to school-based arrests that send youth to both the juvenile justice system and the adult criminal justice system, use of force incidents, and court contact.

4. ELIMINATE THE USE OF TASERS AND PEPPER SPRAY ON STUDENTS

Police officers in Texas schools are authorized to carry Tasers and pepper spray for use against students.  The use of these weapons harms students and can be dangerous and disruptive for bystanders and the general school environment. Juvenile probation departments in Texas have recognized these harms and have prohibited the use Tasers and pepper spray in their facilities.

The Texas legislature should ban the use of Tasers and pepper spray in situations that do not involve a weapon in Texas public schools.

5. ESTABLISH APPROPRIATE COUNSELOR-TO-POLICE RATIOS IN SCHOOLS

Research points to the efficacy of using prevention and intervention measures to encourage positive student behavior and address trauma and student needs.  School counselors and other mental health professionals like social workers and psychologists are great resources for students, and are often able to identify and address underlying causes of student behaviors, without relying on school police or court intervention. The average student-to-counselor ratio in Texas is 470:1. The American Counseling Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1. High schools that maintain one school counselor for every 250 students have shown lower disciplinary incidents, as well as better graduation and school attendance rates.

The Texas legislature should encourage investment in high-quality counselors and other mental health professionals in schools by establishing a minimum 4:1 ratio of school-based counselors and other mental health professionals to school-based law enforcement officers. This ratio would not create additional costs for districts, but would simply allow districts to shift funds so that they are used to address and prevent behavioral problems with meaningful services, rather than simply punish them after they occur.

6. ELIMINATE THE OFFENSE OF DISORDERLY CONDUCT

In 2013, the Texas legislature eliminated the Class C offenses of Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation.  Just by ending ticketing for these two offenses, the issuing of citations decreased by over 50%.  Our data show, however, that the proportion of Disorderly Conduct complaints filed actually increased for some students following the Disruption of Class and Transportation bans, suggesting that Disorderly Conduct has replaced Disruption of Class and Transportation as a general catch-all offense.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a Statement of Interest in Kenny v. Wilson, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. In the suit, the Plaintiffs—a proposed class of students and a youth organization—challenge South Carolina’s “Disturbing Schools” and “Disorderly Conduct” statutes. The Department asserts that the racial disparities in the enforcement of criminal statutes, like Disorderly Conduct, “may indicate that [they are] unconstitutionally vague,” in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process protections.  

The Texas legislature should eliminate the ability of districts to file complaints against students on their home campuses for the offense of Disorderly Conduct.

7.  RAISE THE AGE OF JUVENILE COURT JURISDICTION

Currently, all youth age 17 and older in the state of Texas are considered adults in the eyes of the criminal justice system. With the exception of some youth on juvenile probation, 17-year-old students who are arrested at school are taken to the county jail. Even though these students are juniors and seniors in high school, they do not receive the protections of the juvenile system, their parents do not have to be notified of their arrest, and their record for school misbehavior will follow them throughout their life as a criminal record.  

The Texas legislature should raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction so that 17 year olds are treated the same as other youth.

8. KEEP 10-12 YEAR OLDS OUT OF THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Only 11% of all youth who are referred to juvenile probation are 10-12 years old. However, at least 46% of those 10- to 12-year-olds are referred to probation because of school-related behaviors. Referrals to probation increase the likelihood that youth will be involved in the justice system later in life.  These young kids would be more appropriately served through Community Resource Groups, local Systems of Care, and other services providers. Schools that cannot provide appropriate interventions and behavioral supports to these young students can refer them to the same service providers juvenile probation refers youth to, and can also get youth the supports they need through local Community Resource Groups, a local System of Care, and prevention and early intervention providers.

The Texas legislature should raise the lower age of juvenile court jurisdiction so that 10-12 year olds are kept out of the juvenile justice system and instead get intervention and services in more age-appropriate settings.  

9. REQUIRE DISTRICTS TO ADDRESS SCHOOL CLIMATE IN PLANNING EFFORTS

Schools with positive school climates experience fewer disciplinary problems, a greater sense of safety on campus, and improved student performance. Beginning in 2017, the Texas Education Agency will be required to include measures of school quality, climate, and safety in its plans to support Title I schools as part of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind.

Texas should require districts to include measures of school climate as a performance measure in District Improvement Plans, along with strategies to promote safe and supportive school climates, including trauma-informed practices and positive behavior management strategies.

TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY

1. CONTINUE TO FUND TRAINING FOR RESEARCH-BASED PRACTICES

Research-based practices, like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), and the Restorative Practices model encourage positive student behavior and reduce the need for classroom exclusions, police contact, and court intervention.

The Texas Education Agency should utilize the expertise within the state’s institutes of higher education and other entities to promote safe and supportive school climates by developing partnerships between these groups and Regional Education Service Centers (ESCs). Through these partnerships, all school districts in Texas can have access to research-based strategies shown to promote school success and reduce reliance on harmful and overly-punitive discipline measures.

Further, the Texas Education Agency should leverage funding made available through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to promote safe and supportive learning environments for all students. School districts can now use professional development (Title II) funds to train school personnel on strategies such as making referrals for students with or at-risk of trauma or mental illness, forming partnerships with community mental health providers, and addressing issues related to school learning conditions. ESSA also establishes a new grant program schools can use to fund efforts like promoting supportive school climates and supportive school discipline, providing school-based mental health services, dropout prevention, bullying prevention, and establishing community partnerships and parent involvement.

2. PROVIDE SCHOOL DISTRICTS WITH GUIDANCE ON IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE PRACTICES

Often, educators and administrators ask where they can find resources for their students or how they can access training related to research-based programs to address student behavior.

The Texas Education Agency should should identify and disseminate information on resources districts can use to promote safe and supportive school climates. TEA and the Department of State Health Services are already required to jointly maintain a list of recommended best practice-based programs related to mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention for schools to reference. This list should be expanded to include best practices related to creating positive school climates, including resources that address student needs (such as mental health services and trauma-informed practices) and staff training needs (such as implementing research-based practices shown to reduce classroom removals and school police contact).

TEXAS JUVENILE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

1. IMPROVE DATA COLLECTION & TRACKING FOR REFERRALS OF SCHOOL-BASED OFFENSES

Currently, the data reporting system that juvenile probation departments use to track referrals of youth does not require that information be included in the school-related location data field. As a result, it is likely that a number of probation departments under-report the number of referrals for school-based offenses. The reporting system also has a field that allows probation departments to identify who made a referral, including law enforcement or a school official. However, it is understood that this data is inconsistent as some enter the data based on location while others may use the data field to track whether the youth came in by an arrest from law enforcement or referral from a school official. When school police are tracked as law enforcement, it is unclear whether it was school-based law enforcement or law enforcement outside of school that made the arrest. It is impossible to understand the scope of the problem of school-based juvenile probation arrests and referrals without standardized data collection.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department should standardize data collection and reporting for school-related location and referral sources so that it is clear how many youth are referred to juvenile probation for school-related offenses and whether the referral is from law enforcement or school officials.

SCHOOL DISTRICTS

1. REDUCE STUDENT-POLICE CONTACT BY DECREASING RELIANCE ON SCHOOL POLICE OFFICERS TO ADDRESS MINOR BEHAVIORS

School-based police officers are too involved in addressing student behavior that should be handled by educators, counselors, and school administrators. Officers should not be patrolling hallways, classrooms, and cafeterias. Rather, they should be called from their offices when there are incidents that actually impact school safety. If contact between officers and students is reduced in this way, there will be fewer incidents that inappropriately result in arrests, citations, and uses of force against students.

Texas school districts should reduce student-police contact by requiring that officers be stationed in their offices until they are called to address actual threats to school safety.

2. ENCOURAGE SCHOOLS TO ADOPT RESEARCH-BASED ALTERNATIVES

School districts across the country have started to adopt research-based alternatives to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline, police, and courts (See Best Practices Section). These methods, like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Restorative Practices encourage positive student behavior and safe school climates. Investment in these methods will provide long-term benefits for schools and will reduce reliance on harmful, overly-punitive practices. The Texas Education Agency already provides resources for the implementation of Restorative Practices, PBIS, and Social and Emotional Learning.

Texas school districts should equip educators and administrators with the tools and resources they need to implement research-based methods to address student behavior, improve class management, and create positive school climates. Funds for these tools and resources can be shifted from security budgets and can be obtained through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

3. REVISE MEMORANDA OF UNDERSTANDING AND DISTRICT POLICIES THAT ADDRESS THE DUTIES OF SCHOOL-BASED LAW ENFORCEMENT

Often the expectations and duties of police officers in schools are not clear to administrators, teachers, and even officers themselves.  School-based police officers should only be involved in situations that threaten the safety of students and staff. They should not be called to address minor misbehaviors that would be more appropriately handled by a teacher or administrator in the school setting.

Texas school districts should revise memoranda of understanding that exist between the district and the local law enforcement agency and any other documents that address the duties of police officers within the school district to explicitly limit the involvement of police officers to situations that clearly threaten school safety.

4. CREATE SCHOOL POLICE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES

Students, parents, and educators have the right to be involved in the hiring and oversight of school police officers.  

Texas school districts should create oversight committees that have the power to review applications for officers who want to work in the school district, conduct officer evaluations, investigate complaints, and review data.  These committees should be comprised of students, parents, educators, and community-based advocates.

5. PROVIDE TRAINING TO EDUCATORS, ADMINISTRATORS, STAFF, AND OFFICERS TO ELIMINATE BIAS

In order to address the biases that may inform their actions, educators, administrators, staff, and school police officers should be trained to recognize biases and should learn skills to limit the impact that those biases have on their interactions with students.

Texas school districts should provide training in de-biasing techniques to everyone in the district who interacts with students.

6. HIRE STAFF THAT IS TRAINED TO PROMOTE A POSITIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE

Counselors and other staff members who are trained in research-based methods to addressing student behavior and promoting positive, safe school climates can be effective in understanding student and family needs and connecting them with services when appropriate.  There are a number of recommended staff positions, including community intervention workers, restorative justice coordinators, and community school resource coordinators that can meet this role.

Texas school districts should hire staff members that promote a positive school climate in order to reduce reliance on law enforcement officers who are not equipped to address student needs.

Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children have focused on improving outcomes for Texas youth by working to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.  The term “school-to-prison pipeline” describes the policies and practices—the use of suspensions, expulsions, school police, and courts—that push students out of the classroom and increase the likelihood that they will experience academic difficulties, drop out of school, and come into contact with the justice system. Two major components of the pipeline are the unnecessary presence and misuse of police in schools and the use of the court system, including juvenile probation, to address in-school behaviors.

Using police and courts to respond to minor student behavior is harmful for youth and does not help to foster safe and supportive school climates. Currently, more than 200 school districts in Texas have their own police forces and many more contract with local law enforcement agencies to place officers in schools. Often educators rely on officers to address minor, non-violent situations that would be handled more effectively by a teacher or by a school administrator. Many of the officers in schools are not trained to interact with children and, therefore, respond inappropriately to their unique emotional, psychological, and physical needs and limits. As a result, citations, arrests, and use of force incidents occur with alarming frequency.  Youth of color and youth with disabilities experience this harmful system of punishment at disproportionately high rates.

Unfortunately, this is not a new problem.  In 2010, Texas Appleseed published the report Texas’ School-to-Prison Pipeline: Ticketing, Arrest & Use of Force in Schools, which highlighted the history and growth of school policing and the increasing use of the criminal justice system to address school-based behavior. Class C ticketing and arrest data were collected from Texas school districts, municipal courts, and justice courts. At that time, only 26 school districts and eight municipal courts were able to provide any part of the requested information. Still, a picture of the widespread and inappropriate use of law enforcement and courts in Texas’ public schools became clear.

In 2013, Texas Appleseed published a ticketing and arrest data update, analyzing information collected from more than 40 school districts.  Many of the findings from the 2013 data update were similar to the 2010 report findings, namely that students were still being ticketed for low-level offenses and Black students were over-represented in ticketing and arrests.

What follows is an update of the 2010 report and 2013 data update, with new analyses based on data that Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children have collected from 72 school districts, seven municipal police departments, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, the Office of Court Administration, and 425 surveys administered to youth in secure juvenile facilities. Student enrollment for the 72 sampled school districts in 2014-15 was 1,652,970, accounting for 32% of the statewide student population.  

The data show that while there have been some improvements in the ways that districts address student behavior, there are still policies, practices, and alarming disparities that demonstrate the need for further change at the local and state levels.

High-profile shootings in schools around the country and an inflated fear of juvenile offenders contributed to a rise in the presence and use of school police officers and courts to address student behavior. However, extremely dangerous incidents in schools are rare, so the police officers who patrol campuses often handle relatively minor infractions that could be addressed by a teacher or by a school administrator. The result is unnecessary contact between students and police.  

In 2010, Texas Appleseed found a correlation between the presence of an officer in a school and the number of arrests in that school. Similarly, a recent study found that the regular presence of an officer at a school campus increases the likelihood that children will be referred to law enforcement, including for low-level offenses that should be handled by school officials.  This finding held true even when controlling for demographic factors, neighborhood crime, and levels of crime and disorder at a school.   

The officers that are called to handle low-level offenses in schools are allowed to carry weapons like Tasers and pepper spray and use various methods of force against students.  And, until 2015, there was no state-mandated requirement for officers working in Texas’ schools to receive youth-focused training.  Now, only officers in school districts with more than 30,000 students are required to receive training. The availability of weapons, lack of appropriate training, and frequent contact between officers and students can lead to situations that are dangerous for youth and harmful to school climate and safety.

In addition to encountering police officers in their classrooms and hallways, students can be charged with crimes in school, often for Class C misdemeanors like Disorderly Conduct.  When charged with Class C misdemeanors, Texas students can be sent to Justice or Municipal Courts, which are adult criminal courts, not juvenile courts.

In these adult courts, students are not guaranteed an attorney, yet they face the possibility of court costs, fines, and a criminal record. Seventeen-year-old students also face the possibility of being jailed if they are unable to comply with court orders. Youth charged with Class C misdemeanors are sometimes instructed to understand legal instructions and defend themselves without any assistance, which is difficult for adults, let alone children, and can be a particularly impossible task for students with disabilities and English-language learners.  

The video below details the rise of the overly-punitive school discipline system in the U.S.:

Texas Appleseed’s and Texans Care for Children’s data collection and research, analyzed in detail in the data sections below, show that arrests and Class C misdemeanor complaints are made with frequency in Texas schools, and a stunning percentage of arrests and referrals to juvenile probation departments are made from schools.  

Any student who experiences contact with police or courts is susceptible to a number of negative consequences. But, youth with disabilities and youth of color are arrested, accused of crimes, sent to court, and placed in juvenile probation at disproportionately high rates, increasing their exposure and vulnerability to many well-documented harms. The intersections of these identities can further increase the likelihood of harm for youth.

The Over-representation of Students with Disabilities

Texas students with disabilities are over-represented in arrests and court involvement. Behaviors caused by some disabilities can be seen by educators and police as willful student misbehavior, instead of the symptoms of a disability. Traditional discipline strategies may not be effective; in fact, these strategies are not recommended for students with disabilities. When police officers are untrained in how to effectively respond to students with special needs, they risk escalating situations that could be avoided if more appropriate interventions were used. In Texas, nearly half of students classified as having an “Emotional Disturbance” are removed from their classrooms for discretionary reasons, not for offenses that require removal by law. Even with training, officers may be unaware of which students have disabilities and, therefore, may respond to them inappropriately.

Because of Texas’ under-identification and under-reporting of children who have special education needs, the number of these youth who are arrested and charged with crimes in their schools may be significantly higher than data currently show. Exclusion from class because of an arrest or in order to comply with court requirements can cause children who may already be struggling to keep up with their classmates to fall even further behind.

Racial Disparities

“The concentration of students of color [i]s a predictor of whether or not schools decide to rely on more intense [security] measures.”

– Dr. Jason P. Nance                                                

In every major component of the school-to-prison pipeline—classroom exclusions, police contact, probation referrals, and court contact—Black and, in many districts, Latino youth are over-represented.

The disproportionate removal of these students from their classrooms (thereby increasing the likelihood of school failure and justice system contact) is well-documented and confirmed by the data presented in this report. Research in other states shows that police officers are more likely to be stationed at schools with higher Black and Latino populations, even controlling for neighborhood crime and school-based misbehavior.  This increased presence means a greater likelihood of law enforcement referral.

The Over-representation of LGBTQ and GNC Students

[N]on-heterosexual adolescents suffer disproportionate punishments by schools and the criminal-justice system, which implicates not only schools, police, and courts but also other youth-serving health and welfare systems that often fail to meet the needs of non-heterosexual adolescents. 

The extent to which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) and gender non-conforming (GNC) youth are over-represented in the school discipline system is becoming increasingly clear.  A national study found that non-heterosexual youth are up to three times more likely to experience school sanctions and criminalization than their heterosexual peers.

While more data about these students must be collected in Texas, research so far has confirmed that LGBTQ and GNC youth face hostile school environments.  One survey of Texas LGBTQ youth found that 23% of LGBTQ students regularly heard school staff make homophobic remarks. A number of Texas advocates have reported that LGBTQ youth have been sent to court for school-based behavior that was simply a response to bullying they had endured.

Protecting these youth and their right to feel safe in school without fear of harassment or legal consequences is of paramount importance, especially considering the increased social harassment, isolation, and family instability that LGBTQ and GNC youth may experience.

The Consequences

The harmful effects of arrest and court involvement are not limited to the moment they occur or even immediately after. There are a number of medium- and long-term costs that districts incur and consequences that youth face when they interact with police in their classrooms and hallways and when their schools use courts to punish behavior.  Further, the impact of an overly-punitive discipline system on the general school climate and can be long-lasting and harmful.

High Costs

Operating courts and juvenile probation departments is costly for taxpayers.  Additionally, there are costs associated with the limited earning potential of children who drop out of school and who have criminal records. In some Texas school districts, the cost of security and monitoring, including paying for school police officers, can be significant. The school districts below have chosen to form (and pay for) their own police departments:

The chart below was created using budget data for school districts that is publicly available through the Texas Education Agency.  The chart compares the amount that some Texas school districts budgeted for social work services for students to the amount budgeted for security and monitoring of students in the 2015-16 school year. No school district below invested more in serving youth through social work services than it budgeted for monitoring students.

Data collected for this report show that policing costs per student are rising in Texas, for both large and small districts (see the data section for an in-depth analysis of school police program costs).

Impact on Student Interactions and School Climates

1.6 million children in the U.S. attend schools where there are sworn law enforcement officers, but no counselors.

Among the most important functions of schools is to provide an example of appropriate social interactions and conflict resolution.  In the schools that utilize classroom removals, police, and courts to address student behavior, students may begin to believe that exclusion and punishment are the best ways to solve conflict or deal with people and situations that are less than ideal.  This is particularly problematic when students of color, LGBTQ and GNC youth, and students with disabilities are over-represented in punishments—it is important to consider what lesson this may be teaching students, even unintentionally.

Research shows that one key to creating positive, safe, and supportive school climates is to treat youth fairly and create discipline systems that support students by addressing underlying issues, rather than using overly-punitive measures like classroom removals, police, and courts.  The American Psychological Association has noted, in the context of exclusionary discipline, that schools that utilize these punitive measures frequently also report “less satisfactory ratings of school climate, less satisfactory school governance structures, and to spend a disproportionate amount of time on disciplinary matters.” When disciplinary practices create poor school climates, all students are negatively impacted, not just those of the students who are being disciplined.

Impact on Student Achievement & Life Outcomes

When students are removed from their classrooms, they miss important instruction and socialization time.  They can quickly fall behind their peers academically and experience frustration when they attempt to catch up.

When children are excluded from school they may experience the negative outcomes associated with a “weaken[ed] . . . school bond.”  This weakening may be exacerbated by any number of underlying problems that may be causing misbehavior.  Further, students who are excluded from class as a result of contact with school police and court involvement may feel embarrassed and stigmatized.  All of these factors contribute to an increased likelihood of dropping out, additional court involvement, and limited future prospects.

.  This is particularly true for students who have had no prior justice system involvement. Police interventions, like arrests and other forms of contact, decrease the likelihood that a student will graduate by over 70%. The very first arrest of a student in high school almost doubles the likelihood of drop out. Further, a criminal record can have serious impacts on a student’s ability to contribute to society,obtain housing, make career choices, be mentally healthy, and join the armed services.

In short, police contact, probation referrals, and court involvement are overly-punitive practices that can result in discriminatory outcomes and harm to students in the short- and long-term, do little to address potentially serious underlying issues, and are costly for districts and the state of Texas.

Increasingly, attention has been paid to the ways that communities interact with law enforcement and how courts are overused and misused.  The images of extreme use of force incidents by police officers against individuals have led to national attention and a call for conversations about race, improved community-officer relations, and police oversight and accountability.  Federal investigations and reports have revealed the discriminatory and widespread use of arrests, tickets, courts, and compounding fees and fines to target people and keep them in a cycle of poverty and criminal justice system involvement.

Often missing from these important conversations is the connection between larger policing and court issues and the challenges and dangers inherent in the system of school-based law enforcement. For many children, antagonistic relationships with police officers and courts begin on the school campus. Negative impressions about law enforcement and the justice system can be shaped early and reinforced when officers are called to address relatively minor school-based behaviors, particularly when those calls are disproportionately made in response to the behavior of Black and Latino children, LGBTQ youth, and students with disabilities.

What is particularly concerning is that many of the high-profile incidents that have received so much attention lately seem to occur as a result of minor infractions that escalated unnecessarily. The ticketing and policing of minor offenses has proven problematic generally, and is especially disturbing in schools, where non-violent offenses like “disorderly conduct” are often addressed with handcuffs and court interactions, rather than with research-based measures that promote a positive and safe school climate.

The slideshow below shows a sampling of the alarming student-police interactions witnessed in schools in Texas and across the country:

National Reform Efforts

Nationally, there have been increased efforts to address school policing and the use of courts to punish school-based behaviors.

Congressional Hearing on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

In 2012 the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on ending the school-to-prison pipeline.  It was the first time that a congressional committee addressed this issue head-on.  In his opening statement, Senator Richard Durbin noted that:

Federal Discipline Guidance

The Departments of Justice and Education have provided guidance, so that school districts are aware of the recommended steps to avoid the discriminatory application of school discipline.  While the guidance focuses on exclusionary discipline, it also includes the following language related to police in schools:

21st Century Task Force on Policing

President Barack Obama created the 21st Century Task Force on Policing, which released a report with recommendations on how to improve community and law enforcement relationships. Among those recommendations was:

1033 Program

Important steps were taken to address the militarization of police departments, which was made possible through the 1033 Program.  That program allows the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to transfer surplus military-grade weapons to local police departments, including those in K-12 public school districts.  

In Texas, at least 10 school districts received weapons through this program, including 64 M-16 rifles, 18 M-14 rifles, 25 automatic pistols, extended magazines, and 4,500 rounds of ammunition.  School districts in other states also received grenade launchers and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. In a letter to the DOD, Texas Appleseed and other advocacy organizations described the potential harms to children that could result from weapons being distributed to school district police departments through the 1033 Program, including a negative school climate and poor educational outcomes.

In 2015, President Obama issued an executive order limiting the disbursement of weapons through the 1033 Program.  Certain weapons can no longer be given to local law enforcement agencies, including those “solely serving” K-12 schools. It should be noted that while this is an important change, it is not clear that it applies to school districts that contract with local police departments since those departments do not “solely serve” the school district. Further, the process of actually returning unwanted weapons to the DOD has proven difficult for some law enforcement agencies.

The Every Student Succeeds Act

In December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law, repealing and replacing the No Child Left Behind Act. The ESSA allows states to create their own Accountability Plans, which they must submit to the Department of Education for approval. The Plans must include certain goals, including proficiency in reading and math, graduation rates, English language proficiency, and a measure of student growth in elementary and middle schools.

The Plans must also include a goal related to school quality and student success. Plans must specify how the state educational agency will support local education agencies to improve school conditions for student learning, including through reducing incidences of bullying and harassment, and the overuse of discipline practices that remove students from the classroom.

Federal School Police Guidance

In September 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Department of Education issued guidance to public school districts regarding the use of police officers in schools.  This guidance came in the form of several letters to educators and the “Safe, School-based Enforcement through Collaboration, Understanding and Respect (SECURe) Rubrics.”  

A nationwide coalition of education advocacy groups and individuals, including Texas Appleseed, responded to the letters and rubrics, pointing to a lack of legal guidance around the use of police in schools and calling for limits on the use of school police, increased training, the use of research-based measures before police intervention, data collection, and annual evaluations to determine if school police serve a legitimate educational goal that cannot be met through other means.

The Dignity in Schools Campaign’s School Police Platform

In September 2016, the Dignity in Schools Campaign, a national coalition of organizations committed to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, released its policy platform Counselors, Not Cops, which called for the removal of regularly-stationed police officers from school campuses, the use of positive safety and discipline measures, and the restriction of the use of police to only handle incidents that pose a threat to school safety.  The Campaign also held two congressional briefings to discuss the role of police in schools.

The Department of Justice’s Statement of Interest in Disorderly Conduct Lawsuit

In November 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice  filed a Statement of Interest (SOI) in Kenny v. Wilson, a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a proposed class of students and a youth organization, challenging South Carolina’s “Disturbing Schools” and “Disorderly Conduct” statutes. The Department of Justice filed its SOI in order to address the allegations of “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement” of the statutes in question, and specifically noted the harmful consequences that such statutes have on youth who are arrested and charged in their schools.  

The Department asserts that racial disparities in the enforcement of criminal statutes, like Disorderly Conduct, “may indicate that [they are] unconstitutionally vague,” in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process protections.  

Texas Reforms

There have been a number of statewide reforms that impact ticketing and the use of police in Texas’ school districts.

Class C Ticketing Reform

In 2013, Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children worked with the Texas legislature to ensure the passage of two important reforms: Senate Bill 393 and Senate Bill 1114. These laws:

• prohibited the ticketing of children in school. Instead, schools must file a formal complaint in order to charge a student with a Class C misdemeanor. This process was designed to address the ease with which tickets were routinely given to students.  Before this change, officers could simply and quickly give students tickets in their halls or classrooms, without much formal process. Now, complaints must be accompanied by witness statements, offense reports, and statements regarding a student’s special education status and the use of graduated sanctions, if applicable.

• eliminated the offenses of Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation on a student’s own school campus. Before 2013, these offenses were ticketed at alarming rates. Texas Appleseed found that, along with Disorderly Conduct and curfew violations, Disruption of Transportation and Disruption of Class were the most common offenses for which students in Texas were ticketed.

Since the passage of these laws, Class C misdemeanor ticketing of youth has decreased by more than 50% statewide. While this reduction is certainly an improvement, many Texas children are still being charged with Class C misdemeanors, based on in-school conduct. When charged, these students are sent to adult criminal court, without being provided an attorney. They can be fined up to $500 plus court costs, and could have a criminal conviction on their record, impacting future school, job, and military opportunities.

Truancy Reform

In 2014, Texas Appleseed released the report Class, Not Court: Reconsidering Texas’ Criminalization of Truancy. At that time, children in Texas could be charged with a Class C misdemeanor for having too many unexcused absences from school. Often, those absences were due to family-, personal-, or school-related problems, and were not simply cases of students skipping school. Still, students were sent to adult criminal court where, without court-appointed representation, they faced fines of up to $500, court fees and costs, and the possibility of a criminal record. Some students who were unable to comply with a judge’s orders also faced the possibility of jail time. Only one other state, Wyoming, treated children who missed school like criminals. In one year, Texas schools filed more than 115,000 truancy cases against children, with a disproportionately high number filed against Black and Latino students, children with special education needs, and economically disadvantaged students.

Fortunately, the Texas Legislature responded with House Bill 2398, which decriminalized truancy. Under the new law, schools must help students who chronically miss school with effective interventions. Students may still be referred to court, but now face a civil process rather than a criminal one—they can no longer be fined for missing school and will not have a criminal record. Further, the new law requires that courts destroy the criminal records of Texans previously charged with truancy.

This change in law not only reduces the contact that youth in Texas schools have with the court system, but it envisions the use of prevention and intervention methods to address the root causes of truancy. According to data obtained from the Office of Court Administration (OCA), in the year following the passage of HB 2398, the number of truancy cases filed in Justice and Municipal courts dropped by 90%.

Training for School Police in Select Districts

Before 2015, there was no requirement that police officers in Texas schools receive youth-focused training. As a result, officers who were trained to police adults on the street were being stationed in public schools. The dangers that can result from a general lack of training are particularly pronounced in the school setting where children are mentally and emotionally less mature, physically smaller than adults, and may be suffering from unique personal-, familial-, or school-based challenges.

In 2015, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 2684, which required youth-focused training for law enforcement officers in Texas school districts with more than 30,000 students. The bill requires at least 16 hours of training, which counts as a part of the 40 hours that all law enforcement officers in the state must receive to keep their licenses. The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) was tasked with creating the curriculum and was directed to include training in de-escalation techniques, mental health crisis intervention, research-based conflict resolution techniques, the mental and behavioral needs of children with disabilities, and child and adolescent development and psychology.

Texas Appleseed, Texans Care for Children, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, and other advocacy organizations reviewed TCOLE’s curriculum and found that it failed to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of school-based law enforcement officers, contained a number of substantive omissions, failed to provide practical policing tips for use in schools, and was not explicit in much of its guidance.

In early 2016, TCOLE began teaching the curriculum in regions across Texas, with the expectation that officers who attended would then be able to train other officers in their school districts.

Youth-focused training is certainly an important step in addressing the harms that can occur as a result of the presence of police in schools. However, it is not the only step that must be taken: in Bexar County, school police officers received crisis intervention training after Bexar County Juvenile Probation discovered that more than half of the youth referred to the juvenile system were referred by school police. This 40-hour training is considered a “best practice” in Texas, and yet there are still incidents of inappropriate uses of force by school police officers, and high numbers of arrests in some of the county’s school districts. In San Antonio ISD, for example, a 12-year-old girl was body-slammed, face-first into the ground, by a school police officer and there were 550 arrests made by school-based law enforcement in 2014-15. In Bexar County in 2015, at least 1,709 referrals to juvenile probation were for school-based offenses.

While the conversation around school policing and court use has gained much-needed attention in the last few years, there is still room for reform. As is discussed in the following sections, the data that are available reveal the widespread and disturbing use of police and courts to address student behavior.

For this report, Texas Appleseed obtained detailed data on disciplinary actions by School Resource Officers (SROs) from 2011 to 2015, including Class C misdemeanor tickets, Class C misdemeanor complaints, arrests, and use of force. The following analyses reflect SRO activity across 72 school districts and seven municipal police departments, together accounting for more than 72,000 disciplinary actions by SROs over the past four school years. Student enrollment for the same 72 districts was 1,652,970 in 2014-15, or about 32% of the student population statewide.

Texas Appleseed’s new data set builds substantially on the analyses presented in our last report on this topic in 2013. Besides almost doubling the number of school districts presented, the new data offer a more representative snapshot of rates and patterns of disciplinary actions by SROs statewide, sampling from regions urban and rural, large and small, and socio-culturally diverse. (See Appendix A for a full inventory of the agencies and data discussed throughout this chapter.)

Our 2011-2015 data overwhelmingly show that Texas school districts continue to lean heavily on law enforcement officials for daily classroom management, exposing children as young as 6 years old to aggressive, age-inappropriate discipline practices previously reserved for extremely dangerous behavior. Despite mounting evidence that law enforcement officials are ill-equipped to address routine school behavior problems, statewide figures showing steadily decreasing juvenile crime rates over the past decade, and persistent inequity in students’ discipline outcomes, Texas school districts continue to fund and grow their SRO programs.

Overall Trends

One of the most striking trends we observed in the new data was the abrupt reduction in disciplinary actions by SROs between academic years 2012-13 and 2013-14. Overall, tickets, complaints, arrests, and use of force dropped dramatically following historic shifts in the state’s treatment of low-level classroom misbehavior.

As discussed earlier in this report, in 2013, the Texas legislature eliminated Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation offenses for students on their home campuses, which had topped lists of school-based offenses for years, effectively removing 12% of SRO actions over a summer. Further, the legislature eliminated ticketing of students on their home campuses, resulting in a more than 50% decrease in ticketing statewide, and a 77% decrease for the districts sampled for this report. The law changes were also associated with fewer arrests for similarly non-violent offenses like Disorderly Conduct and even reduced use of force (although, as we discuss later in this chapter, use of force incidents are not tracked systematically).

However, such dramatic reductions in SRO activity between 2012-13 and 2013-14 have since plateaued. The following figure shows the overall pattern in tickets, complaints, and arrests across the 53 school districts in our sample with complete data over the past four years. (Class C misdemeanor “tickets” and “complaints” are combined throughout our analyses since they result in the same types of charges, though they are distinguished by a change in terminology and filing process between 2012-13 and 2013-14.) Not excluding districts with missing data for one or more years, these totals are even higher, reaching 41,304 tickets and 29,136 arrests by SROs over the past four years.

Unfortunately, the new normal, in which fewer SRO actions occur, but a majority of the remaining SRO actions are for behaviors like ‘disorderly conduct’ or ‘code of conduct violations,’ is almost as worrisome. Based on the tens of thousands of citations, arrests, and use of force incidents we observed across our relatively small sample of 79 agencies, we estimate that hundreds of thousands of these actions occur yearly across the more than 1,200 school districts and countless municipal police departments in Texas, most of which are tasked to handle school-based behaviors that are best addressed by counselors or other trained staff.

In the following sections, we examine patterns of activity across the 79 agencies in our 2011-2015 sample of school district police departments and municipal police departments providing SROs to Texas schools, highlighting current trends and practices contributing to the continued criminalization of school behavior across the state. These incidents raise serious questions about whether SROs are necessary for school safety and about the long-term effects of SRO programs on youths’ social, emotional, and intellectual development.

A Closer Look: Class C Misdemeanor Tickets and Complaints

Over the past decade tickets and complaints have comprised a majority of disciplinary actions by SROs. Even with the dramatic drop in SRO activity over the past four years, this has not changed. About 57% of the SRO actions captured by our 2011-2015 sample were Class C misdemeanor tickets and complaints (which are punishable by fine only and usually involve classroom misbehavior or other non-violent behaviors like petty theft) compared to 40% arrests and just 3% use of force without citation or arrest. This is true despite the 90% decrease in tickets and complaints from 2011-12 to 2014-15, illustrated below.

While we were able to obtain some detailed data from the districts in our sample, we were also able to get general data showing juvenile Class C misdemeanors statewide. The Office of Court Administration (OCA) provides data showing the number of Class C misdemeanor juvenile cases filed in Justice and Municipal courts across the state. Unfortunately, it is not clear which of these cases come from complaints filed in response to school-based behavior and which are based on off-campus behavior. Still, the data give us a sense of how often youth in Texas are being charged with certain criminal offenses: 59,054 Class C misdemeanor cases were filed against juveniles in the 2015-16 school year.

While raw counts of Class C misdemeanor tickets and complaints decreased over the past four years, the proportion of Class C tickets and complaints for some types of offenses has also changed. As shown below, after 2012-13, Class C offenses such as Disorderly Conduct and Curfew Violation made up a smaller share of tickets and complaints than before 2012-13. But the proportion of complaints for Disorderly Conduct have begun to increase again—rising from 18% of complaints in 2013-14 back up to 29% in 2014-15.

Top 10 Offense Types Among Class C Misdemeanor Tickets and Complaints (2011-2015)

District-level trends further illustrate how recent policy changes regarding Texas’ treatment of classroom behavior have unfolded. Looking at individual districts, Class C misdemeanor tickets and complaints are distributed rather unevenly across the state, with most offenses occurring in a relatively small subset of school districts and concentrated in large metropolitan areas. The following table presents the 10 school districts with the highest totals for Class C misdemeanor tickets and complaints, which account for more than half of the total tickets and complaints in our 2011-2015 data set. Among the 55 school district police departments with citation data, Houston ISD leads the list, averaging more than 1,500 tickets and complaints per year over the past four years.

Top 10 Highest Average Tickets and Complaints (2011-2015)

Granted, averages of raw totals for tickets and complaints do not tell the full story. Texas Appleseed also examined district-level data by citation rates, accounting for district size. The table below presents districts ranked by their ticketing and complaint rates (total tickets and complaints / total students) for the 2014-15 school year. A few small districts in the table stand out as particularly punitive to students given the sizes of their student bodies. Mount Pleasant ISD, for example, has just under 5,500 students, yet issued 267 complaints in 2014-15 (or 49 complaints for every 1,000 students). By comparison, Red Oak ISD (ranked #30) is similarly sized and issued only one complaint per 1,000 students enrolled in 2014-15.

Ticketing and Complaint Rates by District (2014-15)

We also examined ticketing and complaint rates from municipal police departments contracting SROs to their local districts through written agreements (often referred to as “Memoranda of Understanding” (MOU)). The six municipal police departments in our sample tend to serve smaller school districts but issue about as many tickets and complaints as school district police departments considering the sizes of their districts.

Considering our 2011-2015 citation data as a whole, SRO-issued tickets and complaints are now far less common than they were just five years ago, curbed mostly by sweeping legislative changes in 2013 and 2015, and thus may be funneling fewer students into the school-to-prison pipeline. But there is still a lot of work to do. Although widespread reductions in school-based tickets and complaints have been encouraging, the citations that continue to be made are often for low-level offenses and have the potential to increase if left unchecked. In the coming years, Texas schools must work to reduce school-based citations and ensure that recently eliminated offenses are not simply reclassified under different names.

A Closer Look: Class C Misdemeanor Arrests

School-based arrests are generally less common than school-based citations, comprising about 40% of the disciplinary actions by SROs in our 2011-2015 sample (versus 57% tickets and complaints). However, as with tickets and complaints, many school-based arrests are for low-level misdemeanor offenses.

Encouragingly, school-based arrests have dropped over the past four years, too, but they have shown more attenuated change and have decreased more evenly across offense types than school-based citations. Rather than shift a few targeted offense types at a time (as we observed with the elimination of Disruption of Class/Transportation tickets and complaints), each of the top 10 offenses for arrests decreased about 1-2% per year. Examining all of the cases in our 2011-2015 sample that were identified by offense type, only Disorderly Conduct decreased by more than 5%, dropping from 4,061 arrests (or 10% of those identified by offense type) in 2011-12 to just 305 arrests (or 3% of those identified by offense type) in 2014-15. This was perhaps due to considerable overlap between Disorderly Conduct and Disruption of Class/Transportation in their definition and interpretation.

Top 10 Offense Types Among Class C Misdemeanor Arrests (2011-2015)

As with tickets and complaints, a relatively small number of districts account for the majority of arrests by SROs over the past four years. In 2014-15, the districts with the 10 highest rates of arrest accounted for 72% of the total arrests in the entire sample. Austin ISD and San Antonio ISD ranked highest in our sample for average number of arrests by SROs over the past four years. Additionally, Austin ISD (#1) alone averaged more than five times as many arrests as Aldine ISD (#10).

Top 10 Highest Arrest Averages, All Offense Levels (2011-2015)

Regarding arrest rates, SROs in Winnsboro ISD, Laredo ISD, and Edgewood ISD had the highest 2014-15 rates in the sample, each with more than 10 arrests per 1,000 students (though Winnsboro ISD averaged only 13 arrests per year from 2011-12 to 2014-15, which is considerably lower than the districts with the next two highest averages).

Arrest Rates by District, All Offense Levels (2014-15)

A Closer Look: Use of Force Incidents

Texas Appleseed obtained overall totals for use of force incidents, by district, for the past four years. Although interpretation of our requests for use of force data varied widely, school districts typically defined “use of force” as any incident in which an SRO or school official physically restrained or subdued a student without issuing a complaint, ticket, or arrest.

Generally, use of force data was less available than complaint, ticket, and arrest data, and record-keeping for this type of incident was inconsistent even within districts. Still, Texas Appleseed was able to obtain complete use of force data from 19 school district police departments. Among those districts, Ector County ISD, Dallas ISD, and Brownsville ISD lead in their average numbers of use of force incidents over the past four years. Considering district size, Ector County ISD, Aransas County ISD, and East Central ISD lead the others.

Total Use of Force Incidents by District (2011-2015)

Examining Incidents by Student Gender

Among the cases in the data set that were identified by gender, roughly 74% were male and 26% were female, demonstrating an over-representation of male students—who are 51% of the student population—in receiving disciplinary actions from SROs. This trend was highly consistent across incident types but was by far the most pronounced among use of force incidents. In 2014-15, about 84% of use of force incidents involved boys compared to only 15% involving girls.

Examining Incidents by Age and Grade (Elementary, Middle, and High School)

Although a majority of disciplinary actions by SROs go to older students, alarming proportions of these incidents involve younger students, too. As the charts below illustrate, elementary school students have received an increasing percentage of tickets/complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents over the past four years. Middle school students have received as much as 36% of tickets/complaints, 33% of arrests, and 45% of use of force incidents, often more than high schoolers in the data set.

It is clear that positive changes in the laws that govern school discipline have real, measurable impacts for Texas youth. It is also clear that school districts across the state continue to rely on harmful, overly-punitive discipline methods, to the peril of all students, including young students and boys. New reforms must be adopted to ensure Texas school districts create safe, supportive schools for all students.

Through Open Records Requests to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, Texans Care for Children received data on referrals and arrests of youth to juvenile probation based on the “school-related location” of a youth’s offense for calendar year 2015. The data we reviewed included a breakdown of offenses that occurred at (1) a school-related location, including on campus or at a school-related event, and (2) not a school-related location. At the state level we analyzed all referrals to juvenile probation in calendar year 2015 with data broken down by race as well as by age. We also reviewed data from the 20 largest counties for calendar year 2015; this data was broken down by race, but not by age.

Referrals to juvenile probation include referrals by non-law enforcement entities as well as arrests by law enforcement entities or police departments. The data do not distinguish a law enforcement arrest from a referral directly from school officials or others. When a youth is handcuffed and taken directly to detention, it is classified as a “referral to juvenile probation.” Most often, youth enter the juvenile justice system after being arrested by law enforcement, but they can also be referred directly to a juvenile probation department by schools, Justice and Municipal courts, and other community entities. When youth are arrested or referred to county-run juvenile probation departments, records are created and data can be tracked about each youth.

The data collection systems used by probation departments have a field titled “School Related Location.” The field has two possible selections “OCAM – On Campus” and “OTHR – School Related Activity –On/Off Campus.”  On campus locations can include classrooms, lunchrooms, parking lots, adjacent football fields, etc. School-related activities can include sporting events, dances, fundraisers, academic competitions, field trips, etc. Our analysis refers to offenses identified as having occurred on campus or at a school-related event as “school-related.”

The juvenile probation data is disaggregated to the county level but not the school district or campus level. This analysis cannot tell us how specific schools, school districts, or police departments are operating, however it can and does tell us how students in different counties are faring.

Of the 59,637 referrals of youth to juvenile probation in calendar year 2015, at least 16,814, or 28%, resulted from behavior that occurred on campus or at a school-related event. While younger youth (10- to 12-year-olds) enter juvenile probation at much lower rates than older youth, they are much more likely to be referred to juvenile probation for school-related offenses than their older peers. In 2015, at least 46% of referrals to juvenile probation for 10- to 12-year-olds came from schools.

Statewide, youth are referred to juvenile probation for a school-related offense at a rate of at least 5.3 referrals per 1,000 youth. Looking at the 20 largest counties in Texas, the rate at which youth are referred to juvenile probation from schools varies from a rate of 17.6 to 3.4 referrals per 1,000 youth. Youth in three counties—Webb County, Lubbock County and Brazos County—were referred to juvenile probation for school-based behavior at a rate three times the statewide rate.

Data entry errors—juvenile probation department officials not inputting school-related location information in a youth’s record—could potentially account for some of the variability. However, in most cases, the counties with the highest rates of referral from schools also have higher rates of referral of youth to probation regardless of the location of offense, which are likely driven up by school-based referrals. In fact, the three counties with the highest rates of referrals from schools have school-based referral rates that are higher than the overall referral rate to juvenile probation, from any location, in six of Texas’ largest counties.

As the chart below shows, the data tell us that schools, particularly in certain communities, too often turn to the juvenile justice system through either direct referrals from school or through arrests at school to respond to student behavior rather than addressing student behavior, and the underlying issues that may lead to it, on campus.

School-Based Referral Rates Versus Referral Rates Among General Population (2015)

The most common offenses that lead youth to juvenile probation directly from school are misdemeanor drug offenses (e.g., possession of marijuana), misdemeanor assault (e.g., school yard fights), and “other misdemeanors,” which includes offenses like disruptive behavior at school (disrupting lawful assembly at school), harassment, and disorderly conduct with three priors, among others. These three offense categories alone make up more than half of all referrals to juvenile probation from schools. Arrest or referral to juvenile probation does not mean that that the offense identified at arrest is appropriate or that prosecutors would be willing to continue with the specific charge. For example, multiple juvenile probation chiefs have reported youth being referred to their department for “Aggravated Assault” and “Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon” for behaviors like hitting another youth with a pencil without causing an injury.

Notably, at least 338 youth were referred to juvenile probation directly from schools for contempt of magistrate. It is likely that many of these are youth were arrested at and removed from school for not meeting the terms of Justice and Municipal court orders like paying fines for Class C misdemeanors.  

School-Related Offenses for Which Youth Were Referred to Juvenile Probation (2015)

Examining Referrals by Department Size

While not all Texas juvenile probation departments were included in our data request, we did receive data regarding small, medium and large probation departments.

In Texas, are considered large (all are included in the analysis above).  There are (including 12 of the counties analyzed above) and .

The eight large probation departments make up 54.2% of the 2015 juvenile age population in Texas and received 48.8% of the school-based referrals to juvenile probation across the state.  Medium-sized probation departments serve 34% of the population and received 39.6% of the referrals; and small counties have 11.8% of the youth population and had 11.7% of the state’s referrals.

Overall, youth are referred to medium-sized probation departments for school-based offenses at higher rates than youth are referred for school-based offenses to large or small departments, with youth in large, urban counties being referred at the lowest rates.  While youth are being referred at higher rates for school-based offenses in medium counties, Black and Latino youth receive the brunt of those referrals while White youth are referred for school-based offenses at roughly the same rate as they are in large and small counties.  In medium counties, Black and Latino youth become justice involved for school-based offenses at 3.2 times and 2.4 times the rate as White youth in medium counties.

Black and Latino youth are referred from school to small probation departments at the same rates, which is 2.5 times the rate that White youth are referred to small departments.  It is worth noting that disparities likely exist between referrals to each small department, as can be seen between referrals to large departments. Just as we cannot make inferences about the practices of particular schools or districts based on this data, when looking at the data by size of probation departments the youth are referred to from school, we cannot make assumptions about the schools or districts in a particular county or judicial district.

In sum, the data tell us that behavior in the classroom, in school, and at school-related events can lead to large numbers of youth landing in the juvenile justice system – statewide at least 28% of all referrals to the juvenile justice system originate at school. School districts must prioritize strategies that keep youth in class and out of the justice system.

The over-representation of Black and Latino youth is not due to a natural predisposition to misbehave, a culture of disobedience, or actual higher rates of punishable behavior. Rather, research shows that students of color are punished more often and more harshly than their White peers, though they are not more likely to misbehave:

“there is simply no good evidence that racial differences in discipline are due to differences in rates or types of misbehavior by students of different races.”

Texas, like other states, exhibits discriminatory trends in its punishment of public school students.  The Council of State Governments found that while Black children were over-represented when educators had the discretion to punish certain behaviors, there were no race-based differences when educators were mandated by law to punish behavior:

How Implicit Bias Helps to Explain Racial Disparities

A growing body of research points to implicit bias as one factor that can lead to the disproportionate punishment of certain groups of students. For example, while an educator or officer may not explicitly believe that Black students are more likely to misbehave than their White peers, that person’s unconscious negative beliefs about Black people—formed and confirmed by a lifetime of overt and subtle messages—may lead to a decision to punish Black students more harshly and frequently.

It is important to remember that while implicit bias has been shown to contribute to disparities in school discipline, addressing implicit bias alone will not end the harmful consequences associated with the school-to-prison pipeline.  The current system of policies and practices that allow for the use of overly-punitive school discipline has, in effect, given implicit bias space to thrive, despite clear harms to children of color, LGBTQ youth, and children with disabilities.  We need a fundamental shift in the way we think about supporting children in public schools.  

Examining Tickets/Complaints, Arrests, and Use of Force Incidents by Student Race

Among the tickets/complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents in our new data set that were identified by race, roughly 51% involved Latino students, 22% involved Black students, 19% involved White students, and 1% involved Asian American, American Indian, or multiracial students. This demonstrates an alarming over-representation of Black students in disciplinary actions, as Black students comprise only 13% of the student body in Texas public schools (versus 52% Latino, 29% White, and 6% Asian American, American Indian, or multiracial).

The following charts show such racial disparities in SRO-issued tickets/complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents. The data clearly show that, for every action type and every year, Black students are consistently over-represented in disciplinary actions. For instance, Black students in our sample received 32% of tickets and complaints 2011-2015 though they comprise only 13% of the student body in Texas.

Likewise, in many of the districts with the highest rates of tickets and complaints over the past four years, Black students receive two to four times as many disciplinary actions as their representation in the student body. In Austin ISD, for example, 20% of complaints and tickets went to Black students, who make up just 8% of the district’s students overall. In Dallas ISD 49% of tickets and complaints went to Black students, who make up about 23% of Dallas’ public school population.

However, not all offenses are issued equally, and some offense-level data point to tickets and complaints becoming slightly more equitable for Black students in recent years. Consider the relationship between “Disruption of Class” and “Disorderly Conduct” offenses, the former of which was eliminated by Senate Bill 393 and both of which are disproportionately issued to Black students. As shown below, before Senate Bill 393, Black students received 35% of “Disruption of Class” tickets and 37% of “Disorderly Conduct” tickets. Following Senate Bill 393, Black students received only 26% of “Disorderly Conduct” complaints, showing some improvement (though 26% is still disproportionately high).

Trends for arrests and use of force incidents have been more consistent over the past four years. In our sample, Black students accounted for 22% of arrests and 40% of use of force incidents over the past four years though they comprise only 13% of the student population statewide.

Examining Juvenile Probation Referrals by Student Race

The data show that Black youth and, to a lesser degree Latino youth, are over-represented in arrests and referrals to juvenile probation for school-based offenses. Of all youth who were referred to juvenile probation from schools in 2015, 25% were Black, 53% were Latino, 21% were White and 1% were classified as “Other.” Statewide population data show that, among youth ages 10 to 17, 14% are Black, 46% are Latino, 34% are White and 6% are classified as “Other.”

The chart below shows the total the number of referrals statewide over the course of 2015 and the percentage of all school-related referrals, disaggregated by race.  Students classified as “Other” are categorized this way in the data received from TJJD and cannot be broken down further.  Offenses with fewer than five referrals in multiple race categories and in school-related events are excluded from the list because of the variability in the totals.

Statewide, youth are referred from school to juvenile probation at a rate of at least 5.3 referrals per 1,000 youth. White youth are referred at a rate of 3.3 referrals per thousand, while Latino youth are referred at a rate almost double the rate of White youth, and Black youth at almost triple the rate of White youth.

School-Based Referrals to Juvenile Probation by Race (2015)

Youth as young as 10 years old can be referred to the juvenile justice system in Texas. When breaking the statewide data down by age, it is clear that the youngest youth enter the juvenile justice system at a much lower rate than older youth. However, the trend of Black and Latino youth being pushed to juvenile justice from school at much higher rates than White youth starts early.

While schools referred Latino and White 10-year-olds to probation at roughly the same rate, 11-, 12- and 13-year-old Latino youth are referred to probation at nearly double the rate of White youth, while Black youth are referred at rates that are 2.5 to 3.5 times the rates of White youth in all age groups.

Statewide, 12-year-old Black youth are referred to juvenile probation from school at the same rate as 15- and 16-year-old White youth.

Disparities are Worse in Certain Counties

While nearly all of the 20 largest Texas counties have an over-representation of Black youth arrested at or referred by schools, in a few counties, Black youth are under-represented, particularly counties that have a predominately Latino population: El Paso (84% of county youth population is Latino), Cameron (92%), Hidalgo (93%), and Webb Counties (95%). In Collin County, the county with the lowest rate of referral to juvenile probation from school, Black and “Other” youth are slightly under-represented in referrals to juvenile probation from school while Latino youth are over-represented and White youth are slightly over-represented.

While the trend of over-representation of Black and Latino youth across the state is concerning and needs to be addressed, the rate at which schools and police send youth from school straight to juvenile probation in some counties—for behaviors that in other counties are not leading youth to the justice system—is alarming.

As noted above, youth are sent to juvenile probation from schools at a rate of 5.3 referrals per 1,000 youth statewide. However, in Brazos County and Lubbock County, Black youth are referred to juvenile probation from schools at a rate of 44 and 42 referrals per 1,000 Black youth respectively, a rate that is about eight times higher than the statewide average. In both counties, White youth are sent from school to juvenile probation at below the statewide rate. White youth in Lubbock are arrested and referred at a rate of 4 referrals per 1,000 White youth and in Brazos County the rate is 4.9 per 1,000 White youth. Both counties have extremely alarming referral rates for Latino youth as well: Lubbock’s is 22.9 and Brazos’s is 15.8.

Webb County, where only Latino youth received school-based referrals in 2015, also has an alarming 18.8 referral rate for Latino youth.

In Galveston County, both White and Latino youth are referred to juvenile probation for school-based offenses at a rate of 5.3 referrals per 1,000 youth—the same as the overall state referral rate for all students.  However, Black youth in Galveston County are referred to probation for school-related offenses at a rate of 19.2 referrals per 1,000 youth, nearly four times the rate for White and Latino youth.

The data show that in counties where referral rates may be low or average overall, the disparities in how youth of color are treated in comparison to how White youth are treated can still be drastic. For example, overall, Travis County has a school-based referral rate that is near the state average, but Black youth are referred to juvenile probation at a rate 5.4 times the rate of White youth, and Latino youth are referred at a rate 3.7 times higher than White youth.

School-Based Referrals to Juvenile Probation by County and Race (2015)

It is important to note that there may be data entry errors that could consist of failure to designate a referral as originating in a school, so school-based referrals could be higher than the rates calculated in this analysis. While it is possible that addressing the errors could potentially show a slight increase or decrease in the racial disparities of those referrals, the racial disparities that also exist within the referrals that are not school-based make significant changes unlikely.

To get a better understanding of the racial disparities in school-based referrals to juvenile probation, we created a disparities score for each of the 20 counties that we analyzed, as well as the state as a whole to determine the disparities between the referral rates of White youth and Black youth and the disparities between White youth and Latino youth.  The disparities score is the ratio of the referral rate for youth of color to White youth.  A score of one means there is no difference in the rate of referral between Black or Latino youth and White youth.

Statewide, including all juvenile probation departments, the Black disparities scores is 2.86, meaning Black youth were referred to juvenile probation for a school-related offense at a rate 2.86 times higher than their White peers. The Latino disparities score statewide is 1.87.  Statewide, Latino youth fare better than Black youth when they make a mistake at school, but they are still referred to probation at a rate 1.87 times higher than their White peers.

In the five counties with the worst disparities between Black and White youth—Lubbock, Brazos, Travis, Fort Bend, McClennan and Tarrant Counties—Black youth are referred at a rate more than 4.5 times the rate of White youth.

Schools and school-based police use the juvenile justice system to respond to behavior by youth of color, particularly Black youth, at much greater rates than they use it for White youth.  While the rate at which schools use the juvenile justice system to respond to school-based behavior and the racial disparities in those rates can vary drastically from county to county, it is clear the trend of using the justice system to address school behavior needs to be addressed.

Of the 72 school districts that were sent requests for data, only 14 school districts maintained data fully disaggregated by special education status, but among them, students with disabilities appear to show similar disproportionalities as Black students and male students. Consistent with previous research showing that students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be detained, arrested, or otherwise harshly punished in public schools, students in our sample with disabilities received a disproportionate share of complaints/tickets, arrests, and use of force incidents. For arrests alone, students with disabilities experienced twice as many incidents as their representation in the student body—24% versus 9%, respectively.

A recent multi-part investigative piece by the Houston Chronicle revealed the impact of a Texas Education Agency policy that discourages school districts from identifying more than 8.5% of students as needing special education services. The Houston Chronicle estimates that 250,000 Texas children have been denied special education services because of the arbitrary cap. It is reasonable to assume that the numbers of youth with disabilities reported as having had interactions with courts and police are also artificially low—since many districts are failing to identify students who need special education services, they are likely not providing those students with the services required by federal law to support their educational success, and instead inappropriately relying on police and courts to address behavior stemming from a disability.

A number of Texas lawyers and advocates have reported representing and working with youth who were arrested and/or sent to court for behavior that stemmed from their disabilities.  Many of these students and their families had requested evaluations and services from their schools but were denied, in clear violation of federal law.

The use of school police and courts to address low-level infractions is inappropriate for any student, but presents unique harms for students with disabilities. Schools and districts must ensure that students with disabilities are given appropriate supports, not subjected to arrests, use of force, and court involvement.

In addition to collecting aggregate data on disciplinary actions by school police officers from state and local agencies, Texas Appleseed created a School Policing Survey to assess youths’ impressions of school police and school climate. The survey asked youth for information about their daily experiences with school police officers.

We were especially interested in the experiences of deeply system-involved youth, currently incarcerated in juvenile facilities, whose experiences shed light on the effects of Texas’ over-reliance on law enforcement officials from beginning to end. For these students, the school-to-prison pipeline has very immediate and complex effects. The nature of the interactions between these students and SROs is frequently missing from discussions of school-based law enforcement, and is thus the focus of this chapter.

Our 2015 survey examined 425 currently-incarcerated youths’ most recent interactions with SROs in a school environment, and their attitudes about school police following those experiences.

Administering the Survey

In collaboration with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), Texas Appleseed administered a School Policing Survey to 425 youth currently incarcerated in state-run secure juvenile facilities throughout Texas. Participating facilities included:

• Evins Regional Juvenile Center (Edinburg, TX)
• Gainesville State School (Gainesville, TX)
• Giddings State School (Giddings, TX)
• McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility (Mart, TX)
• Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex (Brownwood, TX)

The five-page survey asked youth about their most recent interactions with SROs through multiple-choice and open-ended items tapping their firsthand and secondhand experiences, perceptions of their school climates given SRO presence, future expectations for interacting with SROs, and other experiences with the juvenile justice system.

Participants were encouraged to skip any item they were not comfortable with, so our data is necessarily incomplete. However, completed items provide many powerful insights into the role of SRO officers in these teenagers’ lives before they entered TJJD facilities. The following section presents Texas Appleseed’s analyses of their firsthand accounts.  

Survey Results  

Individual Characteristics

As with the general population of students interacting with SROs on a daily basis, a majority of students in TJJD facilities are Latino and White, but Black students, boys, and low-income students are vastly over-represented.

Black youth made up approximately 26% of the students we surveyed, though they comprise only 13% of the school-aged population in Texas.

Similarly, boys and low- income students receive several times their expected share of TJJD assignments. Boys made up about 95% of our TJJD study sample though they are only about half the school-aged population in Texas. Low-income youth were also over-represented in our study sample, with 62% of our survey participants reporting that they were eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch at school prior to entering a TJJD facility. Moreover, the latter statistic likely underestimates poverty among TJJD youth, as other research has shown as much as 95% of incarcerated juveniles come from low-income backgrounds (and many youth in our sample answered “don’t know” to our item about free or reduced-price lunch).

Positive and Negative Interactions with School Resource Officers Prior to Entering a TJJD Facility

We started the survey with questions about youths’ earliest experiences with law enforcement in schools. Consistent with other studies examining incarcerated youths’ movement through the juvenile justice system, many TJJD youths’ first negative interactions with SROs occurred very early and escalated from there. Out of the 425 youth we surveyed:

• 64% had been repeatedly stopped or questioned by SROs at school before entering a TJJD facility (beginning between ages 12 and 13 on average)
• 66% had been ticketed or sent to court by an SRO or school official at least once before entering a TJJD facility
• 35% had been arrested by an SRO at school before entering a TJJD facility

In addition, a majority of the TJJD youth who were ticketed or arrested at school were initially disciplined by SROs for minor, non-violent behaviors similar to the Class C misdemeanor offenses discussed earlier in this report. The most commonly endorsed experiences involved students being cited for truancy (35%) or fighting (33%). These pattens support the notion that the school-to-prison pipeline starts early, is often initiated by excessively harsh punishments for low-level offenses, and disproportionately affects students of color, boys, and low-income students.

Next, we asked youth how frequently they interacted with school-based law enforcement before entering a TJJD facility and assessed the quality of those interactions, including both positive and negative experiences. Overall, SROs and other law enforcement officials seem to have a huge presence in system-involved youths’ lives prior to their incarceration. Most youth in our study reported seeing or interacting with police at school nearly every day (the mean response was 4 out of 5 days per week). However, rather than make students feel safer, the youth respondents reported overwhelmingly negative interactions with SROs not just personally but also in their observations of officers’ interactions with their peers.

The following table shows survey participants’ positive versus negative interactions with SROs immediately prior to entering TJJD facilities. Perhaps not surprisingly, currently incarcerated youth report mostly negative experiences with school police officers prior to entering secure juvenile facilities.

TJJD Youths’ Recent Firsthand Experiences with School Resource Officers (2015)

We then expanded the previous item by asking about youths’ secondhand observations of police officers at school. The youths’ perceptions of SROs’ interactions with their peers were similarly negative.

TJJD Youths’ Recent Secondhand Experiences with School Resource Officers (2015)

TJJD youths’ firsthand and secondhand observations of SROs demonstrate that many incarcerated youth have overwhelmingly negative experiences with SROs before they even come in contact with the juvenile justice system—and many incarcerated youth attended schools in which they witnessed predominately negative interactions between SROs and students on a daily basis.

Youth similarly reported rather unwelcoming and unsupportive relationships with SROs before being sent to TJJD facilities. When asked whether SROs made them feel safe at their home schools, nearly half of the youth we surveyed reported that school police officers did not make them feel safe.

Furthermore, youth were evenly split on whether SROs at their home schools respected them. About 32% of survey participants agreed and about 33% disagreed to the statement “The police officers at my school respected me.”

When questioned further about the role of SROs in school safety, TJJD youth generally appear to be more likely to go to a school teacher than a school police officer in an emergency situation.

Together, these findings suggest that deeply system-involved youth expect little from SROs in the way of improved school climate or school safety.

Expectations for Future Interactions with School Resource Officers

Finally, we included an experimental component in the survey, in which we examined indirectly TJJD youths’ expectations of police officers given their past experiences. We did this by asking survey participants to predict what would happen next in the relatively ambiguous scenario depicted in this image:

We then asked trained experimenters to rate youths’ narratives for the image on a five-point scale from -2 (very hostile) to +2 (very friendly). Raters were blinded to respondents’ individual characteristics (e.g., race, gender) while rating the narratives and ultimately scored youths’ responses with very high inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa = .98).

TJJD youths’ answers to this final item (and experimenters’ ratings of their answers) were incredibly revealing. We observed that, after having mostly negative experiences with SROs in the past, presently incarcerated youth hold largely negative attitudes toward police officers and are not particularly hopeful that they will make schools safe. More than half of their responses read as either “very hostile” or “somewhat hostile” to blinded coders, and only 4% of responses described “very friendly” interactions between the hypothetical student and police officer. Moreover, in nearly all “very hostile” and “somewhat hostile” narratives for the image, youth described police officers initiating hostile conversations and being unfriendly first.

TJJD youths’ responses to Texas Appleseed’s School Policing Survey provide a useful snapshot of the role of SROs in system-involved students’ lives prior to their incarceration.  Contrary to the common belief that youth, and not adults, guide student-officer interactions, our data suggest that many young students are exposed to negative treatment from law enforcement officials very early and daily. The TJJD survey data presented above suggest that school police are hugely influential in system-involved youths’ lives, leaving lasting impressions on students that are often contrary to the effects we want them to have.

So, how much do Texas schools’ over-reliance on SROs cost taxpayers? Public school districts with internal police departments spend about $75 per student enrolled on SRO programs, a figure that has been increasing steadily over the past four years despite research showing the harms of current school policing practices and decreasing crime rates statewide. Moreover, our data show that, on average, SRO programs in smaller districts (with fewer than 30,000 students) are even more costly, averaging about $97 per student versus $66 per student in large districts.

School Resource Officer Program Costs by School District Size (2011-2016)

And those are just the averages. Some outlier districts spent upwards of $200 per student for officers to patrol campuses in 2014-15. The following table presents yearly SRO costs for every school district in our study sample that provided financial data. It shows the districts’ total SRO-related expenses, including officer salaries and benefits, for FY 2011-12 through FY 2014-15. The table also presents each SRO program’s costs “per capita” for 2014-15 (calculated as total 2014-15 expenses / total 2014-15 students). In 2014-15, Coldspring-Oakhurst CISD and Eagle Mount-Saginaw ISD showed the highest financial burdens for taxpayers, spending $227 and $199 per student on their SRO programs respectively.

School Resource Officer Program Costs by School District (2011-2016)

Typically, most of this money was used to discipline students for non-violent offenses like “Disorderly Conduct” and “Curfew Violation.” Going back to Coldspring-Oakhurst ISD, for example, which issued only 64 citations and 158 arrests of students over the past four years combined but spent $821,000 on its SRO program; that is effectively $3,700 per disciplinary action, most of which were for disruptive classroom behavior, Class C misdemeanor-level assault, and possession of tobacco on a campus.

The table above is perhaps the most harrowing illustration of school districts’ persistent prioritization of punishment over prevention, which costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Overall, our sample shows Texans paid $79 million for SRO programs across our relatively small sample of 53 school districts with financial data (out of 1,247 total districts in 2014-15). By comparison, Texas allocated about $666 million to school counselor salaries in 2013-14. This means that, on average, each of the 53 school districts from our sample spent over $1.4 million on school police officers, far exceeding the average amount spent on counselor salaries in Texas’ 1,247 school districts: approximately $534,000 per district.

Our 2011-2015 data suggest that Texas public schools need new tools for addressing student behavior. Young children and teenagers do not benefit from costly, ineffective school police departments that apply adult policing strategies to youth. Instead, Texas students deserve fair, age-appropriate, evidence-based discipline practices that improve school climate and keep students in class learning.

One of the most effective steps that school districts can take to avoid harmful contact between students and police officers/courts is to adopt research-based positive behavior models and create safe and supportive school climates.  Not only can these models replace the use of overly-punitive discipline methods, but they encourage skills that benefit children for the rest of their lives.  Investment in models that promote positive behavior shows that a school district is mindful of the development of its students into healthy and productive members of society.  Three of these models—Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, Restorative Practices, and Social and Emotional Learning—are highlighted below. Though they may differ in approach, the models are similar in that program success requires educator and staff buy-in, assessments to determine the particular needs of a school or district, and data collection to track program efficacy.

For other reform recommendations, please refer to the Policy Recommendations section of this report.

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)

PBIS (sometimes referred to school-wide PBIS (SW-PBIS)) is a research-based multi-tiered approach to modeling positive behavior and incorporating that behavior into the culture of a school or district.  In Texas, the Region 4 Education Service Center (ESC) was named the lead ESC for implementing PBIS and does so through the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Texas Behavior Support Network (TBS).

The U.S. Department of Education’s Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports is a great resource for information, forms, and lesson plans on how to successfully implement PBIS at the school, district, and state levels and is the source for the following program description.

PBIS is based on the idea that positive behavioral expectations should be taught just like any core curriculum.  PBIS involves changing systems within a school or district so that, in all areas, positive behaviors are modeled for students.  Usually, a team of administrators and teachers receive training from a PBIS specialist and are then equipped to train and support other teachers, staff, and administrators in the district.  Based on the culture and needs of the school, the team chooses three to five positive, easy to remember behavior expectations, such as:

• Respect Yourself, Respect Others, and Respect Property
• Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful
• Respect Relationships and Respect Responsibilities

With buy-in from at least 80% of educators and staff, the team then creates a matrix of the types of non-classroom behaviors that are representative of the chosen expectations.  For example:

Again, after confirming buy-in from at least 80% of educators and staff, the PBIS team works with individual teachers to develop expectation matrices for the classroom.  The team also creates lesson plans for teaching the behavioral expectations, designs what positive supports and affirmations look like, and adjusts discipline referral procedures and forms to reflect the PBIS model.

PBIS is implemented through a three-tiered system.  

Tier 1 “consists of rules, routines, and physical arrangements that are developed and taught by school staff to prevent initial occurrences of behavior the school would like to target for change.”  Expectations are labeled, modeled, and taught to students, and positive behavior is appropriately praised.  Though Tier 1 supports may look different at different school campuses depending on the needs of educators, staff, and students, all campuses should collect and analyze data to evaluate program efficacy and determine how adjustments should be made. Examples of Tier 1 supports include posters, bulletin boards, lessons, and daily pledges.

Tier 2 supports address the behavioral needs of the smaller portion of students who are having difficulties following the universal Tier 1 supports. Tier 2 involves small group interventions or more intensive individual attention.  Examples of Tier 2 supports include social skills clubs, the creation of Behavioral Intervention Plans, and individualized assessments to determine if outside services are necessary.

Tier 3 supports are for the few students who still need assistance in addition to Tier 1 and 2 interventions. Tier 3 supports are targeted at the individual student and their unique needs and include a behavior assessment and support plan.  These supports are best implemented by a team of teachers, parent/guardian(s), counselors, administrators, and specialists who know the student well and understand the underlying causes of their behavior.

Restorative Practices

Restorative Practices (RP), sometimes referred to as Restorative Discipline in the school context, are designed to restore positive relationships while confronting the impacts of the harms that student behavior may cause to individuals and the school environment.  Originally used as a model among indigenous peoples in the South Pacific and Americas, and later in the criminal justice context, the clear efficacy of RP to repair relationships and prevent future harms, without the use of overly-punitive measures, has led to its use in schools.

Restorative Practices can include the following:

• Restorative Justice is the practice of bringing together wrongdoers and the individuals who have felt harmed in order to discuss harms and repair relationships.  The act of confronting and reconciling can prevent future inappropriate behaviors and can eliminate the need for overly-punitive measures like classroom exclusions, police interactions, and court involvement.
• Peer juries involve discussions between students who have behaved inappropriately and trained peer jurors.  Together the students decide the consequences for the undesired actions.
• Conflict Resolution programs “teach young people how to manage potential conflict, defuse situations, assuage hurt feelings, and reduce any inclination to retaliate after a conflict.” Students are guided through the process of recognizing and processing their emotions in order to address the underlying causes of conflict.

• Peer Mediation programs encourage youth-led conflict resolution by training students to assist other students in resolving problems. “Peer mediation has been shown to reduce discipline referrals, violence rates, and suspension rates.”
• Community Service allows students who have broken school rules to perform an act that provides a visible and measurable positive contribution to the school environment.
• Restorative Circles, or “talking circles” are used to bring together students to address harms after they occur or to encourage strong relationships, discuss difficult topics, and prevent problems before they occur. Participants are encouraged to listen to their peers, express their feelings, and find resolution to conflict within the safe space of the circle.

The Texas Education Agency has partnered with the Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue (IRJRD) at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Social Work to provide RJ training to Regional Education Service Centers so that the Institute’s restorative justice model is available to school districts across Texas. IRJRD has already seen positive results at Ed White Middle School in North East ISD.

Social and Emotional Learning

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) provides an evidence-based framework for schools to prevent problems and promote student success.  It helps students acquire the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging situations effectively.

“SEL programming results in significant shifts in social, emotional, and academic competencies as well as improvements in the quality of learning environments.” 

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) identifies 5 core competencies that are mastered in successful SEL programs:

• “Self-awareness: Accurately assessing one’s feelings, interests, values, and strengths; maintaining a well-grounded sense of self-confidence.
• Self-management: Regulating one’s emotions to handle stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles; setting and monitoring progress toward personal and academic goals; expressing emotions appropriately.
• Social awareness: Taking the perspective of and empathizing with others; recognizing and appreciating individual and group similarities and differences; recognizing and using family, school, and community resources.
• Relationship management: Establishing and maintaining healthy and rewarding cooperative relationships; resisting inappropriate social pressure; preventing, managing, and resolving interpersonal conflict; seeking help when needed.
• Responsible Decision-Making: Making decisions based on consideration of ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and probable consequences of various actions; applying decision-making skills to academic and social situations.”

Successful SEL implementation requires assessing school or district needs and designing appropriate programs that create supportive school environments with language, lessons, and relationships that focus on the five core competencies.

Clearly Limiting the Role of Police in Schools

In addition to using positive behavior models, school districts should adopt district-wide policies and agreements with police departments (whether they are ISD departments or local law enforcement agencies that provide officers to the district) that clearly define the role of police officers on campuses, limit the interactions that officers have with students, and allow for oversight and accountability.  

A community organization in Denver called Padres Y Jovenes Unidos successfully led the local movement for school police reform, developing a comprehensive intergovernmental agreement (IGA),similar to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), between the Denver school system and the Denver Police Department. The Denver IGA (below) includes clear definitions of the role of officers in Denver schools and requires officer training, regular meetings between community stakeholders and officers, and specific due process protections for students.  The Denver IGA is regarded as a model document for other districts seeking to promote positive school climates by defining and restricting the role of police in schools.

Based on the findings in this report, Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children recommend the following policy changes:

TEXAS LEGISLATURE

1. ELIMINATE THE CRIMINAL COMPONENTS OF CLASS C MISDEMEANORS FOR JUVENILES

The data in this report clearly show that students in Texas schools are still being arrested and sent to court for Class C misdemeanors frequently. In 2015, the Texas legislature decriminalized truancy. Now, truancy is a civil offense, still heard in Justice and Municipal courts, but without the fines and threat of a criminal record that the criminal offense carried. The legislature recognized the harms associated with fining youth and saddling them with criminal records.

The Texas legislature should eliminate fines for juveniles convicted of Class C misdemeanors and require automatic expunction of all records related to charges for Class C offenses. Common Class C offenses include Disorderly Conduct and Curfew Violation. Class C offenses could still be heard in Justice and Municipal courts, but the most harmful consequences of being charged with a criminal offense—fines and lasting criminal records—should be eliminated.

2. EXPAND YOUTH-FOCUSED TRAINING TO POLICE OFFICERS IN ALL TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Following the passage of House Bill 2684 in 2015, police officers in all school districts in Texas with more than 30,000 students are required to have at least 16 hours of youth-focused training, including training in child and adolescent psychology, research-based conflict resolution techniques, de-escalation techniques, the mental and behavioral needs of children with disabilities, and mental health crisis intervention. The hours required for this training are part of, not in addition to, the 40 hours of training that any officer in Texas is required to have in order to maintain his or her license. Unfortunately the law does not require training for officers in small- and medium-sized districts.

The Texas legislature should expand the youth-focused training requirements of HB 2684 so that they apply to officers who interact with students in all school districts in Texas.

3. IMPROVE DATA COLLECTION ON POLICE ACTIVITIES IN SCHOOLS

Currently there are no laws in Texas that require the collection and publication of data related to school-based arrests, use of force incidents, and citations/complaints.  Students in Texas schools are restrained, come into contact with Tasers and pepper spray, and are sent to court, all without required disclosure to the public.  It is impossible to understand the scope of the problem without mandatory, standardized data collection.

The Texas legislature should task the Texas Judicial Council with developing a system of data collection that will require school district police departments, local police departments that assign or send their officers to schools, and courts to collect and report data related to school-based arrests that send youth to both the juvenile justice system and the adult criminal justice system, use of force incidents, and court contact.

4. ELIMINATE THE USE OF TASERS AND PEPPER SPRAY ON STUDENTS

Police officers in Texas schools are authorized to carry Tasers and pepper spray for use against students.  The use of these weapons harms students and can be dangerous and disruptive for bystanders and the general school environment. Juvenile probation departments in Texas have recognized these harms and have prohibited the use Tasers and pepper spray in their facilities.

The Texas legislature should ban the use of Tasers and pepper spray in situations that do not involve a weapon in Texas public schools.

5. ESTABLISH APPROPRIATE COUNSELOR-TO-POLICE RATIOS IN SCHOOLS

Research points to the efficacy of using prevention and intervention measures to encourage positive student behavior and address trauma and student needs.  School counselors and other mental health professionals like social workers and psychologists are great resources for students, and are often able to identify and address underlying causes of student behaviors, without relying on school police or court intervention. The average student-to-counselor ratio in Texas is 470:1. The American Counseling Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1. High schools that maintain one school counselor for every 250 students have shown lower disciplinary incidents, as well as better graduation and school attendance rates.

The Texas legislature should encourage investment in high-quality counselors and other mental health professionals in schools by establishing a minimum 4:1 ratio of school-based counselors and other mental health professionals to school-based law enforcement officers. This ratio would not create additional costs for districts, but would simply allow districts to shift funds so that they are used to address and prevent behavioral problems with meaningful services, rather than simply punish them after they occur.

6. ELIMINATE THE OFFENSE OF DISORDERLY CONDUCT

In 2013, the Texas legislature eliminated the Class C offenses of Disruption of Class and Disruption of Transportation.  Just by ending ticketing for these two offenses, the issuing of citations decreased by over 50% statewide.  Our data show, however, that the proportion of Disorderly Conduct complaints filed actually increased for some students following the Disruption of Class and Transportation bans, suggesting that Disorderly Conduct has replaced Disruption of Class and Transportation as a general catch-all offense.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a Statement of Interest in Kenny v. Wilson, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. In the suit, the Plaintiffs—a proposed class of students and a youth organization—challenge South Carolina’s “Disturbing Schools” and “Disorderly Conduct” statutes. The Department asserts that the racial disparities in the enforcement of criminal statutes, like Disorderly Conduct, “may indicate that [they are] unconstitutionally vague,” in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process protections.  

The Texas legislature should eliminate the ability of districts to file complaints against students on their home campuses for the offense of Disorderly Conduct.

7.  RAISE THE AGE OF JUVENILE COURT JURISDICTION

Currently, all youth age 17 and older in the state of Texas are considered adults in the eyes of the criminal justice system. With the exception of some youth on juvenile probation, 17-year-old students who are arrested at school are taken to the county jail. Even though these students are juniors and seniors in high school, they do not receive the protections of the juvenile system, their parents do not have to be notified of their arrest, and their record for school misbehavior will follow them throughout their life as a criminal record.  

The Texas legislature should raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction so that 17 year olds are treated the same as other youth.

8. KEEP 10- to 12-YEAR-OLD YOUTH OUT OF THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Only 11% of all youth who are referred to juvenile probation are 10-12 years old.  However, at least 46% of those 10- to 12-year-olds are referred to probation because of school-related behaviors. Referrals to probation increase the likelihood that youth will be involved in the justice system later in life.  These young kids would be more appropriately served through Community Resource Groups, local Systems of Care, and other services providers. Schools that cannot provide appropriate interventions and behavioral supports to these young students can refer them to the same service providers juvenile probation refers youth to, and can also get youth the supports they need through local Community Resource Groups, a local System of Care, and prevention and early intervention providers.

The Texas legislature should raise the lower age of juvenile court jurisdiction so that 10- to 12-year-olds are kept out of the juvenile justice system and instead get intervention and services in more age-appropriate settings.  

9. REQUIRE DISTRICTS TO ADDRESS SCHOOL CLIMATE IN PLANNING EFFORTS

Schools with positive school climates experience fewer disciplinary problems, a greater sense of safety on campus, and improved student performance. Beginning in 2017, the Texas Education Agency will be required to include measures of school quality, climate, and safety in its plans to support Title I schools as part of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind.

Texas should require districts to include measures of school climate as a performance measure in District Improvement Plans, along with strategies to promote safe and supportive school climates, including trauma-informed practices and positive behavior management strategies.

TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY

1. CONTINUE TO FUND TRAINING FOR RESEARCH-BASED PRACTICES

Research-based practices, like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), and the Restorative Practices model encourage positive student behavior and reduce the need for classroom exclusions, police contact, and court intervention.

The Texas Education Agency should utilize the expertise within the state’s institutes of higher education and other entities to promote safe and supportive school climates by developing partnerships between these groups and Regional Education Service Centers (ESCs). Through these partnerships, all school districts in Texas can have access to research-based strategies shown to promote school success and reduce reliance on harmful and overly-punitive discipline measures.

Further, the Texas Education Agency should leverage funding made available through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to promote safe and supportive learning environments for all students. School districts can now use professional development (Title II) funds to train school personnel on strategies such as making referrals for students with or at-risk of trauma or mental illness, forming partnerships with community mental health providers, and addressing issues related to school learning conditions. ESSA also establishes a new grant program schools can use to fund efforts like promoting supportive school climates and supportive school discipline, providing school-based mental health services, dropout prevention, bullying prevention, and establishing community partnerships and parent involvement.

2. PROVIDE SCHOOL DISTRICTS WITH GUIDANCE ON IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE PRACTICES

Often, educators and administrators ask where they can find resources for their students or how they can access training related to research-based programs to address student behavior.

The Texas Education Agency should should identify and disseminate information on resources districts can use to promote safe and supportive school climates. TEA and the Department of State Health Services are already required to jointly maintain a list of recommended best practice-based programs related to mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention for schools to reference. This list should be expanded to include best practices related to creating positive school climates, including resources that address student needs (such as mental health services and trauma-informed practices) and staff training needs (such as implementing research-based practices shown to reduce classroom removals and school police contact).

TEXAS JUVENILE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

1. IMPROVE DATA COLLECTION & TRACKING FOR REFERRALS OF SCHOOL-BASED OFFENSES

Currently, the data reporting system that juvenile probation departments use to track referrals of youth does not require that information be included in the school-related location data field. As a result, it is likely that a number of probation departments under-report the number of referrals for school-based offenses. The reporting system also has a field that allows probation departments to identify who made a referral, including law enforcement or a school official. However, it is understood that this data is inconsistent as some enter the data based on location while others may use the data field to track whether the youth came in by an arrest from law enforcement or referral from a school official. When school police are tracked as law enforcement, it is unclear whether it was school-based law enforcement or law enforcement outside of school that made the arrest. It is impossible to understand the scope of the problem of school-based juvenile probation arrests and referrals without standardized data collection.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department should standardize data collection and reporting for school-related location and referral sources so that it is clear how many youth are referred to juvenile probation for school-related offenses and whether the referral is from law enforcement or school officials.

SCHOOL DISTRICTS

1. REDUCE STUDENT-POLICE CONTACT BY DECREASING RELIANCE ON SCHOOL POLICE OFFICERS TO ADDRESS MINOR BEHAVIORS

School-based police officers are too involved in addressing student behavior that should be handled by educators, counselors, and school administrators. Officers should not be patrolling hallways, classrooms, and cafeterias. Rather, they should be called from their offices when there are incidents that actually impact school safety. If contact between officers and students is reduced in this way, there will be fewer incidents that inappropriately result in arrests, citations, and uses of force against students.

Texas school districts should reduce student-police contact by requiring that officers be stationed in their offices until they are called to address actual threats to school safety.

2. ENCOURAGE SCHOOLS TO ADOPT RESEARCH-BASED ALTERNATIVES

School districts across the country have started to adopt research-based alternatives to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline, police, and courts (See Best Practices Section). These methods, like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Restorative Practices, encourage positive student behavior and safe school climates.  Investment in these methods will provide long-term benefits for schools and will reduce reliance on harmful, overly-punitive practices.  The Texas Education Agency already provides resources for the implementation of Restorative Practices, PBIS, and Social and Emotional Learning.

Texas school districts should equip educators and administrators with the tools and resources they need to implement research-based methods to address student behavior, improve class management, and create positive school climates.  Funds for these tools and resources can be shifted from security budgets and can be obtained through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

3. REVISE MEMORANDA OF UNDERSTANDING AND DISTRICT POLICIES THAT ADDRESS THE DUTIES OF SCHOOL-BASED LAW ENFORCEMENT

Often the expectations and duties of police officers in schools are not clear to administrators, teachers, and even officers themselves. School-based police officers should only be involved in situations that threaten the safety of students and staff. They should not be called to address minor misbehaviors that would be more appropriately handled by a teacher or administrator in the school setting.

Texas school districts should revise memoranda of understanding that exist between the district and the local law enforcement agency and any other documents that address the duties of police officers within the school district to explicitly limit the involvement of police officers to situations that clearly threaten school safety.

4. CREATE SCHOOL POLICE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES

Students, parents, and educators have the right to be involved in the hiring and oversight of school police officers.  

Texas school districts should create oversight committees that have the power to review applications for officers who want to work in the school district, conduct officer evaluations, investigate complaints, and review data.  These committees should be comprised of students, parents, educators, and community-based advocates.

5. PROVIDE TRAINING TO EDUCATORS, ADMINISTRATORS, STAFF, AND OFFICERS TO ELIMINATE BIAS

In order to address the biases that inform their actions, educators, administrators, staff, and school police officers should be trained to recognize biases and should learn skills to limit the impact that those biases have on their interactions with students.

Texas school districts should provide training in de-biasing techniques to everyone in the district who interacts with students.

6. HIRE STAFF THAT IS TRAINED TO PROMOTE A POSITIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE

Counselors and other staff members who are trained in research-based methods to addressing student behavior and promoting positive, safe school climates can be effective in understanding student and family needs and connecting them with services when appropriate.  There are a number of recommended staff positions, including community intervention workers, restorative justice coordinators, and community school resource coordinators that can meet this role.

Texas school districts should hire staff members that promote a positive school climate in order to reduce reliance on law enforcement officers who are not equipped to address student needs.

Report Team:

Deborah Fowler, Executive Director, Texas Appleseed            

Morgan Craven, Director of the School-to-Prison Pipeline Project, Texas Appleseed  

Yamanda Wright, Ph.D., Director of Research, Texas Appleseed

Lauren Rose, Director of Youth Justice Policy, Texans Care for Children

Kelli Johnson, Communications Director, Texas Appleseed

Report published December 2016.

We are appreciative of the hard work of the Texas Appleseed staff, volunteers and interns, including Director of the Criminal Justice Project Mary Mergler, Community Outreach Coordinator Rocio Villalobos, Development Associate Jamie Tegeler-Sauer, Staff Attorney Brett Merfish, David Infortunio (Open Austin), and interns Kara Mitchell, Emily Eby, Eva Sikes, Kiah Debolt, Carlos Castaneda, and Yasmine Smith.

Thank you to the staff at Texans Care for Children who contributed to this report, including CEO Stephanie Rubin, Director of Mental Health Policy Josette Saxton, and Communications Director Peter Clark.

Thank you to the many other advocates who have contributed to this report and who work tirelessly in pursuit of just and equitable outcomes for children, including Jennifer Carreon, Matt Simpson (the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas), Dustin Rynders (Disability Rights Texas), Meredith Parekh (Disability Rights Texas), Shiloh Carter (Disability Rights Texas), Dr. Courtney Robinson (The Excellence and Advancement Foundation), Ranjana Natarajan (University of Texas School of Law), Monique Dixon (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.), Elizabeth Olsson (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.), Elizabeth Henneke (Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), Jay Jenkins (Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), Margaret Clifford (University of Texas School of Law), Pamela Foster Davis, Kathryn Newell (Texas RioGrande Legal Aid), Tovah Pentalovich (Texas RioGrande Legal Aid), and the many other individuals and organizations that have produced materials that were used in this report.

We are most grateful to the many students and families who shared their stories with us and took time to fill out surveys and provide interviews.  We thank the many people who have helped to collect those stories, surveys, and interviews, including the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, Michael Turner (Texas Juvenile Justice Department, Kaci Singer (Texas Juvenile Justice Department), Niccole Lewis, Educators in Solidarity, and Paige Duggins and the student volunteers from the University of Texas School of Law.

Texas Appleseed’s School-to-Prison Pipeline Project is generously supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies, Houston Endowment, The Simmons Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Harold Simmons Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

School Citations, Arrests, and Use of Force Section Methodology:

Data Collection

Beginning in May 2015, Texas Appleseed requested data from every school district in Texas with an internal police department as well as several municipal police departments and municipal courts tracking School Resource Officer activity within their jurisdictions. Our initial contact list covered hundreds of state and local agencies, including all 202 school district police departments across Texas.

Texas Appleseed requested and obtained data primarily through Open Records Requests pursuant to the Texas Public Information Act. Our letters requested spreadsheets showing the total number of tickets, complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents from academic year 2011-12 through academic year 2014-15, disaggregated by location and offense type. Wherever possible, we also asked that agencies break figures down by key demographic characteristics previously linked to disproportionalities in student outcomes, including:

• Race/ethnicity
• Gender
• Age or grade level
• Special education status
• Level of economic disadvantage (e.g., eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch)

In addition, we requested contextual data regarding School Resource Officer programs in each district, including:

• A police roster showing the badge numbers, races/ethnicities, genders, and hire dates of all SROs assigned to a district
• Yearly budget allocations for SRO programs
• Copies of any Memoranda of Understanding between school districts and municipal police departments.

Most of the agencies that sent data were able to provide the information free of cost. However, wherever necessary and within reason, Texas Appleseed paid for modest processing expenses such as hourly staff time, photocopying fees, and shipping. We unfortunately had to cancel a small number of requests due to high costs. For example, one school district in east Texas initially estimated $15,380 in expenses for providing aggregate ticketing, arrest, and use of force figures, citing outdated software as the driving expense. Many other districts sent estimates exceeding $1,000, engaged the Texas Attorney General’s office for clarification regarding their obligation to provide data, or simply did not respond to our letters.

Despite these obstacles, Texas Appleseed ultimately obtained useful data from 72 school districts and 7 municipal police departments.

Data Inventory

As in Texas Appleseed’s previous reports on this topic, complete, searchable, and fully disaggregated data were rare. Of the 202 school districts we contacted with request letters, for example, 72 school districts (36%) were able to provide aggregate totals, and only about fourth were able to provide data disaggregated by one or more demographic characteristics. Almost no districts offered data fully disaggregated by offense type, race, gender, age, and special education status.

Still, our study sample provides a broad and detailed look at recent disciplinary actions by SROs across the state. The following 72 school districts responded to our open records requests with useful data:

The following 7 municipal police departments provided useful data regarding their SROs contracted to local school districts through Memoranda of Understanding:

Processing the Data

As with data collection for Texas Appleseed’s previous reports on SRO activity, we obtained 2011-2015 SRO data in varying levels of completion from simple aggregate figures for tickets, arrests, and use of force to detailed reports per case. Typically, districts were at least able to provide the total number of tickets, complaints, and arrests by offense type, race, and gender. Very few districts (n=19) kept use of force data or were able to break totals down by demographic characteristics, and only two districts compiled case-level information regarding students’ socioeconomic status.

After compiling as many data files as we could, we narrowed our analyses to only those districts and municipal police departments with useful information. Generally, data were only excluded from our analyses if they were provided in an illegible or unsearchable format or if their format precluded merging with other districts’ data. Examples of commonly excluded data are handwritten notes, printed spreadsheets spanning greater than 50 letter-sized pages, or data missing key fields for analysis such as action type (i.e., ticket, arrest, or use of force) or academic year.

We then standardized the data across agencies, formatting demographic fields such as race/ethnicity and gender uniformly across files and re-coding offenses according to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles’ comprehensive criminal offense code table.

All data processing and analyses were performed in R, Tabula, and Microsoft Excel.

School-based Referrals to Juvenile Probation Section Methodology:

Through an Open Records Request submitted to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, Texans Care for Children received data on referrals and arrests of youth to juvenile probation based on the “school-related location” of a youth’s offense for calendar year 2015. The data we reviewed included a breakdown of offenses that were at (1) a school-related location, including on campus at a school-related event, or (2) not a school-related location. At the state level we analyzed all referrals to juvenile probation in calendar year 2015 with data broken down by race as well as by age. We also reviewed data regarding the 20 largest counties for calendar year 2015; this data was broken down by race, but not by age.

We opted to analyze data for one calendar year. The time period covers half of the end of one school year, the summer months when most students are not in school and the beginning half of a new school year and provides a clear picture of the connection between school and the juvenile justice system.

Most often, youth enter the juvenile justice system after being arrested by law enforcement, but they can also be referred directly to a juvenile probation department by schools, justice and municipal courts, and other community entities. When youth are arrested or referred to county-run juvenile probation departments, records are created and data can be tracked about each youth.

The data collection systems used by probation departments have a field titled “School Related Location.” The field has two possible selections “OCAM – On Campus” and “OTHR – School Related Activity –On/Off Campus.”  On campus locations include classrooms, lunchrooms, parking lots, adjacent football fields, etc. School-related activities can include sporting events, dances, fundraisers, academic competitions, field trips, etc. Our analysis refers to offenses identified as having occurred on campus or at a school-related event as “school-related”.

If the person entering the data into a youth’s file does not select OCAM or OTHR, the field is “blank filled” and the offense location is considered to be not school-related. The school-related location data field is not required to be completed when creating a record, so it is possible and likely that some referrals and arrests of youth for behavior on campus are not captured as school-related, though it is unclear how many are not captured. For example, although most referrals for “Expulsion from Alternative Education” are labeled as occurring at a school-related location, there are still a number identified as not school-related. Our analysis keeps them as they were entered at the county level, however it is likely the “Expulsion from Alternative Education” should be classified as school-related. The numbers of arrests and referrals to juvenile probation for school-related offenses could be much higher and the data presented should be considered a minimum number of arrests and referrals for behavior occurring at school or at a school-related activity.

A single referral can reflect an offense that occurred in more than one location. It is also possible for a youth to be referred to juvenile probation more than one time in a given year. The data we are using are based on individual referrals of youth to probation; the school-based location was determined based on the most severe primary alleged offense per each referral. If a youth was referred to juvenile probation more than once in the calendar year, each referral is included in the data set. While youth can be referred to a juvenile probation department between the ages of 10 and 16, the data do include a few referrals for youth age 17. This can occur when the schools, police, or probation departments referring the youth know that he or she is already on probation and that juvenile probation therefore has continued jurisdiction. We included the general population of 17-year-olds in our analysis of rates of referral and arrest because a small number of 17-year-olds are included in the data. As a result, the rates we calculated are slightly lower than they otherwise would be.

In order to protect the identity of youth involved in the justice system, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) only provides aggregate data. When data represent less than 5 youth, TJJD data shows “<5.”  For purposes of this analysis, when data we received from TJJD showed less than 5 youth and we could not determine an exact number, we opted to identify the data point as 1 youth. Most school-related arrests and referrals are on campus, so most data points originally showing <5 were for uncommon offenses and data specifically related to school-related events.