Question: Our school administrators have asked about sending kids to youth court for violations of school rules and for truancy. I believe other courts do accept school referrals. Can anyone give me some info on school violations and referrals? Specifically, sentence guidelines for school violations. We have guidelines on law violations but not school rules. Any info would be helpful.
In Florida there is a law about Orderly functioning in Schools. So I've gotten numerous arrests by School Resource officers for "Disruption of a School Function." One incident was a food fight another was a kid who would not cooperate (be quite, pay attn) in class with a substitute. I’m guessing it's similar to a disorderly conduct arrest in public. So it is a real misdemeanor--exactly what Youth Court/Restorative Justice is about. We do have a truancy process for the Elementary Schools handled by the School Board., but we've not seen a way to use Truancy for an arrest and bring it to Youth Court.
In our county, school offenses are explained in the school’s handbook along with penalties for those acts. The list includes: assaults, bomb threats, bullying, careless driving on school property, cheating, inappropriate computer usage, criminal sexual conduct, dangerous instruments, extortion, false emergency alarms, falsifying information, fighting, gambling, harassment/discrimination, hazing, insubordination, larceny, littering, loitering, tobacco, unauthorized absence, use of illegal substances, weapons, and destruction of property. Penalties can include conference with parents, notification of parents, suspension, and referral to law enforcement authorities.
We have found that some schools are quick to refer to the youth to court, so we have begun to enforce that the school’s procedures are first followed along with the truancy policy before a petition will be accepted.
The truancy process typically consists of the school contacting the family via phone and letters, a meeting between the family and school, a referral to Project SODA (Status Offender Diversion Alternative) where a worker helps the student with behaviors, homework and other school concerns, and a referral to the truancy officer. If these are completed and the behavior continues, a petition is accepted. The prosecutor may choose to have the youth participate in the diversion program where a family group conference is held based on BARJ principles. Whether it goes through diversion or court, the youth completes a mental health screening as all youth do. Further mental health services or substance abuse assessments may be made to the court and included at disposition.
Other suggestions we have used are Saturday detention (one hour for each hour of missed class), a daily school report is completed and signed by each teacher, research/essays on topics related to the importance of school and career development, mediation, community service, fines for parents, anger management, apology letters, mentoring/job shadowing, and drug testing.
All of our truancy cases still go through the Juvenile Probation Office. Any school violations that we receive have petitions filed and also go through the JPO's.
In the school here in Marlboro County they have a handbook with guidelines and the violations have 3 levels of disciplinary action that they take. The first level for maybe obscene or profane language is ISS (in school suspension) for 3 days then a patent must come to the school and have a patent conference, the second time with the same charge they get ISS for 2 days and the 3rd time they get OSS (out of school suspension) for 3 days.
The Colorado statute establishing teen courts limits the court's jurisdiction to petty offenses under state statute or petty offenses under municipal ordinance. We have discussed expanding the jurisdiction to include school offenses (such as establishing a parallel court using the same students and procedures), but the problem is we would not have the authority to enforce the sentence. Under the statute, failure of the defendant to complete the teen court sentence results in charges being filed in the state or municipal courts.
Most referrals I get from schools has a police officer called in (even for the small stuff), or there is a liaison officer already present in the school to issue an ordinance ticket. I have taken truancy offenses before, but stopped, because they (youth) wouldn't come to court events either!
The Crownpoint Teen Court Program Crownpoint, New Mexico does accept referrals from the local schools. A majority of the referrals are from the Office of the Prosecutor (JPO) of which incidents occurred at school. We handle all cases the same with the exception that they remain in Teen Court for 6 months. We monitor their attendance, grades, and conduct. The same goes for Truant cases. We work with the JPO on these cases (we have a high rate of truancy within our reservation). We also inform the parents of truants that they will be held liable for their child’s non attendance and the JPO will file “Endangering the Welfare of a Minor” as well as “Interfering with Judicial Proceedings” if they become non compliant with Teen Court.
Any question, feel free to e-mail back or you may call me at (505) 786-6443.
Our court has a system in place where the court can use any consequences that are available through the school district. As an example, they can send them to Saturday school for minor violations, or request suspension for serious violations on school property. The schools Discipline V.P. oversees the consequences and makes recommendation to the court and assures that the consequences from the court are followed and completed. For suspensions, these go to the district office and are put in place there. We are currently working at getting students from other school into the court for violations.
Our court has a system in place where the court can use any consequences that are available through the school district. As an example, they can send them to Saturday school for minor violations, or request suspension for serious violations on school property. The schools Discipline V.P. oversees the consequences and makes recommendation to the court and assures that the consequences from the court are followed and completed. For suspensions, these go to the district office and are put in place there. We are currently working at getting students from other school into the court for violations.
Our guidelines for school referrals are the same for other delinquent referrals as far as handling the case with a few exceptions. We only allow ten days to complete the consequences for school offenses. (That is 10 school days to complete.) We still do not take any violent offenses. Community service can be completed on campus when worked out with the school. Truancy is difficult to deal with in Teen Court and it has it own separate guidelines. Here we rarely handle truancy referrals due to our CUTS (Court Unified Truancy Suppression) Program operating throughout the County. There are many issues related to truancy and often it can be a parental issue. We handle many school referrals including: bus referrals, talking out in class, disrupting class, late for class/tardy, ditching class, disrespect of teacher or other school personnel, damage of school property, theft on campus (when not reported to police), cheating, plagiarism, etc.
Our guidelines for school referrals are the same for other delinquent referrals as far as handling the case with a few exceptions. We only allow ten days to complete the consequences for school offenses. (That is 10 school days to complete.) We still do not take any violent offenses. Community service can be completed on campus when worked out with the school. Truancy is difficult to deal with in Teen Court and it has it own separate guidelines. Here we rarely handle truancy referrals due to our CUTS (Court Unified Truancy Suppression) Program operating throughout the County. There are many issues related to truancy and often it can be a parental issue. We handle many school referrals including: bus referrals, talking out in class, disrupting class, late for class/tardy, ditching class, disrespect of teacher or other school personnel, damage of school property, theft on campus (when not reported to police), cheating, plagiarism, etc.
My program does not handle any truancy referrals as it is run through the Juvenile Probation Department and we only accept delinquency referrals. In Pennsylvania, truancy is considered a dependency referral and the agency responsible for handling such cases is the local Children and Youth Services agency. Perhaps setting up a youth court for truancy, through CYS and the school, could be an option.
We allow school referrals to Project SKIP which is our truancy program modeled after Youth Court. It is very similar except we have a panel of students (more like the jury model) instead of judges, attorneys, etc. We only allow school referrals if the student has not met the legal truancy requirements. We also hear excessive tardy cases. Some of our sanctions assigned are:
Tutoring
Participation in school activity
Daily Planner Checks with parent and teacher initials
My "bread and butter" cases all come from our schools. I receive a lot of referrals for drugs/alcohol/drug paraphernalia on school property. These cases make up about 60% of my case load in a year. I have recently been asked to handle truancy cases through Teen Court. I refused to accept these cases because of the difficulty of keeping up with these cases (I'm the only one working at Teen Court) and for the fact that our schools don't send truancy cases until they have missed more than 10 days. With all of the paperwork hoops that it has to travel through, most of the truancy cases only arrive after the kids have missed much more than 10 days. This makes it almost impossible for Teen Court to handle because of the deep hole that the students have dug themselves into with grades. I have recently been trying to rally support from our school administrators to use teen court instead of suspensions for instances of battery. We'll see if I can convince them.
Teen Court coordinators and school officials met together with the school handbook of violations. The school assigned offense categories of I/II/III/IV (Juvenile Court) ranging from small offenses to more serious. We then compiled them as a list and assigned sentencing guidelines to the categories. If you give me a fax number, I will fax ours to your office to see if it can meet the needs of any other school administrators seeking information.
Our Teen Court program takes referrals from school resource officers. The offense has to be an actual law violation, not school rule violation. However, for repeat offenders in school, our officers will usually charge the student with Disorderly Conduct. This charge covers a wide range of violations within the school setting. The reason for the actual law violation requirement is due to the fact that there needs to be teeth behind teen court. The consequence for not completing a sentence is that the defendant must be referred to juvenile court, so there needs to be an actual charge.
Our court does not have any guidelines for dealing with violations of school policy. However we do handle minor offenses of drug possession and disorderly conduct. I would be interested in finding out how other areas deal with these issues.
Attached you will find a sentencing guideline for school code infractions used by the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in Santa Barbara County Teen Court(s) in California. For more information on our school based Teen Court services please feel free to contact myself, or Ramon Velazquez, Teen Court Program Manager.
We accept school referrals and mainly stick to the sentencing guideline for criminal offenses. The difference is many times the community service hours are spent in the school or working with the school resource officer.
The Tioga County Youth Court accepts school referrals (although we don't encourage them as they can be complicated). We've found that the best way to work with school issues for the court to sentence the school offense based upon the equivalent criminal law. Generally you're looking at criminal violations.
You also must have the school back your court up by restricting all school privileges until the sanctions are completed. This is the only teeth you'll have; with Probation/Law Enforcement referrals you always have Family Court/Criminal Court as a further consequence or incentive. If the school restricts all privileges - the offender shouldn't be able to go on fieldtrips, go to sporting events or participate in any sporting events (they're benched until it’s over!), go to dances, etc. It's quite effective (with the school's cooperation) otherwise it doesn't work.
In Caroline County Maryland we take school referrals for disturbing school functions, disorderly conduct and others. We do not take truancy cases as we have no court sanctions against them. Juvenile Justice handles all truancy cases. As for violation of school policies our sanctions are 16 to 40 hrs. community service, apology letters and essays. If I can be of further assistance please feel free to call me at 1-410-479-8080.
Our court handles an occasional FTA (failure to Attend) case. The majority are handled by the municipal judge and the truancy officer for the school. Those we do get, however, fall into Class IV on our discipline grid for number of community service hours and number of required jury terms. For truancy the community service hours fall between 38 and 52, with three (3) required jury terms, plus any additional sentencing the jury imposes.
Regarding school violations, we are a small, rural court and we accept what ever cases the courts send to us. Our local high school writes Disorderly Conduct tickets for profane or vulgar language and for fighting. Those are sent to the Municipal Court and the judge often refers them on to teen court. They do not refer truancy tickets, nor would we accept them.
Here are the offenses taken by “Teen Court in the Schools” sites in Tucson, Arizona and the consequences assigned.
Types of Offenses: disruption/disrespect, dress code violations, gum-chewing, language (abusive or profane), tardy, vandalism/graffiti, or any offense viewed as appropriate by school administrators
Consequences:
Jury Duty
Letter of Apology
Contract for Improvement
Decision-Making Workshop
Community Service – within the school; with area organizations; at Pima County Teen Court
Help teacher who wrote referral – clean room; run errands
Essay on infraction - 50-500 words; length and topic chosen by jury; possible topics include “Littering and the Environment,” “How School Uniforms Improve Student Achievement,” “RESPECT – This is What It Means to Me”
Meeting with counselor – discuss reasons for recent behavior; create a plan for achieving future goals
After-School Tutoring
Graffiti Abatement – clean writing on school desks, walls, bathrooms, wherever
Peer Mediation
Make a poster; possible topics include “Rules for the Computer Room,” “Dress Code Do’s and Don’ts,” etc.
Worksheet with series of questions allowing the student to ponder his/her actions, choices, and the effects on others (ex: What actions did you follow to deserve this punishment? If you were a teacher what would you do to prevent this action? Describe how your actions affect the reputation of our school.). Questions must be answered in complete sentences and be at least 35 words long.
Verbal apology to others involved
Clean/fix/pay for vandalism damage
Check in routinely with mentoring teacher – assign a teacher/volunteer to have weekly meetings with the minor to discuss how things are going
Anger-Management Workshop – by school counselor or at Pima County Teen Court
Interview those affected by your behavior and write a report (ex: janitor who cleans off gum, students distracted from their work, victim of harassment)
Make a list of 10 positive alternatives to breaking the rules
We just began processing school related cases that were being handled by probation. We have been accepting cases such as truancy and possession of marijuana (pipes, resin, etc.) on school grounds. As a guideline, the youth have been using 15 hours as a minimum for community service for the truancy cases, as well as, completing jury duties and a drug and alcohol awareness class. They have been using 35 hours as a minimum for the marijuana related cases because that is the minimum that they would receive at Youth Court if their case at been referred through the court system. This has worked well for us so far. Hope this helps.
The Merrimack Valley Youth Court in Massachusetts focuses exclusively on school offenses. We primarily focus on school truancy which is defined as greater than 7 absences in a given semester. We also will include in the truancy chronic tardiness to school which is a pattern of tardiness greater than 15 minutes. We do take school offenses deemed chronic school offenders which are students who repeatedly violate school rules and have not responded to graduated sanctions. I could go into this further. Please send all correspondence and request for further information to
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The Pottstown Area PAL Youth Court Program accepts school violations.
For truancy violations, sentencing usually involves: 1) handing in a series of report cards (for each failure or illegal day missed 10 hours of community service is assigned) 2) write a report on a topic related to the offense (the importance of attending school, the jobs and salary ranges of jobs that can be obtained without a HS diploma, how to obtain a GED, research the sentence(s) the judge may impose on a parent for allowing their child to be truant) 3) Write an apology letter to yourself, the school administration, a teacher(s), parents or guardians 4) Sometimes tutoring , club involvement, or counseling is required to help build self-efficacy in the respondent
For other school rules (disorderly conduct, daytime curfew, etc) sentencing generally involves: 1) Writing apology letters to school, parent, other youth involved 2) Write a report on the causes of the offense, how it disrupts the school atmosphere and other students 3) Interview a teacher (on how the disruption affects the classroom) a community official or police officer (on how the offense affects the community) and again, 4) Possibly tutoring , club involvement, or counseling is required to help build self-efficacy in the respondent.
We do take citations from the middle and high school but they are Class C Misdemeanors. In other words, Disorderly Conduct, Affray, Abusive Language, Assault. They are considered a Class 4 (the highest service requirement) in Teen Court. We don't take any Truancy because that has more issues involved than we have time/resources for. The range of punishment is 42-60 hours of community service and 3 jury terms. Hope this is helpful.
I am writing in response to the email that I received. We only allow those offenses in Teen Court that would be a violation of the law. We have dealt with truancy issues, but nothing that would not be a violation of the law.
Midland Teen Court formerly received cases directly from the schools. The schools now issue citations which require the youth to appear before one of the local Justices of the Peace. The violations then fall within other already set ranks: prescription drugs at school=drug violation; knife on school property; consuming alcohol, possession of alcohol, possession of drug paraphernalia, etc. We treat them like any other referral (all violent or drug related cases fall in the maximum end of our discipline grid.)
Our court does take referrals from schools, but they go through the police liaison officer. If the school does not have a police liaison officer, then they must go through the city police officer (generally there is one that works with the school). We do not take truancy. Truancy is a tough nut to crack and in doing research I have not found evidence that Teen Court is very effective. If you find a court that has had success with truancy, please let me know.
At the beginning of the 04/05 school year I met with the principals, School Related Deputies (SRD), and the Superintendent of Schools to set the guidelines that they would use in regards to school referrals. On the school referral they added a check box that included Teen Court. Of course, most of the zero tolerance behaviors have to go through juvenile court (even though we get many of them anyways). When the school wants to refer a case, the SRD checks their system to see if they have a prior record; although, at times, I do get repeated offenders, but that is the SRD’s call. I get battery, repeated acts of insubordination, harassing phone calls, most of the truancy cases, etc. This would be in addition to or in lieu of a suspension from school. Sometimes, the suspension could be altered to an in-school suspension as well as teen court, or the suspension could be in lieu of teen court.
My recommendation would be to meet with all parties to come up with your guidelines that all parties would be happy with.
The biggest thing I could recommend to you is to make a relationship with the SRD’s. They help me to locate students as well as serve papers to them from time to time.
In Texas Violation of School Rules and Truancy is a Class C misdemeanor which makes them eligible for Teen Court. In Duncanville Teen Court the Junior High hours are a class 3, 28-46 hrs and High School is class 4 42-64 hours.
We don’t work with school violations, but may expand into this area in the future. I would like to receive whatever information comes from this inquiry.
Vermilion County Illinois Peer Court response to question on school rules violations handled in youth court:
Peer Court takes Daytime Curfew cases. This charge is applied to students who are "skipping" school and are truant. Sentencing guidelines are the same as a normal curfew charge. The jury works within these sentencing parameters:
10 - 20 hours of community service
Serve on the Peer Jury 1 or 2 times
May require defendant to write letter of apology to Police, School, Parents
May require defendant to write an essay using the topic "importance of participating in school" "consequences of skipping school” etc.
Tour of county jail
If police are called to a school for a fight and battery charges are applied, those students are normally given the option of Peer Court and charged with Battery. The Jury works within the following sentencing parameters:
Written apology to school officials victims
10 -50 community service hours
Sit on Peer Jury 1 or 2 times
May require defendant to write an essay using the topic "alternate ways to control my anger" "The dangers of fighting" etc.
Mandatory anger management or conflict resolution classes
Tour of County Jail
Cases involving possession of alcohol or drugs at school are also referred to Peer Court. Normally the police respond and make a charge to initiate the process. Offenders are sentenced accordingly. Vermilion County Illinois Peer Court response to question on school rules violations handled in youth court:
Peer Court takes Daytime Curfew cases. This charge is applied to students who are "skipping" school and are truant. Sentencing guidelines are the same as a normal curfew charge. The jury works within these sentencing parameters:
10 - 20 hours of community service
Serve on the Peer Jury 1 or 2 times
May require defendant to write letter of apology to Police, School, Parents
May require defendant to write an essay using the topic "importance of participating in school" "consequences of skipping school” etc.
Tour of county jail
If police are called to a school for a fight and battery charges are applied, those students are normally given the option of Peer Court and charged with Battery. The Jury works within the following sentencing parameters:
Written apology to school officials victims
10 -50 community service hours
Sit on Peer Jury 1 or 2 times
May require defendant to write an essay using the topic "alternate ways to control my anger" "The dangers of fighting" etc.
Mandatory anger management or conflict resolution classes
Tour of County Jail
Cases involving possession of alcohol or drugs at school are also referred to Peer Court. Normally the police respond and make a charge to initiate the process. Offenders are sentenced accordingly.
In my opinion, if the infractions of the school rules are not laws, then the school should deal with it themselves. If it is a broken law, then a ticket should be issued by a law officer and they can go to teen court.
Or the school could develop their own version of a peer court within the school and using teens but to send them to Teen Court for simple school infractions is the school not tending to their own issues in my opinion.
Schools in our area have resource officers on campus. An offense on campus can result in violation of the education code, thus resulting in consequences including suspension, removal from a club or team, or on campus work project. In addition, the offense can also result in a criminal citation issued by the resource officer, thereby sending the juvenile to court (including Peer Court) If the case comes to Peer Court there will be added consequences from the Peer Court jury. Yes, it's Double Jeopardy, but completely within California State Law.
If there are any School Resource officers (SRO) they can feel out a J2 arrest form and fax it in to the Teen Court Coordinator depending upon the offense. Or they can send it into their Department of Juvenile Service and have it sent up to the Teen Court Coordinator, however the set up. Our Teen Court Program comes through the State's Attorney office. Therefore, I receive my cases through the department of Juvenile services and or the SRO's where ever the occurrence of offensiveness is taking place. The Principles does have the go ahead to have that individual written up and can also referred the child there selves for truancy and/or anything else that may arise concerning a matter that can be handled through Teen Court. It should state what can be done with school disturbances in the by-laws if you have a specific book just for Teen Court. Rose. I can be reached at 301-952-5394.
We relate school offenses to applicable law violations. Disorderly conduct for fighting Truancy and Educational Neglect Ungovernable Behavior for Status or non criminal behavior.
I'm from the Luna County Teen Court in Deming, NM. I handle truancy and the community service guideline I use is 18 to 25 hours. They also must attend jury duty and bring in a donation of their choice.
The Willcox Youth Court is set up to accept referrals from local courts, juvenile probation and school authorities. The school principals have the same referral form as the other referring agents - instead of attaching a copy of a ticket/summons, they attach a copy of the discipline write-up. Our YC has a list of possible sentences that can be given - this list was compiled by the youth and a support committee that contains representatives from all concerned parties and covers classes, screenings, community service, counseling, fines, written reports, letters of apology, jury duties, etc. This list can be modified or added to at any time by calling a committee meeting and presenting a needed change. A copy of this list is given to each jury after they have heard the case. The jury is always informed who made the referral, but the cases and sentencing are not treated any differently. Approximately 20% of our cases are school referrals--we find that usually the schools try their own methods first, then refer them to us when their ways do not appear to be making a change (fighting, possession of tobacco and continual disruptive behavior are the most common referrals, but we have had truancy and other school violations). The Youth Court team uses the student handbook section on violations the same way it uses the state law manuals in trying the cases.
Greenwood dist. 51- We use our youth court for all most of our level 3 and 4 disrupting school, truancy, petit larceny, alcohol are just a few examples. The suspensions are cut in have if they agree to come to Youth court.
Tyler Teen Court does take referrals on violations of school rules, however they are sent from our City Courts. Our schools are calling on campus security guards or the police in some cases to write tickets and then they are sent to us. We get kids with Disorderly Conduct Tickets (either for Fighting or Profanity) 24-35 hours of Community service and 2 jury terms; Assaults 35-44 hours and 3 jury terms; Criminal Trespassing 24-35 along with 2 jury terms; Criminal Mischief (breaking of windows, vending machines, etc) 35-44 hours 3 jury terms; Classroom Disruption 24-35 hours and 2 jury terms; Disruption of Transportation (the school bus) 24-35 hours and 2 jury terms.
With the Disorderly Conduct and Assault charges we usually have them attend a program called H.Y.P.E. (Helping Young People to Excel) This is done through a counseling center here locally and the kids attend 4 classes. The classes deal with anger management, peer pressure, decision Making and how to be successful as a teenager. If you need/want further information please don't hesitate to ask.
Our program participated in a pilot program with one of our middle schools. We found that changing the sentencing guidelines to meet the needs of the students was critical ex; a large portion of their community service hours were performed after school at study hall (thus helping them the students up to speed)- university students helped provide tutoring services for the students etc.. Trying to meet the time constraints of a semester were challenging.
In response to your request for information, In Chicago, we currently have 18 Peer Jury Courts in operation. Over 60% of the referrals are from schools or school related incidents. Based on the nature of the incident, the sanctions can vary from an apology letter to a task of service within the school. All of the sanctions are based on getting the minor to realize what was wrong in the incident, and to give back to the victim. If additional information is needed, please don't hesitate to contact me. Also, because of the size of Chicago, we have implemented Peer Jury into many of the public schools.
We only hear school offenses but do not have guidelines, each case is so different, we try to sentence students to things that will be beneficial to them such as tutoring, joining a youth program, meaningful community service such as at a nursing home, book reports (about someone they admire), apologies, and essays such as how their behavior will affect their ability to reach their goals.
