Bad Behaving Students Bring Out Bad Behaving Decision Makers

I write often about "behavioral issues" in school settings.

I have written about how almost impossible it is to change or overturn a school administrators' decision despite how wrong it may have been.

I have written about how administrators can use a student's behavior as an easy strategy to change the placement of the student and it is almost impossible to challenge even when this "administrative convenience" is ill founded.

I have written about how children with disabilities face these difficulties, despite the responsibility of the school system to positively address behaviors that are a manifestation of the disability.

Here is an article that speaks to these issues.

Before everyone jumps in to tell all of the stories about behavioral issues, this discussion is not about whether behavior is an issue. An interesting question to ask is how much money does our local school system allocate to real, professional behavioral specialists? I say "real, professional" because I don't count the check-mark smoke-and-mirror posturing of counting someone who sits through a three hour presentation and then be designated as a school site's "behavioral specialist". This looks good on paper, but it falls short of real function.


Try getting a police report when school based issue arises that is disputable.
Try getting a school generated incident report when the police are involved.



You can discount the message if you want, but somewhere lies the truth.


- "Florida police frequently skirt state and federal laws, or violate them outright, when questioning children at school"

- "Principals, the last line of defense for kids jeopardized by police misconduct, rarely challenge resource officers or other police who enter school to interrogate students."

-"And children are saddled with criminal records that can follow them for a lifetime."

-"But courts rarely scrutinize school interrogations."

-"In both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, an unusually high number of kids were arrested at school and referred to court, according to the Department of Juvenile Justice. Hillsborough sent students at a rate of 21 per 1,000, while Pinellas sent 24, compared to a state average of 17"

-"In a recent study, the National Juvenile Defender Center described Florida's juvenile system as dangerously dysfunctional, with courts overloaded by low-bore school referrals"

-""We saw, in courtroom after courtroom, hundreds of school-based cases that had no business being there," said Patricia Puritz, the center's executive director. "There was no place where these kids were not being dumped into the juvenile court setting.""

-"But Florida police and principals frequently exploit loopholes in the law, said Gerard Glynn, associate professor of law and director of the juvenile law clinic at Barry University in Orlando. "




Compare and contrast these two statements:

1- -"Do principals have the right to monitor student interrogations?

Absolutely, said Tom Gonzalez, general counsel for the Hillsborough County School Board.

"If they ever get uncomfortable (with an interrogation), they should speak up and say, 'You know what, I think we should wait for that person's parent,'" he said.

Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando policies require principals to always be present in loco parentis -- legally "in the place of the parent" -- when police question students as suspects."

2 - -"In some Florida districts, principals are "completely abdicating to the police" and turning over discipline to untrained SROs, said Evans, former chairman of an advisory committee to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

**** So, if the principal abdicates to the police, what happen to the "legally in place of the parent?"

If the media accounts were correct, recently a student was suspended because the school's efforts to get the parent to contact them failed. Perhaps they should have gone to the principal if the principal is legally in the place of the parent.


Click here: When students are suspects, lines blur