A new investigative report finds that school districts around Illinois may be trying to circumvent state laws that place limits on student discipline, by bringing in police to write tickets for various minor offenses.
ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune report that those tickets… for everything from truancy to possession of tobacco… can saddle students with fines and leave them subjected to action by collection agencies. School districts are prohibited from imposing fines on students as a means of discipline, but police are not. The practice has been used occasionally in District 186. The report finds 18 such tickets over the past three years… 11 at Springfield High, six at Lanphier, and one at Southeast.
City of Springfield policy allows those debts of juveniles to be sent to collection agencies.
