Citations issued by school resource officers shows decrease in offenses

PASO ROBLES — Suspension and whether or not the district should be drug testing students were discussed at the Tuesday, Aug. 6, Paso Robles Joint Unified School District (PRJUSD) meeting. Staff will present the current board policy on drug testing students at the next board meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 20.

The 2023-2024 school year showed a drop in suspensions with 217 compared to 428 in the 2022-23 school year. Thiscomes after the state has encouraged districts to begin using alternatives to suspension. During the July 9 school board meeting, staff presented trustees with a presentation on disciplinary actions taken for misbehaving students. That presentation showed that despite the decrease in suspensions, staff have noticed an increase in “behaviors” since the COVID pandemic.

At the end of that July 9 presentation, trustees requested staff to come back to the board with more disciplinary data for the district. During the Aug. 6 meeting, staff’s new presentation included data on citations issued by the district’s school resource officers (SRO).

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“We have found that issuing citations to appear in court has been a pretty good deterrent to behavior because it not onlyaffects the student, but the parent as well. And we are not just doing it as a punishment; the court system has interventions themselves that they can impose on a student,” Director of Student Services Tom Harrington told the board, adding that the citations have been especially effective against fighting and possession of controlled substance infractions. 

Harrington also clarified for the board that the district has been working with SROs to distribute citations for the last year and a half for specific EDU codes, which has resulted in a decrease in offenses.

Trustees Laurene McCoy and Kenney Enney questioned Harrington on why the board was not made aware of these citations being made.

“How come that was never told to us because I know that we have asked what happens now,” McCoy asked Harrington, clarifying that trustees have asked staff this several times during closed session.

“That falls on me,” said Harrington. “I will do better going forward.”

Trustee Sondra Williams addressed Harrington saying that despite his data showing suspensions are down, she hears from teachers that “they are tired from the process of discipline.”

Sondra Williams added that, “If our interventions are good and our numbers are going down, the staff should feel that and I haven’t experienced that kind of feedback.”

Harrington clarified that while suspensions are down, the behaviors are not, but that the interventions are in place to support the student and that “it’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.”

Moving forward, staff in Student Services will be working on the following:

  • Continue work to review demographic and subgroup discipline data
  • Site administrators will receive training specific to the implementation of creative consequences that can be usedalongside restorative practices as alternatives to suspensions
  • Continue to build district-wide Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) structure to address all students’academic, social emotional, and behavioral needs

Trustees then reviewed a presentation from Harrington exploring drug testing and expulsion rehabilitiation contracts. Earlier this year, the board directed staff to seek legal opinion specific to requiring drug testing as part of a student’sexpulsion contract.

Staff came up with the following options: 

Non-Athletics Voluntary Drug Testing:

    • Consider reinstating previous program
    • Testing costs should be considered and may be prohibitive

Athletic Program Drug Testing:

  • Consider implementing a nonvoluntary random testing program.

Expulsion Contract:

  • Require a drug test upon reentry from expulsion.
  • Positive drug test results would not result in further exclusion, however positive drug test results would result in the development of a rehabilitation plan that includes ongoing counseling.

In Templeton Unified School District, they conduct random tests on athletes and students on contracts. Atascadero Unified School District however does not test athletes or students on contracts.

Trustee Baker was in favor of following TUSD’s lead on drug testing students. 

“You are going to have 800 parents very angry,” argued Trustee Jim Cogan. “There will be a lot of angry parents if their kids start getting randomly drug tested … because it’s an invasion of privacy.” 

McCoy debated, “I would want to know if my child was on drugs so that I could intervene as a parent as quickly as possible so this doesn’t become something that ruins their life later on.” 

PRJUSD does not currently drug test their athletes. 

Cogan reaffirmed his position on not drug testing athletes: “I would say that as a parent of two football athletes, the extra work and the assumption and all of the foolish around it that they would have to go through would make me angry, and the assumption that I don’t know if my kids are on drugs and that’s the part that for me gets reallyfrustrating.”

Trustees Baker and McCoy requested to see the TUSD policy and the cost that it would take for PRJSUD to add drug testing for athletes to be presented at the next meeting. Trustee Enney suggested that drug testing athletes should be a seperate policy from suspended students on contract.

The board will hear a first read of the current board policy at the Tuesday, Aug. 20, board meeting where trustees will further discuss drug testing students.