Reported Crimes in APS schools to plummet - guaranteed!

The proximate effect of Senator Ortiz Y Pino's SB 528, link, will be that the number of reported crimes in APS will plummet.  The plummeting numbers will be used in the next few years to convince community members that crime rates in APS are declining, and by extension that the APS police force is doing a great job, and by further extension, that the superintendent and school board are doing a great job; managing to actually reduce the number of crimes being committed in schools.

The Bill, quoted in significant part, reads;

Each school district or charter school discipline policy shall: … offer alternatives to … referrals to law enforcement agencies. (And shall:) not require the reporting of … misdemeanors to law enforcement agencies.

In plain English, school districts and charter schools can allow administrators to not report misdemeanors; violations of the law.

Administrators, principally principals, have an interest in lowering the number of crimes committed in their schools.  In the first place, it's the right thing to do.  Beyond that, the likelihood of their promotion correlates with the crime rates at their schools.

The number of crimes can be lowered in one of two ways:

1. doing things that actually reduce the number of criminal acts, or
2. under-reporting the number of crimes that are taking place.

There is the appearance of a conflict of interests when a person whose future depends in no small part on the number of crimes committed on his/watch, is allowed to decide what crimes do and do not get reported.

If there is an opportunity to under-report, there are principals who will under-report.  The number of reported crimes on campus is going to go down.

Are there APS administrators who would do that kind of thing?

When the Council of the Great City Schools recently audited APS, they found administrators routinely falsifying crime statistics in order to protect the public perception of their schools.  You can't ask for clearer proof than that.

Whether a school principal actually bows to the pressure to under-report crime, there is still the temptation.  The easier it is made to yield to temptation, the more administrators will yield to temptation; It's human nature.  It isn't power that corrupts, it's an opportunity to abuse power without consequences that corrupts, absolutely.

Regardless of the reasons that contribute to a child's decision to break the law, the law is either broken or it is not.  Bringing the severity of the act into deciding whether the law has been broken, is a red herring.

If you decide to go one mile per hour over the speed limit, you have decided to break the law.  Period.  Whether there is any point in enforcing the law, is an entirely separate question, and a question that is properly asked of law enforcement, not of you;
and not of conflicted school principals.

APS already allows principals way too much latitude in enforcing rules.  There is a document given to students called the Student Behavior Handbook.  The handbook, in the minimum mandatory consequences section, promises students they will be held accountable; there are consequences they will suffer.  Principals are loathe to impose the minimum mandatory consequences for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it annoys people who then annoy the principal.

Principals are provided a "weasel clause" in the Student Behavior Handbook.  Nothing in this handbook, they write, prevents an administrator from exercising  their own "best judgment" to suspend the rules and do whatever they want, link.  Best judgment is not subject to review; it does not require explanation or defense.  It is what it is.

SB 528 was given a "do pass" by a majority of the members of the Senate Education Committee, link.  Next stop, the Judiciary Committee, link.

Submitted; Alb Journal, Letter to the Editor,  upon posting.