The district’s response asserted that Black students and white students receive the same consequences for the same offenses and that the school has been affected by “a rise in violent crime and gang activity” in the communities the school serves. In an emailed response to reporters’ questions, district officials said they were concerned about the racial disparities in ticketing identified at Bloom Trail. In response to similar data on expulsions and suspensions, the state last fall put a group of districts including Bloom Township High School District 206 on notice to reform how they handle discipline. In 2017-18, the most recent year data was collected, Illinois stood out for the gap between the percentage of students who are Black and the percentage of students referred to the police who are Black. But it didn’t do so during the 2019-20 school year, when in-person learning was interrupted by the pandemic. Department of Education collects data nationally in alternate years about the race of students referred to and arrested by police. Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune) That can create larger problems for students of color, problems that we’ve become accustomed to for far too long,” Welch said in an interview. “If these tickets are being issued disproportionately to people of color, we need to address that. House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, a Democrat, said the legislature should take action if school ticketing is harming students. Illinois lawmakers tried in the past to pass legislation that would require school districts to collect and share student race and ethnicity data compiled by police when they intervene at schools for all types of disciplinary reasons, including such minor offenses as tobacco possession, tardiness or insubordination. Pritzker said conversations already were underway with legislators “to make sure that this doesn’t happen anywhere in the state of Illinois.” In response, Illinois’ top education official told school leaders to “immediately stop and consider both the cost and the consequences of these fines,” and Gov. It found that schools often involve police in minor incidents, resulting in harsh fines, debt for students and families and records that can follow children into adulthood. The investigation, which was based on school and municipal records from across the state, documented at least 11,800 tickets during the past three school years. The first installment of the Tribune-ProPublica investigation “The Price Kids Pay” detailed how student ticketing flouts a state law meant to prevent schools from using fines to discipline students. Department of Education that oversees civil rights issues. In fact, while Illinois officials have focused on whether schools are suspending or expelling Black students in unequal ways, they have not monitored police ticketing at schools. Student ticketing in Illinois, or any other state, has never been examined on this scale. But students in those groups don’t appear to have been ticketed at high rates compared to their share of school enrollment. The analysis found that about 9% of those students are Black but nearly 20% of tickets went to Black students.Īnalyzing tickets received by members of other racial or ethnic groups is more difficult, in part because the Tribune and ProPublica identified anomalies in the way school districts and police recorded information about white and Latino students.
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Most local officials either did not specify race on tickets or refused to provide the information, but the news organizations obtained documentation of the race of students for about 4,000 tickets issued at schools in 68 districts.Īfter excluding places where ticketing was rare, schools in 42 districts remained, representing more than one-fifth of the state’s high school students.
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Reporters set out to analyze police ticketing in nearly 200 districts throughout Illinois, which together enroll most of the state’s high school students. In the schools and districts examined, an analysis indicated that Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed as their white peers. Such racial disparities in ticketing are part of a pattern at schools across the state, an investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune has found.