Illinois law bans schools from fining students. But an investigation has found police do it for them, issuing costly tickets that burden families.
Kip Heinle, a spokesperson for the Illinois School Resource Officers Association, said he thinks ticketing is uncommon and used as a “last resort.”
Across the state, police ticketed students most frequently — about 3,300 times — for possessing tobacco, e-cigarettes or other vaping materials. Many towns have passed new vaping ordinances in response to concerns about underage use. Students were ticketed for possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia — almost always related to cannabis — about 1,900 times.
Carpentersville police issued 649 truancy tickets to students at Dundee-Crown High School between January 2019 and December 2021, the most truancy tickets issued in any district the reporters examined. The fines totaled nearly $50,000. Superintendent Tony Sanders of School District U-46 in Elgin, the second-largest district in the state, said he was upset to learn from reporters that dozens of students in his district, including some at a middle school and two high schools, had been ticketed for truancy after the state ban took effect. He said principals and school resource officers have now been told to stop.
“You know how much money this is? This is how much money I make for the week,” said Fee, who was working as a school janitor. They could fight back by hiring a lawyer or they could go to trial without one. The family chose to pay.Blake, center, gets a hug from a friend as he and his mother, Jennifer Fee, at right, wait to attend a hearing with Blake’s aunt Becky Fee, second from right, and his cousin Anna, left, who had also received a ticket at school.
When several families asked Nichols for community service instead of a fine, he told them the city doesn’t offer that option. “We were just absolutely shocked, but you had no choice. You have to pay,” said Piker. “People don’t believe me when I say Manteno does this.” About three years later, her son got a letter from a collections agency. The amount due had grown to $270. “They waited until he was 18 and threw him into collections as he was trying to start his own life,” Patterson said. He has yet to pay, she said.
The village of Bradley has tried to collect unpaid fines from about 40 tickets issued to high school students from 2018 through 2020, totaling about $10,000. The village uses both a private collections company and the state comptroller’s program; Bradley has collected about $1,800 in student debt through the state program, records show.
“I was devastated,” she said. “I could finally get my kids out of the motel situation and into an actual home, and it was down the drain because they took what I was expecting to get.”Nathan, 16, stood with his father at a lectern, ready to defend himself against a disorderly conduct ticket related to a fight on a school bus. This was his second appearance; Nathan had already entered a “not liable” plea in October and had been told to return for a hearing.
Semrow decided to continue the case until another day so both sides could call witnesses. Nathan would have to come back yet again. At the hearings, students have little or no opportunity to explain the circumstances surrounding a school incident. There’s often no counseling or other help offered to kids who may need it, only punishment. And cases are decided by lawyers who are not trained to work with young people.
In hundreds of cases the Tribune and ProPublica observed, it was exceedingly rare that a student was not found to be at fault. Data obtained from suburban Crystal Lake showed that of the 1,888 ordinance violation cases on the city’s docket from May 2018 through December 2021 — which includes both adults and minors — only seven people were found not liable.
Even though the city code calls for it, McHenry also no longer records the proceedings, having abruptly stopped in December soon after reporters began attending. McHenry Deputy Police Chief Thomas Walsh said state law does not require a recording, and he and the police chief decided it “created an unnecessary record.”
But it’s unlikely that a state’s attorney would prosecute a scuffle in the school hallway or underage possession of a tiny amount of marijuana. When matters are serious — if a weapon is involved, for example — police can and do arrest students. While Illinois allows juvenile arrest and court records to be expunged — meaning they are erased from a person’s record — state law considers ordinance violations to be ““These records are visible to a lot of people,” said Hannah Berkowitz, a staff attorney with Legal Aid Chicago who has tried to find ways to get children’s citations expunged. “They can be seen. They can be used to make decisions that would hurt kids.
Malachi, 12, takes out the recycling during a break from schoolwork at his Bolingbrook home in April. Police wrote him a ticket for battery last fall after he got in a fight before school. It’s not that students aren’t vaping or fighting. But when they do, school workers decide the consequences: detention, suspension, mandatory counseling.
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