(The Center Square) – Illinois lawmakers have introduced bills that would end the practice of ticketing students for municipal code violations.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, and state Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, sponsored measures that would ban school officials from fining students for truancy and other offenses.
Ford introduced House Bill 2502 on Monday. The measure would prohibit school personnel from issuing a monetary fine, fee, ticket, or citation for a municipal code violation.
“Ticketing students is considered to be bad practice because it can create significant financial burdens on families, especially those in the Black and Brown communities,” Ford said.
At a news conference in Springfield this week, Ford mentioned violations like vaping and said ticketing does not address underlying issues.
“So it literally pushes them further away from school instead of helping them learn from their mistakes,” Ford said.
Villa, D-West Chicago, introduced the companion measure, SB 1519, in the Illinois Senate on Tuesday.
Stand for Children Government Affairs Director Aimee Galvin said a student in Springfield was ticketed for sharing homemade brownies with her classmates.
“Despite no wrongdoing, she was targeted by school officials, which ultimately forced her to transfer schools just to escape the harassment,” Galvin said.
Galvin said some fines are as high as $750, which is the maximum allowed by state law for such violations.
Galvin is also a member of the Debt Free Justice Coalition. She said the legislation would apply only to municipal ordinance violations.
“Assaulting a teacher, not a municipal ordinance violation, that’s a serious crime in which case school districts would still be allowed to, of course, engage with police for a serious crime like that. Guns, weapons, things like that, drugs, those are crimes,” Galvin said.
The legislation also provides that the State Board of Education shall require that each school district annually report the number of students who were referred to a law enforcement agency or official and the number of instances of referrals to law enforcement that students received.
It also requires a parent-teacher advisory committee to develop policy guideline procedures to establish and maintain a reciprocal reporting system between the school district and local law enforcement agencies regarding both criminal and civil offenses (rather than only criminal offenses) committed by students.
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