(The Center Square) – Illinois state Rep. La Shawn Ford is again pushing to protect school kids at the forefront of his agenda.
Ford said he is all in on a measure proposed by Democratic State Sen. Karina Villa that would ban police from issuing any tickets or citations to students for breaking school rules like truancy. Senate Bill 1519 would also require officers to receive extra training to become a school resource officer, including how to deal with students with disabilities.
“I’m going to pick it up,” Ford told The Center Square. “I had one, but I’m going to advance the one that passed the Senate and we’ll do that when we go back in two weeks. We know that anytime young people have to deal with law enforcement as minors, as young people, it’s a pipeline to the criminal justice system.”
Ford, who has been pushing such legislation since 2022, also argues that such approaches never get at the underlying problem or help students to overcome whatever their challenge might be. And with some fines being as high as $750, he said such deterrents only serve to push students further away from the classroom, as opposed to helping them to learn from their mistakes.
“It leads to the school to prison pipeline by legislating discipline,” he said. “There’s no reason for a student to be engaging with law enforcement when they break a school rule. Teachers and principals should deal with it by helping correct the behavior, by teaching lessons, not issuing citations with the law enforcement. Our goal should be to keep young people out of the criminal justice system, not introduce them or lead them.”
With SB 1519 passing out of the Senate Education Committee by an 8-2 vote, Ford said he is reminded of a resolution he recently proposed honoring Amara Harris “for her courage and perseverance to defend truth and fight for justice.”
Harris was featured in a ProPublica report after being ticketed in 2019 for violating the school’s code against theft over another student’s AirPods. Harris, who has since graduated from Spelman and filed a federal lawsuit alleging civil rights violations, was ultimately found not liable by a jury.
“That really sparked the advancement of this new, new law,” he said.
