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Released last week, the report was the result of an ACLU-conducted investigation into what the organization called "two factors that may contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline" - school-based arrests and School Resource Officer programs - in Hartford, East Hartford and West Hartford.
The report's several findings included that "students of color are arrested at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers, and students of color committing certain common disciplinary infractions are more likely to be arrested than are white students committing the same offenses" in West Hartford. The reported also alleged that the likelihood a disciplinary incident would result in a school-based arrest was higher in West Hartford than in East Hartford or Hartford.
In an interview following the Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Board Chairman Terry Schmitt said the board takes the charge of racial disparities in West Hartford's in-school arrests "very seriously" and "would work pretty hard to correct any disparities if we found were there."
However, Schmitt, who has a background in sociology, said he was "pretty concerned about their data collectiAon" and called its trustworthiness into question. Although, according to the report, the data was obtained through the state Department of Education, nobody in West Hartford was independently interviewed for the investigation and no data was independantly gleaned from the school district, which, according to Schmitt, means there was "no attempt to verify the veracity of the data."
"That's problematic. You begin to wonder whether the data is being reported accurately," Schmitt said of the report covering three distinct school districts.
The question of data reportage could have implications for the charge of West Hartford's higher incidence of arrest, a rate which, some officials have pointed out, would not necessarily be indicative of a problem.
Schmitt also pointed to data he said refutes the ACLU's perspective that school resource officer programs could factor into a "school-to-prison pipline," a possibly national trend wherein, according to the ACLU report, students are criminalized "through increased reliance on zero-tolerance school discipline, school-based arrests, disciplinary alternative schools, and secure detention."
According to Schmitt, since West Hartford's School Resource Officer Program was implemented in 2003, in-school arrests have actually dropped dramatically each year, with the 150 arrests district-wide in 2005 dropping to 50 arrests last year. This "steady, linear decline" is "evidence that would suggest the School Resource Officers are actually lessening the likihood there would be arrests in schools," Schmitt said.
"You could theorize that what's going on is, the more [the officers are] there, the more they get to know the students and the students get to know them, the less likely it is incidents are ramped up to where arrests are necessary," Schmitt said.
Responding to the report in an interview last week, Police Chief Jim Strillacci said the School Resource Officer program has been a positive force in the school district, calling the officers "valuable members of the school community," present in the schools "not just to arrest kids, but to protect the school, staff and students."
Strillacci also called the legitimacy of the report into question.
"When you have a statistical result, the question is, are the facts really similar? Not at all fights are alike, I can tell you," Strillacci said.
When incidents do occur, arrest is not necessarily a pre-determined outcome, according to Strillacci, who said the School Resource Officers have discretion to make arrests, levy fines or simply to allow the school administration to take discplinary action.
Funded through a federal grant, the School Resource Officer program in West Hartford was established in 2003. Each of the town's two high schools have two resource officer assigned to them, full-time. General-duty community resource officers visit other district schools during the course of their regular shifts, as has been a practice in town for upwards of 30 years, according to police officials.
