Juvenile justice officials worry schools “dumping” problem kids

Friday, Feb. 25, 2000 | 12:19 p.m.

"It's the most frustrating thing I'm dealing with," Clark County Family Court Judge Bob Gaston told a legislative study panel on Thursday.

Gaston said problem children and even those who merely miss too many classes often get kicked out of school.

"It's a pushing out rather than setting up programs for these at-risk students," he said. "For (the schools), it's easier to bump them out."

Michael Fitzgerald of the state Education Department agreed that school districts often "bump out" those students who cause them trouble.

"We're removing more students from mainstream classrooms without a place for them to go," he said. "The school district is not doing a service to the school, the student or the community if the only consequence for a behavior is to remove the student from the system."

The majority of those students, officials agreed, aren't dangerous, just disruptive.

The effect of kicking them out of school, according to Gaston, Clark County's Family and Youth Services Director Kirby Burgess and Metro Police spokesman Stan Olsen, is to put them on the street where they often wind up in much more serious trouble.

Gaston and Burgess agreed the big problem is there just aren't enough programs to teach children who have had problems with regular school settings.

And Gaston said even when the juvenile justice system gets children back on track, schools won't always take them.

"If the school district does not want to develop programs for this population of students, we can handle it - if the dollars that follow that student come to the judicial system," Gaston said.

Burgess said the funding must follow the student because his department doesn't have the money.

Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, a high school teacher and study committee member, said it's not that simple because per-pupil money for school districts is set at the beginning of the year.

He said it's not possible for school districts to have part of their budget taken away after they've already committed to teacher contracts and other resources for the year.

Anderson agreed some sort of program is needed to serve difficult students, adding, "We do squeeze kids out of the system without giving them a fair hearing and without somewhere to go."