Sen. John Schickel has filed a bill that would require schools to be notified within 24 hours of the status of charges facing their students in the juvenile justice system.
The senator said he was approached by Boone County Attorney Jordan Dallas Turner and the Boone County Sheriff’s Office with a request to file the bill (Senate Bill 11). The legislation has been assigned to the Senate education committee, although a hearing date has not yet been announced.
One provision in the bill would require notification of school superintendents or private school principals within 24 hours after a county attorney determines probable cause to charge a minor with offenses that would be a felony or misdemeanors if committed by an adult.
Schickel (R-Union) said the bill gives “court designated workers” – juvenile justice workers who process noncriminal “status” and criminal complaints against minors – the ability to contact schools immediately after their students are charged with specific offenses that qualify as felonies or misdemeanors in cases involving adults.
Notification would also be required within 24 hours after a student is found to be guilty of those offenses, as well as “status” or noncriminal offenses such as truancy. Additionally, schools would be notified within 24 hours if charges are diverted (handled outside of formal court proceedings).
Violent, drug, sexual, and firearm offenses are specifically targeted under criminal provisions in the bill.
“Now the law provides that if (minors) were not detained the school wasn’t to be contacted until after the case had been prepared. Sometimes that could take weeks,” Schickel told LINK nky. “There was not a provision in the statute for court designated workers, when juveniles have been charged, to contact the school immediately.”
Schools would be required by the bill to destroy records concerning the incident if the case is diverted from the court system or charges are dismissed.
Turner told LNK nky that SB 11 “doesn’t really have anything to do with a particular situation or case. It really comes from observations that we’ve made in my office over the past year.” She said that she approached Schickel about the bill after conversations with the sheriff’s office and local school resource officers or SROs.
“Broadly speaking what I’ve found over the past year is a potentially significant delay in notification to schools in some situations due to procedural requirements that are jump started in the statutes,” Turner told LINK nky. “What the legislation would do is provide notice to schools in what we feel is a more timely fashion and would allow for notice in a wider variety of circumstances.”
When asked if the legislation would address any specific incidents at local schools, Turner said the bill is general in scope.
“We can’t divulge any kind of information about any juvenile matter that comes through our office or has gone through our office in the past,” she told LINK nky.
NKY generated national attention last year when parents at Conner High School in Boone County learned that a student charged with creating a school “kill list” had been allowed to return to the classroom. Last January, NBC News quoted Conner principal Andy Wyckoff as saying that he was “not aware of the status of the charges” because the juvenile’s records were sealed.
It was the second reported incident involving threats by a Conner High School student in the past two years.
Schickel said the notification requirement in SB 11 will improve the ability of the juvenile justice system to address what he said is “a huge problem.”
“Juvenile crime is a huge problem. We have a big juvenile crime problem because our juvenile crime laws don’t have any teeth in them,” he told LINK nky. “This corrects part of the problem – notification of the school – so the school can take proper action.”