From investigation to action: Fighting racial discrimination in Rockford Public Schools
A ProPublica series highlights NCYL‘s fight to protect students’ rights in Illinois
By Willis Jacobson, National Center for Youth Law Media Relations Manager
It’s an incredible example of strong investigative reporting complementing dedicated advocacy to lay the groundwork for meaningful change.
The National Center for Youth Law and the MacArthur Justice Center this week filed a federal complaint against Illinois’s Rockford Public Schools (RPS) that calls on the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to address widespread racial discrimination within the district. The complaint specifically calls out RPS’s troubling discriminatory practice of referring students — primarily Black students — to law enforcement for minor disciplinary matters, and asks the OCR to take steps to ensure the district’s disciplinary practices, including its use of police officers on campuses, don’t discriminate against students of color.
The filing, which highlights alarming experiences shared by students, aims to improve equity and ultimately student outcomes — and it was boosted by powerful investigative reporting.
As part of the Debt Free Justice campaign, NCYL investigated court fees and fines assessed on families and youth in Illinois. Through that investigation, NCYL learned that some Illinois municipalities were assessing youth fees and fines in quasi-judicial hearings on municipal ordinance violations.
In 2022, ProPublica reporter Jodi S. Cohen and Chicago Tribune reporter Jennifer Smith Richards amplified the rampant and unjust school ticketing schemes in Illinois schools with the in-depth ProPublica series, “The Price Kids Pay: How Schools and Police Work Together to Punish Students.”
That investigative series, which highlighted a database of thousands of student tickets issued across Illinois, raised widespread awareness of how this problem impacted students across the state, and not just in a few municipalities.
After attending municipal hearings in Rockford and meeting with students and families, it became abundantly clear to NCYL and MacArthur that action was needed in RPS, a district with 28,000 students, 31% of whom are Black and 32% Latino. As noted by Cohen and Richards in a ProPublica article published Tuesday about the OCR complaint:
“Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed at school than their white peers. The municipal tickets — for violating ordinances including those against vaping, truancy and disorderly conduct — can include fines of as much as $750 in Rockford and are difficult to fight. They’ve left some families with debt and other serious financial consequences. Unlike in juvenile court, students in local ticket hearings cannot get a public defender.”
Additionally, as detailed in the complaint, Black students were more than three times as likely as white students to be referred to a school police officer over the past three years, even when the infractions were the same. According to the district’s data, for example, at least nine Black students were ticketed for trespassing during this school year; although 27 white students were accused of trespassing, none were ticketed or referred to police.
The recent increase in media attention and resulting awareness of this issue can only bolster the fight for reform.
In a piece produced by Jess Liptzin for mystateline.com and local Rockford ABC and FOX affiliates, NCYL Attorney Angie Jiménez succinctly summed up the ultimate goal of the OCR complaint and related advocacy:
“What we want is for all RPS students to feel safe and connected. And, you know, right now we know that Black students in particular are not feeling safe or connected because they are experiencing discriminatory police referrals.”
Beyond Rockford, NCYL has collaborated with local advocates and lawmakers on a pair of recent bills to stop school-based ticketing, but those efforts have stalled in the state government. As Jiménez shared with ProPublica, statewide reform is desperately needed:
“The plan is to still move forward with the legislative advocacy to stop the practice of school ticketing. We are hopeful that this complaint will help to support those efforts overall.”
Visit here for more information on this week’s OCR filing and how the district’s policies are impacting students.
Willis Jacobson is the Media Relations Manager at the National Center for Youth Law. A member of NCYL’s Communications team, Willis strives to elevate NCYL’s work in the media and ensure that coverage involving NCYL’s focus areas — or any topics involving young people — is accurate, respectful and shared through an appropriate cultural and racial-justice lens.
