Some Nevada Schools ‘Dumping’ Problem Kids

Juvenile justice officials are concerned that some Nevada school districts are dumping problem students on the streets with little to do but get into trouble.

On Thursday, Clark County Family Court Judge Bob Gaston told a legislative study panel that 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.

Michael Fitzgerald of the state Education Department agreed that school districts often bump out 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 trouble.

Gaston and Burgess agreed that there aren’t enough programs for children who have had difficulty with regular school settings.

And Gaston said even after 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.

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.

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.”