W-B Area counters assertions

WILKES-BARRE – Wilkes-Barre Area Superintendent Jeff Namey said allegations that school officials have been too quick to refer cases to juvenile court in order to rid themselves of troublemakers is “absolutely not true,” at least not in his district.

The manner in which school officials have handled offenses has come under scrutiny as part of the wide ranging probe being conducted by the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, a panel that was formed to investigate the county’s juvenile justice system following the arrests of former judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan on corruption charges.

Several witnesses who appeared before the commission during a two-day hearing this week spoke of how school officials praised Ciavarella, the count’s long time juvenile judge, for his “get tough” policy that resulted in significantly higher placement rates.

Two of those witnesses, Senior Berks County Judge Arthur Grim, who was appointed by the state Supreme Court to review Ciavarella’s cases, and Basil Russin, the county’s chief public defender, questioned whether school districts had done enough to resolve cases outside of court.

In his testimony Monday, Grim said he felt school officials supported Ciavarella’s policy without giving thought to “what it really meant” for juveniles – many of whom ended up in out-of-home placement for minor offenses based on Ciavarella’s zero tolerance for offenses committed at school.

“They would immediately pick up the phone and call police because they knew . . . if they got in front of a get-tough judge, the troublemaker would be out of their hair,” Grim told the commission.

Namey said Wednesday he can’t speak for other districts, but officials within the Wilkes-Barre Area have always thoroughly reviewed every case and, with rare exception, only referred those that involved serious crimes, such as drugs, weapons or assaults.

“We petitioned 25 students to juvenile court in all of last year. That’s out of 6,800 students,” Namey said.

Namey said Brian Lavan, the district’s director of police operations and security, said the district takes extensive steps to resolve matters without filing criminal charges.

For instance, if two students are involved in a fight, the district will call the students and their parents in to analyze what happened. In most instances the matter will be resolved with in-school discipline and a referral for counseling, they said.

In most instances such a case would only land in juvenile court if one of the students suffered a serious injury that required medical treatment, Lavan said. Even then, police might forgo filing criminal charges if the victim in the case did not wish to pursue the matter.

“Sometimes a parent will say I’m happy with the discipline in school and don’t want to go further. We go by their wishes. We’re not going to force a kid to testify against another kid,” Lavan said.

Contacted Wednesday, Russin said he did not mean to disparage school officials as a whole. But he does believe some districts were too eager to refer cases for criminal prosecution that could have been handled with less intrusive measures.

“Instead of handling it as an interdisciplinary matter, such as in-school suspension, they’d call police and it would go to juvenile court,” Russin said. “I don’t know what districts did this. I’m sure some did and some didn’t . . . It just seemed the amount of cases coming from schools was out of proportion.”

Russin said he believes many of the schools have since changed their philosophy. He did not have statistics readily available Wednesday, but said he believes the number of referrals from schools have decreased.

Namey and Lavan said Wilkes-Barre Area remains committed to doing what’s best for all parties – the school, student offender and any victim of the offense. There are instances when that may require the filing of criminal charges, but typically that’s a last resort.

“If an officer gets called to an incident at school, he’ll investigate if it warrants an arrest. A whole bunch of stuff occurs rather than just saying ‘We’re taking the person to juvenile court’,” Lavan said.

“I just know we’re going to continue to do what we need to do to keep our schools safe for students and teachers,” Lavan added.