School Police Should Stay Out of Discipline, Organization Says

Yesterday's first-of-its-kind federal guidance on school discipline included warnings to school district leaders that school resource officers are too frequently pulled into routine disciplinary matters, an action that can spark unnecessary interactions between students and the criminal justice system and lead to overly harsh penalties for nonviolent issues, leaders of the U.S. departments of Education and Justice said. Civil rights groups say the issue, along with overly broad zero-tolerance policies, are major contributors to the "school-to-prison pipeline."