County leaders who were trying to measure the effectiveness of two controversial approaches to youth misbehavior—restorative justice and the stationing of police officers away from schools—appeared stymied Monday by a lack of data from Montgomery County Public Schools and the Montgomery County Police Department.
There have been around 2,500 “serious incidents” reported within MCPS for the 2022-23 school year through March 9, according to data shared at a County Council meeting—but so far there’s no breakdown on recidivism rates, the nature of medical calls or student satisfaction with restorative justice exercises, MCPS officials said. County leaders are questioning how well the school district is measuring the success of its response.
The findings were published during a meeting of the County Council’s Public Safety and Education & Culture committees held to discuss community engagement officers (CEOs) and the district’s approach to restorative justice. During the meeting, council members raised concerns about several gaps in information that, if bridged, would help measure the effectiveness of the school district’s restorative justice approach to incident prevention and conflict resolution.
MCPS describes restorative justice as “an approach to building community, self-care and conflict resolution.” The model was adopted in 2019 in response to state-mandated guidelines and has recently come under fire from students and community members who say its implementation has not been effective.
Shauna-Kay Jorandby oversees the restorative justice team at MCPS as the director of student engagement, behavioral health and academics. During the meeting, she said measuring the impact or success of restorative justice can be challenging given that one of its primary goals is prevention.
“For example, we can share how many fights have happened or how many times a student has used disrespectful language,” she said. “However, it’s more difficult to measure how many times they have not.”
Councilmember Sidney Katz (D-Dist. 3) asked if data was available on the recidivism rate for students who go through restorative exercises following an incident. School officials said data is not currently available—nor is there data measuring how students feel conflict resolution was handled by the school district following incidents.
There have been around 2,500 serious incidents reported so far within MCPS for the 2022-23 school year according to data from the school district, and half of those involved a need for medical assistance. When asked by council member Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), MCPS Chief of District Operations Dana Edwards said the school district did not have data immediately available on how many of those calls for medical assistance related to athletic injuries versus other incidents.
Over the current school year, 218 incidents have occurred involving the presence of knives or other weapons, according to Edwards. Over 19% of serious incidents involved the use of drugs or alcohol. Students have recently expressed concern about “bathroom culture” and rampant use of marijuana vapes in bathrooms.
There have also been 100 hate bias incidents reported since the start of the school year, according to school data. Of those, 48% targeted race, 43% targeted religion and 15% targeted the LGBTQ+ community. Ove the 2021-22 school year, 65 such incidents were reported in total. The recent rise of antisemitic acts across the county has been a growing community concern. In early March, Northwood High School closed all outdoor facilities following four antisemitic incidents that occurred on school grounds.
Beginning with the 2021-22 school year, Montgomery County removed police officers from inside schools and replaced the school resource officer (SRO) with community engagement officers (CEO) who are stationed off school grounds but within a close enough range to respond to calls for service.
The police department surveyed some CEOs and found that “most” reported being invited by principals back into high schools, according to information provided in the meeting agenda. Edwards said that some have even been invited back into elementary schools and added that the purpose is to “form relationships” and connect with the school community. Neither MCPS nor the police department could quantify how frequently this happens.
As of March 9, police or CEOs have responded to incidents in schools over 1,100 times this school year. Of those, police have conducted 13 arrests and 15 referrals to the Department of Juvenile Services. When asked by Councilmember Will Jawando (D-At-Large) why committee members were not provided with a breakdown of the arrest data by race or ethnicity, Assistant Police Chief Marc Yamada said the data was available and he did not know why it wasn’t included.
“That was a key measure that we talked about tracking with the school system,” Jawando said. “That’s the whole precipitate of this discussion for many of us.”
Yamada assured Jawando that the department would follow up with the County Council to provide the data.
Committee members expressed a strong desire for follow-up briefings to be held with MCPS and the police department and asked for more detailed data to be provided as soon as possible. Council member Gabe Albornoz (D-At-Large) said he wants to see school representatives included on the next panel discussion about restorative justice as opposed to only central office staff.
“I want to hear more from the folks … who are on the ground, who are experiencing [and] seeing this every day,” he said.
Katz said the next follow-up meeting should also include the council’s Health and Human Services committee.
“As soon as you can get us the information, then we can try to get scheduling together—before June if possible,” he said, reiterating, “As soon as we can get the data and the additional information, it would be helpful to all of us.”
