Progressive Voices

Elected officials love to say they are "for the children." Unfortunately, too often this supposed concern seems to be reserved mostly for happy, healthy, and well-adjusted kids. 

A case in point is Governor Perdue's recent proposal to open up juvenile records to probation officers. Though promoted as a way to provide probation officers with the full history of the adult offenders they are supervising, the proposal is as serious threat to confidentiality of juvenile records. Except in rare cases, it's hard to see how knowing that a probationer stole from the local convenience store or got busted with a joint as a teen should dramatically affect the way he or she is supervised by a probation officer as an adult.

Similarly, legislators are also considering whether to adhere to a punitive federal law that would require juvenile offenders to be placed on the adult public sex offender registry.  Almost all juveniles charged with violent sex offenses are already transferred to adult court. If a teen has been allowed to remain under juvenile jurisdiction, there is a good reason. Subjecting that child to public registry will not help the public or the child. 

If state officials are truly serious about helping children during the 2009 session of the General Assembly, here are three proactive proposals that merit their attention.

The first opportunity is the "Healthy Youth Act." This bill requires that all public schools teaching grades seven through nine offer two tracks for sexuality education - abstinence only until marriage or comprehensive sexuality education. Parents would be able to decide which track in which to enroll their child.

North Carolina has never risen out of the bottom ten states when it comes to teen pregnancy rates. In 2007, over 20,000 pregnancies were reported in young women aged 10 to 19.  Estimates put the cost of unplanned pregnancy to the state at over $300 million dollars per year. Meanwhile, in 2006, North Carolina was rated 5^th for number of reported cases of HIV infection, 10^th for the number of reported Chlamydia and syphilis cases, and 8^th for the number of gonorrhea cases. Clearly, the state's current "abstinence only" curriculum is not working. Legislators have the opportunity to try something new to help kids in this state make healthy decisions for a lifetime.

A second child-friendly proposal is the "School Violence Prevention Act." This measure, commonly known as the "anti-bullying bill," would create a statewide definition of bullying and harassing behavior for all schools. The bill includes a list of enumerated categories of students most at risk of bullying and most prone to negative outcomes because of bullying that includes race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. 

During the 2007-08 legislative session, lawmakers clashed over whether the categories ought to be included. The Senate stripped out the categories and the House refused to go along. The bill ultimately died. Let's hope the Senate comes to its senses and that the bill does not suffer the same fate again this year. Children who are bullied and harassed are more likely to miss school, attempt suicide, and some even bring weapons to school in retaliation against their harassers.

Lastly, the legislature is considering a bill called the "Parent & Student Educational Involvement Act."  This bill would standardize what information schools must provide to parents when their child faces a long-term suspension - including informing parents of their right to appeal the recommendation of suspension through an impartial hearing. 

Parents are quite often the best advocates that children have, but they cannot assert their rights and help their children if they do not know what their rights are. Students who are suspended are three times more likely to drop out of school and many students on long term suspension end up in the juvenile justice system, or if they are 16 or above, the adult correctional system. 

Studies show that one in ten children in North Carolina (and more than half of African American male students) is suspended. During the 2004-2005 academic year, more than 150,000 students were suspended in North Carolina, missing close to one million class days combined. Perhaps if someone had been asked to reconsider the punishment some of that learning time could have salvaged.

In the midst of a crippling recession that has greatly reduced state revenues, legislators would do well to abandon the costly and ineffective "get tough" approach of treating juveniles as adults. Instead, they should adopt the "get smart" approach embodied in these three, no-cost proposals for reducing teen pregnancy and disease, limiting violence and keeping kids in school.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Progressive Voices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.