ACLU calls on Pittsburgh Public Schools to cease summary citations for students

PITTSBURGH — Advocates are calling on Pittsburgh Public Schools to cease issuing summary citations for students, arguing that the practice is ineffective and discriminatory.

In a letter to School Board President Gene Walker, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania urges the district to permanently end the practice. A moratorium is currently in place but is set to expire at the end of January.

The letter states that “there is no evidence that summary citations reduce student misbehavior” and that they rather “push students into the criminal legal system for minor infractions.”

Ghadah Makoshi, an Advocacy and Policy Strategist for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and a parent of two children in the district, told Channel 11 that summary offenses also tend to come with burdensome fines and can remain on a student’s record for several months after turning 18.

She further argues that summary citations are disproportionally issued to Black students. The ACLU letter states that more than half of the PPS student population is Black (53 percent) and “they account for over 75 percent of all students involved in incidents that lead to a summary citation.”

The letter claims that summaries can be issued for offenses as minor as spraying silly string on a car, however, Walker told Channel 11 that historically they have been issued for more serious offenses, for instance in cases of theft or assault.

He agrees that there is a disparity between discipline for Black students and white students, and calls it an issue seen “across the country.” However, he isn’t so sure that summary citations are ineffective in every case.

“I think that’s a case-by-case thing,” Walker said. “For some students, that type of discipline will cause them to think differently next time. For others, it won’t, so it’s really hard to put a blanket statement on it like that, at least from my perspective.”

In terms of what the district could consider as an alternative type of discipline, he said: “I think that’s the question we’re trying to answer, which is, ‘how do we ensure that our schools are as safe as possible for our students and that they are held accountable for behavior that doesn’t belong in our schools?’”

We asked Makoshi what she’d like to see instead of summary citations.

“It’s the same thing that we have been recommending for many years now, which is to invest in more social workers and counselors, to do more proactive things,” she said. “A lot of what PPS does is very reactive and it could address the problem before it even begins.”

The ACLU’s letter claims that the current practice of issuing summaries “violates federal civil rights law,” in that schools are legally required to protect kids from “discriminatory school discipline.”

The organization spells out several suggested remedies, from expanding “programming on restorative justice” to engaging key stakeholders in the “process of discipline reform.”

Walker said that he doesn’t expect the moratorium to be extended, but said that the board and a policy committee are working to revise the part of the student Code of Conduct that includes the citations provision. He said the board could be reviewing a revised plan, and potentially voting on it, in the coming days.

“This is a difficult thing to deal with,” he said. “I wish there was a clear and easy answer to make it right, but we’re doing all that we can from a school board perspective in coordination with the district to make sure that the policy we come up with is the best we can.”

A district spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment at the time this article was published.

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