Playing Hooky From School Isn’t a Crime

The Path to Education Is Redemption, Not Prison

To understand the disturbing connection between San Bernardino schools and prison, consider this: Our school district is one of only two in California with a police force that can arrest students on criminal charges. Over a 16-year span, from the time this wrong-headed policy was enacted in 1997 through 2013, school police in San Bernardino arrested and criminally charged close to 60,000 children. Of those, nearly 250 were under the age of 10.

Many of these children have suffered consequences far beyond the nature of their original transgression. Those who …