 Hi, everyone. If you're just joining, my name is Jodi Cohen, and I'm a reporter for ProPublica. My name is Jennifer Smith Richards, and I'm a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and we will be your host today. Welcome to today's session, Ticketed on Campus, How to Investigate Police Ticketing of Students at Your School. As an additional note, this session is being recorded, and a link to the captioned video will be emailed to everyone who registered. A transcript will be available upon request. For those who are new to us, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism, and today's program is in partnership with the Chicago Tribune and the Journalism Education Association. Today, we're going to be taking a closer look at our reporting where we found that Illinois public schools have been working with police to ticket students for misbehavior at school, resulting in municipal fines as high as $750. Now in this special event for student journalists, we'll talk about the public documents that can reveal what's happening inside schools and the best journalistic practices for pursuing the subject thoroughly and fairly. We'll also hear firsthand from a Chicago area high school that use the investigations findings to conduct reporting on its own campus. So we're going to focus today on Illinois, but this practice does exist in other states. So when you report this out in your own community, you may find differences in the way that tickets are issued, the reasons and even the consequences to students who are ticketed. Okay, so if you're reporting on this in Illinois, a good starting point is this database that we built as we reported on this issue. There you'll learn how whether we looked into your school or your district and what we found. So although we did not look at every single high school in the state of Illinois, we did look at schools that represented about 80% of the state's high school enrollment which ended up being a lot of schools. So if you did not examine a school, you'll still find some basic information about how police are involved in student incidents that happen at school. And that that is data that we pulled from a federal data source called the civil rights data collection. That information is very limited. It will tell you how often police got involved at school, and how often students were arrested at the school, but it does not specifically track ticketing by police. Because our job came in and was was so different than what was already provided in federal sources, and it's your opportunity now to tell students and families within your school, the role that ticketing is playing, and you know, keep our reporting going. Sorry about that we're going to go ahead and tell you how we started out reporting on police ticketing at school. We really started with this broad question, what happens when police get involved in discipline at school. We know that there are more police in school than ever before and this was a question that we had. So we learned that one way police participate is by writing students tickets for their misbehavior. The tickets are for violating local ordinances or local laws, usually things like vaping, if you're a minor fighting disorderly conduct or cannabis possession. But we needed to know more how often was ticketing happening for what reasons, who was getting ticketed and what happens to students who get these tickets. Now we answered a lot of these initial questions by using the Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA to get public records. So you may already have the kind of relationship with your school administration or local police where you can just ask for records and data. And if that's the case, that is fantastic. But the more formal way to do this is through FOIA, which requires government bodies to provide the public access to records within a set timeframe. So every state's public records laws are different, but in Illinois, once you file a request for access to records that are kept by the government body, that government has five days to respond to you, either to ask for an extension or provide the records. So if that formal process appeals to you as a student journalist, that's where we recommend that you start. We first filed a FOIA request when we started this reporting with school FOIA officers asking for records of police involvement on campus. And here's what that FOIA request looks like, and we can share that template with you later so that you can use it too. What we learned pretty quickly is that not every school had records specifically about tickets. And so, and that reason is that they're not required to, they're required to keep some information about about police on campus, but not specifically ticketing. So then we turn to the police departments that had jurisdiction over the school we were examining. And in many cases you might know that a school resource officer on your campus is often affiliated with your local police force. So we went to those police departments, and this is what the FOIA looks like to police departments. So, you know, we just like you do things by trial and error sometimes, and over time tweaked our FOIA to become more specific to what we were looking for. We found that we were most successful when we asked the police to provide us records of tickets that were written to juveniles, that's, you know, anybody younger than 18 at the school address. And that was one way that we narrowed down tickets that were written, you know, likely to students, and we'll share this FOIA with you too. We do want to pause and show you the types of records that you might get back and that that we actually did get back. It was a little bit of everything. So we got some, some information and spreadsheets, and sometimes we got sort of long, like printouts of police activity on campus. And in some cases we got actual tickets, and like the copies of tickets themselves. So we took all of those records, and we entered key information from those records into a spreadsheet. So information about the school and about the police agency and how many tickets were issued during the time frame we were looking at, and for what reasons. So all of that got entered into a spreadsheet that we could later use to analyze to answer some of those big questions that we had in the beginning. So once you get all those records or the data, your reporting doesn't end. Maybe you've confirmed that tickets are written to students at your school. A good question to ask next is, is this practice legal in your state. So to understand more about what the law says in Illinois, we're going to refer refer you to two important bits of Illinois school code. The law says that schools can't find students as discipline. And that's what you're looking at right now it says, you know, a student may not issue be issued a monetary fine as a disciplinary consequence. In this case, what's often happening is that school administrators are telling the school resource officers the police officers in your school that a student has broken a local law. And the officer is writing a ticket that has a fine attached to it. So as we reported and as we discovered this, we learned that many people felt that this violated the intent of that law. That's on the screen. We also were able to show that since 2019 state law also has banned schools from alerting police about truan students so that they can be fined. However, we found through all those requests to the schools and the police departments that this is still happening in many districts in Illinois we found it in more than four dozen, and you may find that in yours as well. That would be a very important finding. Once you have collected all this information all this data, or you've used our data, however you decide to go about this, and you have an understanding what the law says is allowed and what isn't. Now, who do you talk to about it. You're going to have to conduct interviews. Who do you interview. In the next stories, we talked to dozens and dozens of students and families and school principals and deans and police officers. And then we also went out to local hearings and courthouses to learn what happens after the ticket is written and saw that firsthand. So we can go to those two, we would actually recommend that most cities and villages in Illinois post the dates and times for their ticket hearings. It's called administrative adjudication on their websites. And sometimes those hearings take place in police stations or at a city hall at your local village hall. The question you can ask if you go there is, is whether students who are ticketed are required to go to the hearing, and whether there's a cost to attend the hearing, which is actually pretty common and can be important for your readers to know. So we're going to share with you now, some of the key things that we found after analyzing the data about tickets and conducting all those interviews. So hopefully these findings and will lead to questions and for you to think about and stories that you might want to do. First, we were able to tell readers why the tickets were written. So this is how we explained it in the story. The words that are up on the screen now we were able to say, you know, how many times students were ticketed for various reasons like you could get all this information from your school and realize there were, there were 18 students that were ticketed for vaping and, you know, the different reasons and really kind of parse that out for the students and families who are reading or listening to your news report. And so definitely look for, you know, why students were ticketed in your school and what the most common reasons were and how often. That's one thing to look for. It was really useful to be able to tell people how often young people were ticketed at school and that's definitely a question that you could take on by doing this reporting, you know, how common is it for students to be ticketed. We were also able to explain how expensive some of the fines for students were. So we found that state law in Illinois allows fines for ordinance violations, which is what, what these local laws are to be as much as $750. And some communities we found do impose fines and penalties of that amount. So you could answer the question, how costly are the fines here in my school. How can students do community service instead. We found that in some in some communities community service was an option instead of paying a fine, and in others, it was not the fine was was required. You could ask, can students who don't pay their, their fines and fees be sent to debt collection, you know, what are the consequences, if they can't pay. These are the things that we explored in our reporting. And sometimes the answers to those questions are written right in your city, or towns, municipal code. So this is, this is another good reporting tip, the municipal code that tells you what your local, what your local laws are, and what the consequences are are often online and searchable. So that's, that's a good, a good place to kind of start to understand and what types of laws are being enforced. So as you pursue this reporting, know that your journalism can really make changes. A few things to tell you about after we published our reporting, which was back in April, the Illinois school superintendent directed the leaders of all of your schools the schools in Illinois to stop working with police to ticket students. So it would definitely be good if you're pursuing the story to find out whether they have listened to the state school superintendent and stopped working with police to ticket students. What other things that happen, the governor and the legislators said they would work to end this practice. So there have been some investigations into schools by the Illinois Attorney General. So those investigations are pending, and the comptroller's office has stopped collecting debts that Jennifer talked about the debt collection that's related to truancy tickets, they will not help your towns collect those debts anymore. And your work could also have really big impact in your communities. So after, after the story published the newspaper in McHenry County Illinois which is a suburb north of Chicago. It has a student newspaper called the McHenry messenger decided to read our story look in the database see how often students were ticketed at their school, and then pursue a story which was really really exciting to see. And now I'm going to ask Dane or back the newspaper advisor and Vanessa Moreno the student who wrote the story to join us on the screen. Hi, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Vanessa is the McHenry messengers news editor and I said, as I said, Dane is the advisor of the student newspaper. Vanessa reported on police ticketing at McHenry in May, and just did a really, really fantastic job. She interviewed a student who had been ticketed, just, you know, a couple weeks earlier. She interviewed the school principal deans and others. Her story really shed light on the practices at her high school, and we're really eager for her to share with you how she approached the story. So, thank you both again for for joining us in this event today. And I think I'll start with you. You were the first one to read the story of the two of you. And I'm wondering what your reaction was after you read the investigation and what you decided to do. Yeah, I feel like I saw it on like Instagram. And I was like, Oh, this looks interesting and kind of swipe past it and then it popped up again and again and I was like fine I just need to sit and read this. And I think I must have gotten, it was a really long article. And I think I must have gotten through like the first several paragraphs. Before I was like, it just got me thinking about how does this impact our school. And so I sort of put it in front of Vanessa and said what do you think of this and she was like this is interesting. And I'll never kind of forget, like we, we had our class at the end of the day. So we both went home and we're both reading it and kind of messaging each other at the same time like, Oh, did you get to this part. Oh, what did you think of that thing. And I think we're both really surprised that McKenry High School was prominently mentioned in the article and we're like wait, what, like so we had our question answered about how does this impact our school. Before we, you know, even got to the end of the article, the article itself had a reference to something that had gone on with a student in our school. And then I'm, there were a couple of little quotes from our principal. And so we were like, a lot of this has already, you know, started this conversation is already happening at our school we need to dig deeper now. So yeah, I mean, and I guess Vanessa can kind of maybe talk a little bit too about how she reacted when she first read the article but I was kind of where it all started. That's a big plug for Instagram for getting our stories on Instagram. Thank you for sharing that I did not know that Vanessa, please share your reactions when when you first were reading the story and the conversation you had with your teacher. So like he said it was the end of the year and he shared it with me, like we read it kind of at the same time. And I was shocked that our school was mentioned a lot actually. So that's when we started like investigating more. Did you know that police were issuing tickets to students at the McKinney there's so people know there are two campuses for the McKinney High School freshman campus and then a campus for 10th through 12th graders. So did you know that police were issuing tickets at the school. No, I actually didn't know police could issue tickets at all. And that was some surprise to like wow, I did not know this was happening. And then you decided to investigate it yourself and and do all the work what what was it like reporting on this topic at your school and in your community. It was kind of difficult. Some people weren't really willing to talk. It was difficult to find students who have been ticketed. I actually had help from a freshman over at the other campus, and she found a list of students that were ticketed. And if I could chime in because one of my jobs like I teach mostly at the freshman campus in fact newspapers the only class I teach at the upper campus. One of the weird parts is we, we found a lot of upperclassmen just didn't want to talk about it at all. We were able to kind of like do a little reporting just by saying who asking the rest of the class who do you know that might have gotten ticketed and then when we got a name we'd ask and they'd be like no, including the student that was featured in the Chicago Tribune from McHenry he just didn't he wanted to put it past him and didn't want to talk about it anymore. So, we actually found I think three freshmen who I mean maybe because they were just a little more naive. Maybe because they were just a little more fired up about their tickets. I think we found about three. And then I did kind of like my background teacher due diligence to see to make sure that they had permission from their parents for us to tell their story. And it's declined. They both said that they don't want it in the article so only one student's parent actually agreed. And that's, that was definitely one of the obstacles for us. An obstacle but also such a such a lesson because you are in the school you know people like, you know, you have access and the ability to, you know, really be on the ground there and talk with people and find out who was affected by something who's, you know, who's really affected by this policy of police ticketing and you, you have insight and access in a way that we really don't. So to be a student journalist and report on your school, you're in a very unique position, and there's, there are just a lot of benefits to that and it sounds like you really, really use those those benefits and, and also use them in a very judicious way, you know, seeking permission from parents and, and all of that so really, really interesting. Dane, were you faced with any pushback or opposition you're the teacher you're the one you're the one, you know, kind of the conduit between the administration and the students, any, any pushback. I will say that I've, I've gotten pushback in my job previously but not for this story so much. And I think that has a lot to do with Vanessa framing this as like an opportunity for, for our school to react and comment, you know, like the school is already broken like it's already out there that our school issues tickets. I don't recall where on the list we were, but I mean, I think we are high ish on the list of how many tickets are being, you know, being handed out to kids. So our school like was not only aware of the practice and not only aware that there is now this article out there, but they were also I feel like Vanessa and I talked a little bit about how do we approach these conversations. But I think she did a really good job at basically just saying what how do you now that this news is out. How do you feel about it what has been the reaction from the community, and, and what are you still what what about this story do you still have to say, you know, because it might have only been a sound bite that was released in the article or so from from the people from our school at least. So she basically gave them a platform to kind of explain themselves. Personally, I think that maybe giving them the microphone so to speak might have also given them an opportunity to say more than they wanted to at times. And they may have revealed a bit more than they intended to by speaking to us, maybe they were a little naive and thinking that a student journalist wouldn't like pick up on some of the nuance of what they're saying. I think I don't think pushback is the right word that we received. I think we got a lot of cooperation. And I think that just has to do with the way Vanessa approached the story. You gave them an opportunity to speak to add nuance or more information and a platform. So as also a good lesson there that other students journalists could take you can, you know, look up in in the database that we gave you the link for earlier and see how many tickets and then use that to go and say look this information is already out there. And now know that that students are ticketed at our school. What can you tell me about this are you still doing this or you know what, you know, why are you doing it and and, you know, give them, give them a chance to talk about it so it's really great. Vanessa, I'm curious while you were, you were reporting on this and interviewing so many people, what did you learn, or what's and also what's really surprised you when you were, you know, talking with people at your school about this. So something surprising was that, for example, the beam he didn't really take this seriously. He was like this is just the media spinning an unfair narrative or something like that. In my article. That was weird because we obviously know that tickets do happen. I was trying to say it was, it wasn't happening or like it this is not no big deal or, you know, what was he, what do you think he was trying to get across to you. Just trying to say that it wasn't like a big deal. I saw that in your story to think you did a good job of providing context to that statement. After your story published have you been able to track any impact from your reporting. Not really. I feel like at times our school doesn't care about things they probably should. Did you hear back from other students or people in in newspaper class. I mean, people from my newspaper class they were really supportive but that's pretty much it. And here too, just to kind of piggyback on what Vanessa said like, I feel like we definitely felt the impact of our story being pushed out there. We've never had a social media response like we got like, we were getting comments from across the country journalism teachers and professors journalists from different corners and stuff. And they were really championing what we said they were commenting on our administrators and their quotes they were commenting on what our students were saying I mean it was pretty, it was kind of a crazy ride for a few weeks. And just to kind of echo what Vanessa said it seemed like it jumped over our community. And that was very frustrating for us like the very people we wanted to respond to this story, either kind of shrugged it off. Or kind of ignored it, and I, you know, I'm, you know, on camera and being recorded so there's only so much I can say on behalf of our school and stuff but I do feel like, to some extent I think our school stayed quiet because they didn't want it to get bigger. They didn't respond to it they didn't retweet it they didn't really want to talk too much about it. And so, I don't think that was surprising. You know we really, we really thought our community would probably be up in arms about it and they didn't. So I do think that is maybe guiding a little bit of what we feel like we might want to do next. Vanessa and I have talked very little but we have asked this question now of like, is our school still doing this. And if they are, what do we do about that as journalists now and, and obviously that's the question I'm asking, you know, Vanessa I've asked Vanessa like, What do you think we should do about this. So that's a conversation that might be coming up to that's really interesting if you decide to try to find out whether tickets are still being issued whether asking them or filing those freedom of information act request that we showed you earlier. In this session. Please let us know what you find because right like what do you do next to how do you kind of keep this going one thing at Republic we definitely keep on stories. And, you know, it's not we don't write one story and, and move on, you know, like it with the price kids pay stories we've written a whole bunch of stories since April related to ticketing in schools so definitely would encourage continued spotlight on this issue especially my Henry had so many, so many tickets. Vanessa, what tips do you have for other high school students hoping to report on this issue. I think like a tip would be to start looking at the database that you had. That's like the first thing I did to confirm that tickets were actually happening. And then just reaching out to people. Is there anything I didn't ask either of you that you'd want to share with the audience. Vanessa and I did talk while we were prepping about this about one thing that we found surprising that we haven't talked about yet. And Vanessa if you want to chime in and talk more about it because this was definitely your adventure. Our student resource officers did not talk to us they refuse to. They, we, we sent emails and then we did Vanessa did I like send you into the hallway to chase after one of them once after they walk past our classroom I don't this seems like something I would do. They we would they, they just didn't want us around we send a photographer to take a picture to try to represent. Like maybe they had some tickets like in their desk or something like that or maybe we could just take a picture of them, and they refused. I found that really surprising that they didn't want to I guess maybe, maybe they, it's not surprising that they didn't want to cooperate but at the same time. These are their tickets. This is their opportunity to explain why and so yeah we thought that was a surprise. Vanessa anything to add to that. I will say that eventually we contacted the police department directly and that worked better. I saw that in your story to. But interesting that you, you know they weren't going to talk to you in in your school that you felt like you would have to chase them down to talk to them and that they weren't accessible. But good for continuing to try to get their point of view. I love that persistence. That's that's another good lesson for for all student journalists. You know, persistence does, does pay off. So we need to sort of pivot now, and kind of turn it over to our q amp a portion. But first of all, thank you so much today and and to Vanessa for giving us this insight into actually, you know, doing this, the story pursuing it on your own as a student journalist. Thank you so much for your work and and so exciting to see both of you here and and explaining how you persevered and kept on the story in your school that's awesome. So before we we completely turn it over to the q amp a portion but we'd like to share a link to our event survey in the chat box so appreciate your feedback if you can fill that out. So cameras for the session are turned off we would love to invite you to use your microphone and ask a question. And to do that just click on the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen, and we'll just hand you the mic. We know that we have a number of classrooms joining our program today, which is fantastic we're so glad you're here, including students at the school that you work times, and from several universities and high schools across the country. Thank you so much for being here. I see we have some questions in the in the chat. And some raised hands. Okay. Sorry about this. Make sure okay Beatrice has a hand raised. Hi, my. Yeah, my name is it should cut Beatrice is as one of our advisors. Oh, my question was. I'm going to file a FOIA request. And they said for a bunch of them they said no responsive records. So, first of all, like, how do you make sure that your request is like valid, and that they have to respond to it instead of responding with the no responsive records. And secondly what kinds of information should we be asking for in these FOIA requests. They're all really good questions and actually you're pointing out something that we encounter all the time, which is you asked for something that you think a government agency has, and then they come back to you and say we don't have any responsive records. So that happens for a couple reasons. One, they really might not keep any record that looks anything like what you need. We had a lot with schools. So we mentioned at the top of the program that we first went to schools and said, please tell us, please give us any records that you have of tickets being issued a school. Well, schools aren't required to keep those specific ticketing records so many of those schools came back to us and said, we don't have any responsive records, and that's why we went to police them. That may be the case that may be why you're you're being told there aren't any responsive records. The other reason you might get that response back is that you simply asked for the records in a way that they're not kept. So we sometimes asked for a lot of information about about tickets that were issued that included things like gender and age and race, or, you know, the address of the school that we were looking for. And sometimes police agencies came back to us and said, we don't have a record that has all that stuff in it. And we would say, we would go back and negotiate with them and say, well, do you have anything that has some of this, some of this information in it. So you may be getting like a very strict response from somebody who's saying well I don't have the record that has everything you asked for in it. So it sort of behooves you to that and like reach out and ask, you know why don't do you not have any records or do you not have any records that has every single thing that I asked for. So I think that's that's just one, one thing to keep in mind as for what you should be asking for. But this is a little bit of trial and error to we would find that asking for a big pile of information sometimes did not help us in the long run. So if we asked for too many very like discrete things. It became not helpful. So being very narrow about what it is you want to see in the record. I think we'll help you. Age was really important, or some sort of indicator of whether it was a juvenile who was being ticketed. The reason for the ticket was very important. Right. And then if there was some sort of fine associated with it with that ticket that also was important. I hope I answered that. Do you have any other things. So should I call them like on the phone with the FOIA that they sent me back, and then just like go through each one and like ask if they have anything. Okay. And then I just had one more question, if that's okay. So if like, like you guys mentioned your school resource officer, didn't want to talk to you. So like, because we still need an opinion and like our police department also hasn't been like as responsive. So do you guys have ways of like, I don't want to say forcing but like, there are ways that we can get around them not being able not wanting to talk to us. I would try as many people as possible I mean I would try the school the people at your school the principal the deans, the sounds like the school resource officers aren't responding I would try to put some if they're not are returning to their schools, try email and emailing your questions, letting them know that you're, you're working on the story that you want to give them make sure that their voices heard that you want to know their point of view. You want to give them a chance to respond. So I would, you know, just try to, you know, talk to them email them let them know that that this is their opportunity to share their point of view. I definitely endorse calling the FOIA officer walking through what documents they do have, and just trying to get a handle of the language that they use and you know explain to them. I mean play officers are, you know can be very helpful. This is my, this is my goal this is the information I'm trying to get these are records I'm trying to get, can you explain to me how you keep them just kind of work with them and have a conversation. You know, public bodies for your officers don't need to answer questions right so you can say you know they're not going to. They're not obligated to answer your questions, but you can take those questions to the people who have the answers, the public officials and say, you know, not under FOIA but just because you know you are a public official who should have some accountability. I'm a reporter I'd like to know the answers to these questions. Let me tell you one thing that sometimes works. This is pro tip. When we get close to publishing a story, and we've had difficulty getting someone to respond to questions that we have, or have a conversation with us. We do a thing out of fairness. It's called a no surprises letter, and we reach out to them and say, Hey, this is, you know we've been we've been reporting about this we've been trying to reach you. We've been writing a story. The story is going to say the following things. And this is sort of your last chance to respond to that and tell us you know and be heard. You know we work very hard to explain to people what what the story is is going to say and be transparent about what the reporting process and what's coming. And that kind of notice that hey the story is coming it's going to publish and, and this is what it's going to say it's going to say that you are not commenting on this. Sometimes that does sort of prompt someone to call you up and say okay fine, you know, I'll, I'll explain this. So it's just it's good to maybe give a last reminder before your story publishes to that person. You know the police chief or whoever that that the story is coming and that they have one more opportunity to respond before it publishes. Thank you so much that was really helpful. One more piece of advice is that we're super lucky today that we have the student press law center in attendance as well. They're an organization I have admired since I was in Vanessa shoes as a high school journalist and, you know, actually used to dream day of working there. But they are here watching today and just want to remind all the student journalists who are listening today that they are very happy to assist student journalists in working on their FOIA requests responding to issues that come up. So if you run into a wall with your FOIA request, you know you can reach out to the student press law center, you know their websites very accessible and they will their job that what they, they do is help student journalists just like you so shout out to the student press law center and the work that they do and, and reach out to them for help with your FOIA challenges. I saw that Brian's hand was raised, Brian we can unmute you and you can ask your question please. Sure thing. Thank you for doing this. My question was, how can someone reporting on this issue humanized ticketing data, when you may not have a student connection or family connection at a school district. You know a lot of times this data is protected because of FERPA, you know on the specifics. So what strategies do you guys have on connecting those dots. So I had a question and somebody actually mentioned this in the chat earlier. They wanted if we if we got student names from police and the answer is no. Brian real quick, what, who are you with. I'm an alum of the emerging reporter program, but I work for St. Louis public radio that NPR in St. Louis, Missouri. Amazing. Great. Thank you. Thanks for being here. One way that we really got access to the most students was simply by showing up at the ticket hearings. So for many communities, they require students to show up and go before a hearing officer or sometimes an actual judge to, to kind of like plead their case or defend themselves if they want to defend themselves against the ticket. And so Jodi and I went all over the state to, I don't know, more than 50 of these hearings, and we were there. We would often encounter, you know, a dozen or more students. Inevitably when you start talking to one student, they know a couple more their cousin or their older sister have been ticketed. And so once you start making those connections with with students who are, you know, out experiencing the ticketing process. And we meet more and more and more. Thank you so much. I think we had a hand raised from Melissa, Melissa Sigmund. Hi, thanks for answering my question. I'm the director of the National Center for juvenile justice so I'm not a journalist but I'm always interested and have talked with the pro public of folks before. I was sort of wondering if the, the youth journalists doing this, you know, story in their school had had an opportunity or thought to talk to reach out and do interviews with local advocates, because this topic of fines and fees in juvenile courts is a big issue where the reform around the country is trying to get courts to reduce or eliminate the use of fines and fees. And I bet a lot of folks aren't real, you know, work until this story of ProPublica came out they weren't thinking about the schools or the ticketing by, you know, by officers, and that often is, you know, a step removed from real state juvenile court. And those advocates could have a lot of good perspective could perhaps connect you with with other youth, and certainly could help engage with, you know, more reform efforts to sort of push, push things a little further to try to end it. We didn't reach out to advocates. This story was kind of rushed. It was the end of the year. It was like finals week, but we would probably do something now. We would probably continue this story now and reach out to advocates. Yeah, I mean, certainly you can reach out to me at ncjj.org to get if you want to get in touch we know some advocacy groups in Illinois, and others that are more national. Another thing, you know, the last question about, you know, sort of getting other information and finding things out, I would be curious to know what was in the either contracts or guidance manuals for the SROs in the schools. Are they kind of being told to do this, or is it happening more informally through, you know, administrators or just, you know, they're trying to make money for the town. Vanessa did you get the vibe I kind of don't forget did you get the vibe that the police were like not telling the SROs that they couldn't comment wasn't was that the case in our in our community. That was the case they couldn't talk about the ticketing. Yeah, so I don't think it came from the school. I don't know what I'm thinking of is there, you know, not every place and fact probably not most places when there is a police department brought into a school for you know to be SROs. There's sometimes, you know, sort of a contract that says this is these are the things you are to do. This is the boundaries between your involvement in our discipline and school personnel's involvement. And so I'd be interested to see whether the actions about whether to you know, is there the statement of what the law is, is there you know the do's and don'ts of it, or is that absent from the document or is there no such document at all which could be another whole issue altogether. That's a great question, Melissa. We, when we first did our first pass through asking schools what records they had one of the things we asked for, where any memorandum of understanding documents that they had, which will be the contracts that Melissa's talking about that would spell out like what are the duties of the SRO in school. The best of my recollection, and Jodi can correct me if she remembers something different, is that we never saw a mention of issuing tickets as part of the SRO's duty. I probably would say things like, you know, it's, it's the officer's job to enforce the law. Right. So that that was sometimes, there's my teenager that would sometimes be in the MOU, but we very rarely saw something, I think that was like an explicit directive to, you know, to issue students, or even a prohibition, even though there were places in Illinois that had directed the SRO in their school, you know, not to ticket. One thing that was in the MOUs frequently was that they would share information so that the school administration and the police would share information about students so that goes to you know the administrators finding a school dean being alert, being alerted that there's a vape pen on the floor in the hallway, and then they go and tell the school resource officer, you know, student drop the vape pen in the hallway and then the police officer goes and writes that student is vaping. So these contracts or these MOUs do outline that the, there can be sharing of information about students which is relevant to this issue of disciplining students with police tickets. Again something that's not, you know, tracked by the state or by the US Department of Education Civil Rights data collection so, you know, again why why we thought it was important to really do a deep dive into education and ticketing because it is this kind of black hole of information that you, like even Vanessa in her school did not know that police were handing out tickets to students at her school and she's a student in the school, which is not uncommon I think unless you're directly impacted affected by this you're ticketed, you might not know that police in your school who, you know, are in the hallways are, you know, giving students these fines. Yeah, it's so true. Thank you very much Melissa for bringing up MOUs and for the good questions I think Maxina has a question coming up. I am not Maxina I'm her mother Clarissa, and we're in California so Maxina could not attend this meeting because she's still in school. So I'm here for her. But I am sorry there's two things. The first thing is that I am extremely interested in knowing what your advice is on how Vanessa can pursue this topic with her school and try to get some sort of positive outcome where, as Verna mentions that ticketing and ticketing in the schools is more or less a school to prison pipeline. So I, you know, I'm extremely interested in learning about that the second thing is that for my high school school, she really would love more of these kind of webinars. And so, as a journalist in learning how to find information for investigative reporting. So that's, we would just love to have more of that. So, thank you, you can go ahead and mute me. I mean, put me back on mute. Thank you for being here on behalf of your daughter that is that's dedication. I love to hear it. So good question about like how to move forward. So for for Vanessa I'm for the student journalist here in Illinois. As I mentioned earlier that the Illinois State school superintendent sent pretty strongly worded directive to all of your schools all the leaders of your schools and districts to say, essentially stop doing this that if, if you as a school are allowing the police to to participate in school level discipline that you're advocating your responsibility. I mean that's a pretty serious directive it's out there on the internet you can read it we wrote about it as well. So I think like a first stop to moving forward with the story is simply to go back and ask, are you still doing this. Our police still writing tickets and in my school, even though the state superintendent has said, you know, to knock it off. And, you know, in California, it reminds me, I think that there was ticketing going on in the Los Angeles schools for a while and there was some some movement to pull back on at least some portion of ticketing and and and practices for at least some age groups of students. So maybe it's worth going back and saying, did, did they stopped ticketing as well did they keep their, their promise to to curb ticketing. That's, that's like a good first story that that you could do, moving forward. And it sounds like Vanessa is kind of going down that pathway. Jodi, do you have other ideas. No, I think that's a great first step. Ask them if they're still doing it, try to get the data or just, you know, either ask them or through a records request to find out the school year how many tickets have been issued. I found that your schools use your contacts, you know, your fellow students your classmates and and try to see I mean people talk to each other and see if they're still still ticketing and for what reasons and especially are they still ticketing for truancy. Not especially really are they ticketing for anything but as we discussed truancy is, you know, they're really, you know, it's blatantly illegal to do that so you know, ask the questions try to try to find out if it's still happening. Melissa put a link in the chat about the court fees. If I could say something about that, it is. There is work being done by advocates in Illinois and estates across the country to try to eliminate fines and fees in juvenile court again that state court different from these ordinance violation tickets. And there are efforts in Illinois as well there was a Supreme Court Task Force that was is looking into that. They should have recommendations soon there's a bill that's been introduced in this in the state house and that is something else that could be worth looking into. So if you're a student or just a journalist in general these efforts to eliminate fines and fees in juvenile court, and it does raise questions of. Okay, if the fines and fees are eliminated in juvenile court but they're still being assessed in these local courts not courts it's like local hearings where these ordinance violation tickets are being given. So how, what does that mean, you know why are students why are young people are going to still have these fines in in these, you know, for these local ordinance violation ticket so it's sort of two different issues but definitely definitely related and there is work being done in Illinois about that. So just a reminder, raise your hand. If you have a question to ask and we'll pass you the mic but in the meantime there's some really good questions in the Q amp a, including a question about beat reporting, and like how you go about, you know, developing a beat covering schools. I love that question, Jodi and I are both, you know, longtime education reporters written a lot about schools, Jodi what what is your hot take on how to really go about developing as a schools reporter. I would say to start talking to people in your school of your student journalists, start meeting people start going to your school board meetings, see what, what issues are on the agenda what are they talking about who is coming to speak comments, go back and read prior prior board meeting minutes from the school board meetings, you know, try going to your city council your local government meetings to and see what's, you know, what, you know, they're, they're talking about how to look at, look at the budget, try to understand the numbers, what's what money is being spent at your school and on what. I think this is actually probably a really good question for Dean and Vanessa to, but you know what what's teacher with the spending on teachers what teacher retention like how what's the look at. I'm just going to keep saying saying things but you know there's so much data out there where you can really look at attendance rates, dropout rates who's taking AP classes advanced classes at your school or their disparities and access to those classes. There's a lot of great guides out there, reporting guides on, you know how to cover the education beat you can, you know, do some googling Education Writers Association, I would recommend joining, and you will get learned so much and get just so much information they offer a lot of free programming as well. So I would start with the Education Writers Association, and, and go from there. There's a little plug for data so so Jodi mentioned that there's a lot of data out there. If you don't already know how to work with Google sheets or Excel. This is your sign to go learn there increasingly is so much data that's produced out of schools that can tell you anything from, you know, like what we're looking at right here. You know, criminal justice issues that are happening in school, all the way to, you know, grades and, you know, and salaries. All of those live in structured data forms so learn how to use Excel learn how to use Google sheets. And I'll also tell you that working a school speed is really about being a busy body and and trying to figure everything out Jodi mentioned in the school board agendas. So I used to go and ask for any presentation like a copy of any thing that was going to be presented in the school board meeting so slides or packets of information or reports. So you can see like the day to day operations like what's going on, you know, in the school that is important enough to be mentioned in the context of a school board meeting. The other thing that will guide you to records that your school district keeps is your district's records retention policy. So most states require government bodies including schools to lay out how long they're going to keep any individual type of record that they make. So that could be that could be personnel information that could be salaries that could be any number of things. But if you go and ask for their records retention policy, what you'll find is a list of all the stuff that they have, and how long they have to keep it and that's a good roadmap for like what records might be available. Do you have anything to add as schools reporters. I am the thing that this question made me think about is kind of different from the actual question so apologies if this goes off the rails bit, but like, you know, our student newspaper the McHenry messenger isn't really doesn't really isn't an doesn't have an education you know, because we're a school paper we just cover what's going on in our community. So it's already kind of an education beat right. So what this question made me think about is like what Vanessa was really doing here is more of an investigative kind of beat like translate that question into something else that might be relevant for members of our audience is how do you start investigating in a student newspaper where a lot of what you cover is who won what basketball game. And what's what good Netflix show is worth reviewing right we I think what we've had some success with is really annoying administrators for data like we haven't done a lot of FOIA requests, but we do have relationships with administrators to get those numbers of all kinds of things like we have existing relationships, I have colleagues, you know, who are people that can run numbers for us and stuff. So, I like to think of that question, a little bit and like how can you get someone to start doing investigations and I think we've had some conversations about data. I think that if you have a student or you are a student who really loves looking at numbers and data, and who isn't afraid to ask, like, send cold call emails to people, or knock on office doors and request things directly. It's really hard to say no to a student when you're an administrator right. Like that's I think a really easy entry into becoming kind of starting an investigations section of your student newspaper, or starting like an investigations beat. And then the data can come from other places later, but you might as well mind the data where you can get it pretty easily and I know that probably puts you, I know you guys are talking about like how it's hard for you where the, you know, students are the boots on the back in the schools it's harder for you guys to get that data. But for students it might even be a little easier, just to be able to like, you know that one, that one assistant principal that came and chatted with you in the hallway you can be like by the way, you know, what, what are the, what's the truancy rate look like this year and what kind of data do you have on that. So anyway I feel like I'm talking a bit too long but I figured that might be a, that's what I was thinking about that question. I agree you don't need permission to go to your school, you get, you have the past you can go into your school every day we, we can't. You are there you are on the ground. One thing that might translate to doing investigative journalism at the high school level is something, you know, we, we do this at ProPublica a lot is where we do what's called a call out like we ask people to respond to, you know, our question like we want more about a certain topic, and we get, you know, people right in and respond and, and they become sources and, and it's how we, we, you know, learn more about an issue. You could always try that to, you know, ask, you know, in, you know, kind of a call out way a form or like, you know, you're, of course you see students in the hallways and teachers and administrators all day long, but you know they could, you know, maybe submit some ideas of what they want to see investigated what is important to them what their concerns are at school right now and that could provide some, some leads as well, if you want to do. Please. We have a lot of success that way so that kind of, again, between students and between the student publication and, and the rest of the schools, you know, population, like you might have a lot of success with students that way within, you know, like a student context. Vanessa is currently working on a story where we found some sources, quite a, you know, a good handful of sources. That way, it's kind of, it's about a different subject like opioid, like crisis in our community and stuff. And we had some people reach out to us that way where I mean you can't just walk up to a kid and be like have you lost a loved one to opioids. So this is a way for students to kind of communicate a little bit more personally one on one. Those are great, great tips for everybody who's listening and we've actually had a lot of questions in the chat about how to become an investigative reporter. And you know I always tell people that I talked to you about you know how to become an investigative reporter that it really begins with just curiosity and reading investigations and seeing what went into them, and that that will be really instructive. That will be Jodi's investigations. Vanessa, you're well on your way to becoming an investigative reporter you're doing investigations as a student journalist. Can you, you know, just tell us a little bit about how, how you're doing that like what are your tips for learning how to do this type of work. My tips are just like you said to read investigations to learn from them, then to just send emails to everyone for all your sources and keep annoying them until they answer. That's fantastic curiosity is everything right. Thank you so much Vanessa thank you for your thoughts and thank you, thank you Dane. It's been so much fun, but that's our time for today so I want to thank Dane and Vanessa for their time with us today as well as our audience for joining us and for those awesome questions that was that was so great. Thank you also to today's partner, the journalism education Association. So again this event has been recorded so you'll receive an email with the full video of today's event, as well as some information that some of you have asked for. We will also post this recording on the ProPublica YouTube channel, and from all of us here with the ProPublica and the Tribune thank you so much for joining us and have a great rest of your evening. We'll see you next time.