Some kids at Philadelphia’s juvenile detention center get no education at all, advocates say. That’s illegal.
“Students at the PJJSC have an unequivocal right to access education that cannot be denied simply due to their involvement with the juvenile justice system,” an Education Law Center lawyer said.
The Philadelphia School District and the Pennsylvania Department of Education are denying access to education to students with disabilities at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center in defiance of federal law, a state administrative complaint filed this week alleges.
The center, in West Philadelphia, houses young people awaiting trial and those who have been sentenced but are awaiting beds in secure state facilities. The district operates a school inside the center.
Though all young people placed at the center are entitled to an education, they are denied access to that when first admitted, sometimes for up to a month, according to the complaint, filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s special education bureau by the Education Law Center.
“Advocates and students have reported over 20 students sleeping on rubber mats in dirty, overcrowded rooms for weeks at a time,” the complaint says. “While they are being ‘processed’ in this unit, they are not receiving any education services.”
Once processed, young people at the center have erratic access to instruction, the complaint says. Though the facility has classrooms, the Education Law Center said, students are sometimes kept from them for disciplinary reasons, and entire groups of young people are sometimes forced to stay on their units with worksheets slid under their doors but little-to-no access to teachers. So they must try to learn the material on their own, the complaint said — some are unable to do the work at all.
Federal and state law requires parents to have the ability to participate in educational planning for students with disabilities but the center often does not provide them with the information they need to be able to do so, the complaint says.
“Students at the PJJSC have an unequivocal right to access education that cannot be denied simply due to their involvement with the juvenile justice system,” Ashli Giles-Perkins, an Education Law Center lawyer, said in a statement. “In one case, a 17-year-old student with significant disabilities received no education at all during his time at the PJJSC and was not even enrolled in school.”
Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district, said it does not comment on legal matters.
Students of color are most often affected by issues at the juvenile justice services center because of systemic racism, said Giles-Perkins.
“Young people in the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania — whether in publicly or privately run facilities — simply cannot be deprived of their right to an education, yet that is precisely what is happening here, and it must be remedied,” Giles-Perkins said. “Decades worth of research and student advocacy tell us that this lack of education leads towards dropout, inadequate employment and housing, and deeper involvement in the criminal justice system. Young people at the PJJSC need more support and services, not less.”
A ‘larger system breakdown’
Large numbers of students placed at the center — nearly half — require special education services. But many don’t receive them, according to the complaint.
Though the complaint specifically addresses JJSC, it notes a “larger system breakdown”: The district lacks systems for identifying young people eligible for special education services and providing those services, as required by federal law that guarantees those with disabilities access to a “free and appropriate public education.”
The Education Law Center seeks changes in policies, as well as monitoring and oversight to ensure that students get the education they deserve as required by law.
Long-held concerns
Advocates have been raising alarms for more than two years about both the conditions at the center and the amount of time young people spend awaiting state placements in more long-term facilities — time that, unlike in the adult system, is not counted toward their sentences.
The facility is not designed for long-term stays, and is not licensed to provide any therapy or treatment. Advocates have described a climate of violence there, heightened by frustrated young people in overcrowded spaces with limited programming.
In 2022, the city sued the state Department of Human Services, saying it had failed in its duty to promptly take adjudicated youth into custody to serve their sentences. By late last year, there were 212 young people in a facility licensed for 184, and some teens were sleeping on the floors of overcrowded cells or in what was supposed to be an office area. The city asked a judge to hold the state in contempt, but dropped that request after the population fell below the licensed maximum capacity.
The state’s solutions to curbing that crowding also have raised alarm among advocates. One plan was to send young people to a facility in Texas. Another option, outlined in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s budget proposal this year, would place young people in a refurbished unit on the grounds of the State Correctional Institution Phoenix, a maximum-security men’s prison.