Promise program gets tougher on troubling students

Amid growing pressure from state officials and local law enforcement, Broward schools are retooling the controversial diversionary program called Promise to address concerns that it has created a culture of leniency in the district.

The Broward School Board plans to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday to discuss changes to the Promise program, which provides alternatives to arrests for students who commit misdemeanors such as marijuana possession, vandalism and petty theft. Students go to an alternative school designed to correct their behaviors.

Students will get fewer chances to repeat the program and law enforcement would be kept in the loop about which students enter the program, under changes the school district is making. Most of the changes appear to have already taken effect, although the School Board may suggest more.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that the Promise program was part of widespread tolerance in Broward schools that allowed children to engage in an endless loop of violations and second chances, creating a system where kids who commit the same offense for the 10th time may be treated like it’s the first.

The program has been the target of critics during the past year, including some family members of Parkland victims, who claim it allows potentially dangerous students to go unnoticed by police. A number of local law enforcement agencies have failed to sign onto the program, saying it restricts the abilities of school resource officers to intervene with problem students. They’ve also complained that the policy is unclear about whether marijuana seized by students must be turned over to police.

“For us, it wasn’t so much the idea of the program, but it was the way it was being administered,” said Albert “Butch” Arenal, police chief for Coconut Creek.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which investigated the murder of 17 staff and students at the Parkland high school, found the program had no direct relevance to the massacre, but the commission still criticized its leniency and the district’s lack of coordination with local law enforcement and the State Attorney’s Office. Gov. Ron DeSantis has asked both the Department of Education and a grand jury to review the Promise program and similar programs in other counties.

The Broward County School District refused to comment for this story, but material posted on the district’s website lists the changes to both the Promise program and student discipline rules.