Kansas bill would drain funding that helps steer kids out of criminal justice system, advocates say

The One Heart Project works with kids in the criminal justice system.

The group provides counseling, mentorship and job training to help them develop social-emotional skills to create “healthy relationships that they need to navigate life successfully,” said the group’s founder and CEO, Steve Riach.

They are pretty good at what they do.

Riach said recidivism among kids before entering his programs typically hovers around 75%. But kids in his Texas, Kansas and Nebraska-based programs average around 18% recidivism, sometimes as low as 12% depending on the location.

Riach said his group is giving people a second chance.

“We’re seeing young men or young women that we’ve worked with 10 years ago who are now married and raising a family,” he said. “They’ve got their own children.”

Funding for programs like the One Heart Project could be murkier in Kansas if reworking certain grant funding passes.

The bill does a handful of things. It increases the amount of time kids can be jailed and allows Kansas to incarcerate more children, despite that jail time makes the behaviors worse.

It allows courts to sentence any child “to the custody of the secretary of corrections for an out-of-home placement” for a first-time offense, misdemeanor crimes and for children as young as 10, the Kansas Department of Corrections said.

But the bill also spends down a pool of grant money designed to fund programs that help kids. That grant money is currently used for dozens of programs, like One Heart Project. That pool of money would be drained to build new congregate care bed facilities. Kansas previously had programs like that, but they only successfully discharged kids 46% of the time.

That worries Brenna Visocsky, campaign director at Kansas Appleseed — a group that lobbies on foster care and youth justice issues. She said Kansas is taking money currently spent on successful programs and spending it on programs that have failed before.

“I never want to say something is impossible,” Visocsky said. “(But) it seems extremely close to impossible that we would be able to stand something up that’s better than what we had before.”

Congregate care facilities close

A by the Kansas Department of Corrections found that the previous congregate care facilities strategy, called Youth Residential Center II, failed to successfully help youth more than half the time. Only 14% of youth who left the facility went to lower-level placements.

YRCII facilities took kids between the ages of 10 and 22 with a history of aggressive, abusive, impulsive and other high-risk behavior. The 24-hour facilities were group homes that were supposed to teach children social skills, decision-making and addressing underlying problems. These facilities were supposed to get children back into the community.

Kansas then shifted to its current grant funding model where kids get treatment in their community.

Visocsky said YRCII facilities failed because they cost too much, failed too often, took kids out of their homes and didn’t offer enough therapeutic services. It’s possible the new program could do better, but Visocsky said she’s worried there isn’t enough money to fund quality programming.

The pool of grant money would completely run out by 2028, KDOC said.

Kansas lawmakers are more optimistic about the new proposal.

The bill passed with bipartisan support in the House and mostly along party lines in the Senate. It has a veto-proof majority. Foster care agencies and police are pushing for the bill, saying high-risk youth who are a danger to other kids are ending up in foster care.

Kristalle Hedrick, a former social worker and CEO of the Children’s Alliance, told lawmakers during the legislative process that this bill will strengthen prevention services.

Nonprofits who received juvenile justice money from Kansas say there isn’t enough money being spent to help kids up front, and some are seeing cuts to other services that could help kids, like sports leagues.

Hedrick said this bill creates treatment that is sorely needed. Some kids end up in youth detention while others need services at home. The state doesn’t have enough of the middle tier of treatment for kids who need something more but not too restrictive.

This does that.

“This bill supports a more flexible continuum that allows youth to receive the right level of care at the right time – particularly youth who present with complex behavioral needs but do not belong in either detention or foster care alone,” Hedrick said. “A stronger continuum improves outcomes (while) reducing reliance on costly, high-acuity placements.”

Social-emotional services

Moses Wyatt Jr. works with Jegna Klub, a nonprofit in the Kansas City area that got grant money from the state.

Wyatt said successful programs help kids build a brighter future and address social-emotional learning. That’s what his group does.

Jegna Klub teaches kids about multimedia production, like audio and video editing. It has podcast studios, partners with schools to broadcast sports games, and gets kids on the radio. Wyatt said it builds skills for kids thinking about getting into broadcasting, radio, TV, movies, journalism or any similar field.

He said kids need to be optimistic about the future because if they aren’t, they don’t care about their present. That’s why skill building is so important. But they won’t succeed unless they can process their emotions and react to situations differently, Wyatt said.

“Some of them can’t even name or understand their emotions,” he said. “I’m angry. I’m upset. I’m sad. I’m depressed. Like you got to be able to name that.”

Wyatt said he doesn’t think any kid is too high-risk for help. He said the highest-risk children need the most help.

Riach, with One Heart Project, still remembers when the retaining wall at his house needed work. One of the workers who came to fix it was a former One Heart kid. Juan had been incarcerated, he never knew his father and got into trouble.

But then he graduated from the One Heart program and was married with kids. He served as a mentor to his brother — who also spent time locked up and worked at the same company as Juan.

Juan told Riach that he never knew his dad, but that will be different for his kids. This was out in Texas, but the grant funds One Heart received helped them expand to Sedgwick County.

Without the funds, One Heart wouldn’t be in Kansas. If those funds weren’t available, “a whole bunch of kids’ lives would not have been transformed, and that would be tragic,” he said.

Future congregate care beds

The bill was amended in the Senate, so both chambers will need to agree to a final version before it’s sent to the governor.

Sen. Stephen Owens, a Republican representing , said he’s concerned about the youth justice money being emptied, but the proposed bill isn’t the problem.

Money sat in the youth justice fund for years, and prevented groups from being able to use it. In past years, the money was sent to the general fund to be spent on whatever the legislature wanted.

Future legislatures could always add back more money to the grant program, and the youth justice fund is just one of many sources of funding for crime prevention.

“If it is the will of the legislature and the governor to deplete this fund, I would much prefer it be utilized in ways (the bill proposes) because then it is at least being used to help juveniles,” Owens said. “Sweeping it to the general fund does nothing for the juvenile justice population in Kansas.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Throw parents in jail. 

Chronic absenteeism nearly doubled — to about 30% — the year after the pandemic shuttered classrooms, and of more than 1 million Americans. Student attendance rates have improved by just a few percentage points since the federal public health emergency expired nearly two years ago, a reality that’s been dubbed “Education’s long COVID.” 

But Johnson, a Republican district attorney representing three counties , said the persistent absences have nothing to do with the pandemic and instead are because “we’re going too easy on kids” and parents have been given “an excuse not to be accountable.” 

Since Johnson was elected in 2022 on a campaign promise to enforce Oklahoma’s , he’s forced dozens of students and parents into hasty court appearances and, on several occasions, put parents behind bars in the hope it will compel their children to show up for class.

Lawmakers nationwide have taken a similar approach, including in Indiana, Iowa and West Virginia, where new laws leverage the legal system to crack down on student absences. 

“We prosecute everything from murders to rape to financial crimes, but in my view, the ones that cause the most societal harm is when people do harm to children, either child neglect, child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic violence in homes, and then you can add truancy to the list,” Johnson said. 

“It’s not as bad, in my opinion, as beating a child, but it’s on the spectrum because you’re not putting that child in a position to be successful,” continued Johnson, who has dubbed 2025 the “

Since the pandemic, policymakers have taken on a heightened role in addressing persistent student absences, and lawmakers nationwide have proposed dozens of bills this year to combat chronic absenteeism, typically defined as missing 10% of school days in an academic year for any reason. Such efforts have fallen broadly into two camps: incentives and accountability. have taken a similar approach to Johnson’s, imposing fines and jail stints for missed seat time. Other efforts have focused on addressing the root causes of chronic absenteeism, like homelessness, and have sought to draw kids to campuses with rewards. 

In Hawaii, for example, pending legislation seeks to entice student attendance with the promise of . In Detroit, where 75% of students were chronically absent last year, the district employs both the carrot and the stick: handing out $200 gift cards to 5,000 students with perfect attendance while warning those with an extremely high number of absences that they can be held back a grade in K-8 or made to repeat classes in high school.

In Oklahoma, where parents can be jailed for up to five days and fined $50 each day their child is absent from school without an excuse, proposed legislation would let schools off the hook. 

For years, Oklahoma schools have received poor grades for chronic absenteeism, one metric the state uses to gauge school performance. If approved, would strike chronic absenteeism from the state accountability system, a change officials said is necessary because it’s the responsibility of parents — not principals and teachers — to get kids to class. 

Schools in Oklahoma “have very little control over whether or not a kid gets to school,” Rep. Ronny Johns, a Republican from Ada, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. Ada, the county seat of Pontotoc County, is ground zero for Johnson’s truancy initiative, an effort that Johns, a former school principal, said should be replicated statewide. 

“We can encourage them to get their kids to school and everything,” Johns said. “But in the end, parents have got to get their kid up and get them to school.”

‘A shared responsibility’

The , collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2022-23 school year, found that some 13.4 million students — nearly 28% — missed 10% or more of the academic year. In a majority of states, chronic absenteeism has shown marginal improvements since its peak. Nationally, chronic absenteeism reached an all-time high in the 2021-22 school year of nearly 30%. Pre-pandemic, the national rate was about 15%. 

Some states like Colorado and Connecticut have seen substantial improvements in absenteeism, the data show. In others, including Oklahoma, since 2021-22. In 2023, nearly a quarter of Oklahoma students were chronically absent, according to the federal data. 

among Native American, Pacific Islander, Black and Hispanic students, as well as those who are English learners, in special education or live in low-income households. 

Hedy Chang, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, said the key to solving chronic absenteeism is to address the underlying problems that make kids absent in the first place. The California-based nonprofit focused solely on improving student attendance identifies a range of , including student disengagement, boredom and unwelcoming school climates. Caregivers’ negative education experiences are a factor, according to the nonprofit. So, too, is homelessness and community violence.

Last year, lawmakers in 28 states focused on identifying, preventing and addressing chronic absenteeism, according to analyses by the nonprofit FutureEd. This year, legislators in 20 states are weighing focused on chronic absences, including efforts to improve data collection and create early interventions. 

The Oklahoma legislation seeks to replace chronic absenteeism in its school accountability system with an alternative, such as a climate survey, a softer measure that would gauge students’, parents’ and educators’ opinions about their schools. The move would require approval from the U.S. Department of Education. 

States have been required to collect chronic absenteeism rates since the passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. Since then, chronic absenteeism has been included as one of six school performance indicators on Oklahoma’s annual A-F report cards from the state education department. Currently, 38 states use chronic absenteeism to grade school performance, Chang said. 

For schools in Oklahoma, the measurement has proven to be a hurdle. In 2022-23, the state’s schools received an F grade in chronic absenteeism. Last year, the state grade ticked up slightly — to a D. 

Removing chronic absenteeism from the state accountability system, Johns, the state lawmaker, said, could allow schools across Oklahoma to receive better grades. Meanwhile, he supports initiatives to handle student absences through the courts, arguing that “parents need to have some skin in the game.” 

“Chronic absenteeism is driving our report card down,” Johns said. “Without the chronic absenteeism [measurement], our report card is not going to look as bad as it is because our public schools are doing some really good things, so why shouldn’t the report card be a reflection of that?”

Chang argued the move is misguided. She pointed to a growing body of research that has found schools can combat absenteeism if they form meaningful relationships with parents and partner with social services agencies that to attendance, like food insecurity. 

There’s little research to suggest that fines and other forms of punishment improve attendance. Even as some states ramp up truancy rules, others have scaled them back as studies report that punitive measures can backfire. In South Carolina schools, for example, students placed on probation for truancy wound up with even worse school attendance than they had before the courts got involved, by the nonprofit Council of State Governments Justice Center. 

In , the Oklahoma State Department of Education highlighted school districts that have made “impressive strides in reducing” chronic absenteeism and that “offer valuable lessons on how schools can re-engage students.” Among them is a 24% drop in absenteeism at Dahlonegah Public Schools, which hired a school-based police officer to visit the homes of students who failed to attend school. The district also credited improvements to “a welcoming and engaging school environment.” 

The state education department didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

“Families have to be involved and they have to be partners and they have to take responsibility for getting kids to school, but it’s not solely about what families do or don’t do,” Chang said. “I think it’s a mistake to assume it’s only one group’s responsibility. This is a shared responsibility.”

‘Broken families, no economic opportunity, no education’

Johnson, the district attorney, said his office has stepped up to address a problem that state education leaders have failed to solve. He took particular aim at the state’s high-profile education secretary, Ryan Walters, who has become an outspoken champion of conservative education causes. 

Yet, as far as chronic absenteeism goes, Johnson said the state schools chief “has no interest in talking about” the topic except “when he could get a soundbite on Fox News.” The state education department did not respond to Johnson’s comments.

The 51-year-old father of four also pinned persistent chronic absenteeism on parents — those living in poverty, in particular. Children in his district who most often miss school, he said, are “kind of feral.” 

“My friends generally don’t have children that are in crisis because, just economically speaking, they’re on the higher end of the spectrum,” Johnson told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. 

Johnson said there are about 7,500 K-12 children in the counties that make up his district and estimated that at least 30% contend with “economic poverty, multi-generational drug abuse, domestic abuse in the home, broken families, no economic opportunity, no education.”

“If you live in a school district where there is a real high poverty level and a real high incarceration rate, then a lot of times you’re going to get kids that have been raised in those environments,” Johnson said. “So you’re going to have a lot more challenges with that group than you would if every person had a four-wheel drive vehicle and in their driveway and everybody has a good industrial job and is making a good living and providing for their families.”

Johnson said schools should play a role in encouraging students to go to school, but when that doesn’t work, threats of jail are needed. In Pontotoc County, just two truancy charges were filed against parents in 2023, according to data provided to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ by Johnson’s office. That number jumped to 20 last year and, so far this year, there have already been eight. 

David Blatt, the director of research and strategic impact at the nonprofit Oklahoma Appleseed, questioned the accuracy of the data and said it could be an undercount. He said he attended a truancy court case in Ada last year where as many as 30 parents and students made appearances before a judge that lasted just 60 to 90 seconds each. 

In , Blatt found that truancy laws were enforced inconsistently across the state and urged policymakers to adopt interventions and supports for families to address chronic absenteeism rather than criminalize them. Blatt backs the legislation to remove chronic absenteeism as a school accountability measure, acknowledging that certain attendance barriers are outside of educators’ direct control. But he said Johnson’s characterization of the problem is “rather harsh and one-sided.” 

Rather than being apathetic toward their children’s education, he said many parents struggle with work responsibilities and transportation while children wrestle with in-school factors that can discourage attendance, such as persistent bullying. 

“There may be cases where being called before a judge will help convince them of the seriousness of things, but for other cases, it’s just going to compound their problems,” Blatt said. “Adding court appearances and fees and fines doesn’t solve their problems. It just adds to them.” 

Yet for Johnson, the issue stems from a lack of repercussions. By enforcing truancy cases, he said schools have “a little bit of a weapon” against parents whose children are missing school and can threaten them with jail time. Most of the time, he said, threats alone improve student attendance and in many cases the charges wind up getting dismissed.

In fewer than a dozen instances, he said, his truancy crackdown has led to parents serving time behind bars. 

“Generally, they’ll go in for about four hours,” Johnson said. “We’ll give them the taste of it.” 

Michelle Villanueva’s 16-year-old son, who has autism, was arrested when he was 11 for what she believes was disability-related behavior with a bully in school. Five years later, her son is just now getting back on track in school, she said.

Villanueva didn’t know where to go or who to talk to when her son was arrested, and while he spent only a day in jail, his arrest has slowed his progress in school. Had she been connected to the right resources sooner, the transition back to school could have been smoother for her son, Villanueva said.

That’s what a new state law promises to provide.

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establishes a bill of rights that schools must follow for K-12 students involved in the juvenile or criminal justice system. The bill outlines different paths those students can follow to get back into school, earn credit for school work they do while in the system, and work toward graduation.

As soon as a student is released from custody, a school under the new law must contact their family within three days to begin conversations on the student’s return to school, and the student must be reenrolled within 10 business days. Students must also be evaluated for giftedness, and they must receive credit for coursework completed while they’re incarcerated and be set up with a graduation plan.

Over the next year, a working group established by the bill will meet to determine specifics around the new policies and best practices. Schools will need to have the new requirements implemented by August 2025, ahead of the school year.

House Assistant Majority Leader Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, who sponsored the bill, said it affirms that “justice-engaged” students have the same rights as any other K-12 student. It also ensures the various state agencies that keep records on the same students communicate properly and share relevant data.

“The state keeps track of kids in so many different ways, but the systems weren’t talking to each other,” Bacon said. “They were aware of each other, but they weren’t connected in a way to provide a continuum of support for kids.”

Jose Silva, vice president of equity initiatives at Generation Schools Network, a Denver-based nonprofit that works to improve school environments, said his organization worked directly with a group of justice-engaged students to see what prevented those students from getting back into school and succeeding. They held community forums where students, families and school leaders talked about what they needed, recommendations that eventually led to the bill being introduced this spring. 

“They believe that these are kids that fall through the cracks, and that it is a better investment in getting them reconnected to school than having them drop out or just recidivating,” Bacon said about GSN.

The bill also establishes a hotline that families and justice-engaged students can reach out to for support. Silva said the hotline will be the “game changer” in the bill, as it will not only help students already involved in the justice system, but it also can prevent other students from getting into trouble. He said people who contact the hotline with concerns or questions will be connected to the proper resources.

Villanueva’s son was arrested after he was involved in a physical conflict with another student, she said. Her son is sensitive to touch and isn’t always verbal, and his response during the experience, which included repeatedly hitting his head and face on a seat back while handcuffed in a police car, resulted in injuries, she said.

Villanueva said she had to pay bond to get her son out of custody. She checked him into a children’s hospital, where he stayed for nine days. A requirement of his bond was that he had to be in school, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed, given his hospital stay. She spoke with a variety of lawyers and advocates throughout the process, as she didn’t know who was the right person to talk to. She connected with an educational advocate — as would now be required by the new law. If she hadn’t, she isn’t sure how long her son would have been out of school.

“This bill builds clarity as far as, ‘Hey, if you’re engaged, you call this point of contact,’ and they’re responsible for getting you education,” Villanueva said.

Villanueva said that had the policies in the new law been implemented when her son was arrested, she would have had better direction and a roadmap on how to work through the various processes.

In the first year after the policies are implemented, Silva said as many as 22,000 students will receive additional support under the new requirements. He said the bill will have major economic benefits for the state if more of these students are able to graduate, pursue higher education and join the workforce, instead of costing the state money in corrections.

“What I hope is that we partner together collectively as a coalition, as a state, and ensure due diligence and do right by these students, many of which ended up justice-engaged due to social situations, epigenetic trauma, and then we just toss them to the wayside,” Silva said.

Silva said school district leaders can start to think about how they will implement the new bill of rights for justice-engaged students, but the working group will help them establish essential definitions and standard practices. Each school district will have to designate a staff member to be the primary point of contact for students involved in the criminal justice system within their district.

Valerie Mosley, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education, said the department is still identifying a facilitator to support the working group, with updates anticipated later this summer. She said the department is working with the courts and the Colorado Department of Human Services to determine who will serve on the working group.

Bacon said kids have to go to school even while in custody, and if their school won’t accept the credits they earned while incarcerated, they’re more likely to drop out. She said the bill will lead to school districts not only reenrolling students, but providing the services and support they need to work toward success and avoid recidivism.

“It reiterates our values that we have all proclaimed in these systems, but may not really be happening in reality,” Bacon said. “So we wanted to be sure that we’re doing what we said we’re supposed to be doing.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on and .

James Crumbley, the father of the Oxford High School shooter, was found guilty Thursday of involuntary manslaughter for his role in the killings of four students in 2021.

The verdict will not bring back anyone’s children, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said at a press conference after the verdict was read, flanked by the parents of the students who were killed.

“I will forever remain in awe of their strength and perseverance that they have shown in the last two and a half years,” McDonald said. “It’s a privilege to do this and we know that it can’t take the pain away, but It’s one small step towards accountability.”

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The decision in Crumbley’s case follows the February conviction of Crumbley’s wife, , on the same charges, one involuntary manslaughter charge for each child their son killed. The cases mark the first time in the U.S. parents of a mass shooter have been held directly responsible for the deaths their child caused.

The shooter was sentenced to life without parole in December.

The prosecution had the task of proving that Crumbley’s actions or inactions made the shooting possible, as Crumbley had the legal duty as a parent to prevent his child from harming others and should’ve taken reasonable actions to mitigate possible harm.

Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of Madisyn Baldwin who was killed in the shooting, thanked the other parents standing with her over the course of the two and a half years since the shooting for their friendship and support through all three prosecutions. All four families of the victims are forever changed and will continue fighting for accountability on behalf of their children, she said.

“This is not just a verdict for attention or media,” Beausoleil said at the press conference. “This is a verdict that actually needs to be put to the platform that it is: How are we going to use this verdict to actually make that change?”

For five days, , witnesses relayed the events leading up to and following the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School, as well as the horror and violence individuals faced as James Crumbley’s son opened fired at teachers and students, injuring seven people and killing four of his classmates: Baldwin, Hana St. Julianna, Justin Shilling and Tate Myre.

There were several small actions Crumbley could have taken to prevent the shooting and signs of mental distress from his son that a parent should have acknowledged and sought out help for, McDonald said in her closing arguments Wednesday.

“There were 1,800 students at Oxford High School. There was one parent who suspected that their son was the school shooter and it was James Crumbley,” McDonald said, , telling the operator that a gun was missing from his house.

Crumbley’s lawyer, Mariell Lehman, told the jury during her closing arguments that although the prosecution has shown them “haunting things; tragic things,” they have not shown evidence that Crumbly knew that his son was a danger to others. If they had evidence to prove Crumbley knew what his son was planning, jurors would have seen it.

“The prosecution wants you to find that James could foresee that his son was a danger to others and that James acted in a grossly negligent manner or breached a duty that he owed to other people, despite having no information at the time,” Lehman said during her closing arguments. “You saw no evidence that James had any knowledge that his son was a danger to anyone. You heard no testimony and saw no evidence that James Crumbley knew what his son was planning.”

Crumbley had bought his son the gun used in the shooting four days before the killings, having taken him to the shooting range on several occasions and supervising his usage there.

But during Crumbley’s trial, as well as that of Jennifer Crumbley, questions were raised on .

Ultimately, it would have taken “just one tragically small measure of ordinary care to avoid four deaths” McDonald said calling attention to the meeting the Crumbleys were called to at the school the day of the shooting after the shooter drew a sketch of the gun his father had bought him days prior on his math assignment.

Shawn Hopkins, the school counselor at the meeting the day of the shooting, testified during Jennifer Crumbley’s trial that he was , or that their son would be able to access it. In addition to the drawing of the gun, there was a drawing of a body with blood coming out of it and a few statements including “the thoughts won’t stop” and “help me.”

Hopkins said on Monday that he didn’t tell either parent that they absolutely had to take their son home and the shooter expressed interest in returning class. Hopkins said he did insist that the parents seek out mental health care for their son who had told him that he was experiencing sadness over the recent death of his dog and grandma and was missing his friend who had moved away.

And though neither parent told their son at the meeting that they cared about him after Hopkins told him at the end that he cared about him, Hopkins said James Crumbley did speak to the shooter.

“He was talking to his son and mentioned that, you know, ‘You have people you can talk to; you can talk to your counselor; you have your journal; we talk’ and it felt appropriate at that time,” Hopkins said.

If the shooting had not happened, Hopkins said it was his plan to check in with the shooter to see if his parents had sought out any mental health services for him. And if not, he said he would have called Child Protective Services.

On Tuesday, Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Detective Lt. Timothy Willis offered insight on the shooter’s journal saying that in all the 22 pages the shooter wrote in, he referenced wanting to commit a school shooting. There were also passages where the shooter talks about wanting to get help.

One entry reads: “I have zero HELP for my mental problems and it’s causing me to SHOOT UP THE F—ING SCHOOL.” Another entry reads: “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”

Later entries chronicle the shooter receiving his gun from Crumbley and detailing his plan to kill people at his school.

Edward Wagrowski, an Oakland County Sheriff’s detective at the time of the shooting, testified last week, showing the jury text messages between the shooter and his friend months before the shooting detailing mental health struggles, including hearing voices.

One text from the shooter reads, “I actually asked my dad to take [me] to the Doctor yesterday but he just gave me some pills and told me to ‘Suck it up.”

If Crumbley had done the simplest of things, as he knew his son was struggling, four kids would still be alive, McDonald said in her closing arguments. If he had listened to his son or read his journal and believed what it said, he could have intervened as the violence his son was planning was foreseeable.

“He sees that drawing that morning when he goes to the school and what does it say? It says, ‘help me.’ How many times does this kid have to say it? He says it in his journal. He says it to his friend and what is he saying? ‘I asked my parents; I asked my dad,’” McDonald said. “And if that isn’t enough, he writes the words “help me” on a piece of paper and his parents, James Crumbley is called to the school to see it and what did he say? He says, ‘We gotta go work.’”

The defense only called on one witness as the burden of proof was not on them. Crumbley’s sister, Karen Crumbley, talked about seeing her brother and nephew, the shooter, in April and then again in the summer, months before the shooting.

Crumbley, who lives in Florida, said she and James Crumbley had been in the hospital with their mother as she was sick at the time. Karen Crumbley said their mother died on April 6, 2021, and the shooter came to Florida to visit shortly after. She didn’t observe anything that would have raised concerns for her.

When she came to Michigan for a summer 2021 visit, she said she didn’t observe anything that gave her reasons to worry about her nephew’s mental state or what kind of care he was receiving from his parents. When asked by the defense if she would have done anything had she observed anything wrong, she said she would have.

“I would have addressed it and if I would have known anything I would have talked to him. I would have took him home with me if there was any kind of inclination that anything was wrong,” Karen Crumbley said. She added that she would have told her brother if she thought something was wrong, but there was nothing she was concerned about.

Moving forward, more needs to be done to address the ways in which children in America are dying from gun violence, Steve St. Juliana, the father of Hana St. Juliana, said at the press conference after the verdict reading. More needs to be done to tackle kids’ declining mental health and other issues and people can’t simply stand behind Second Amendment rights and not talk about what is killing kids.

“We can put people on the moon; we can build skyscrapers, huge monuments like the Hoover Dam and we can’t keep our kids safe in schools?” St. Juliana said. “I think people just need to wake up and take action. Stop accepting the excuses. Stop buying the rhetoric. It is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s nonpartisan. Do not accept any excuse from any of the politicians. This needs to be solved and it needs to be solved now. We do not want any other parents to go through what we’ve gone through.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

After years of requests from the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for Michigan State University to release documents for the state’s investigation into sexual abuse by ex-Olympic and MSU doctor Larry Nassar, university leadership agreed on Friday to release several thousand documents to the office.

“I started all this when I was a freshman in high school and now I’m a junior in college,” Elizabeth Maurer, a survivor of Nassar’s abuse, said after the MSU Board of Trustees unanimously voted to review and release the requested documents.

Maurer recounted all the conversations, meetings and public calls for transparency it took to get the “sister survivors” to this moment. “That’s a lot of transitional years and I’ve spent a lot of those years fighting for what I believe is right in regards to my trauma and my case. … I always knew that something was there that they didn’t want us to see and so I knew in order to be able to see it we were going to have to be vocal and outspoken and have to fight our way to see it.”

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Although the board voted to review and release the requested documents, trustees said the university reserves the right to redact parts of what it sends to Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“No redactions!” Valerie von Frank, a parent of a Nassar survivor, exclaimed alongside comments of disapproval from other parents and survivors.

Nassar is currently serving essentially three life sentences on child pornography charges, as well as several charges of criminal sexual conduct across three courts, with many of the over 150 women and girls telling a Lansing court in January 2018 that Nassar abused them in his capacity as a physician at MSU.

Due to the university claiming attorney-client privilege on the documents, Nessel ended the state’s investigation into what leadership and employees at MSU may have known about the abuse over the years in 2021.

Nessel said at the time, “The university’s refusal to voluntarily provide them closes the last door available to finish our investigation. … We’re incredibly disappointed that our work will end this way, especially for the survivors.”

After Friday’s vote, Nessel announced a reversal of that decision, saying in a statement that the investigation is reopened and will be expedited.

“The students, the MSU community at-large, and most importantly, the victims of Larry Nassar have long been owed this transparency,” Nessel said. “I am encouraged to see the MSU Board of Trustees finally make the right decision on a long-promised, and long-delayed, measure of transparency.”

Ahead of the vote to release the documents, Melissa Hudecz, a survivor of Nassar’s abuse, addressed the Michigan State University Board of Trustees

“This is a very significant moment, it is difficult to come up here and continue to watch things go wrong at MSU if these documents aren’t released, if don’t have transparency, if we can’t trust the Board of Trustees then what was the point of everything we’ve been through as sisters,” Hudecz said.

Having to come to trustee meeting after trustee meeting, marching on the administration building and creating awareness for sexual violence on MSU campus, “has been it’s own form of Hell,” said von Frank, a founder of POSSE (Parents of Sister Survivors Engage).

“Having to beg for people to do what’s right is just not the right thing and people with a conscience and a soul should have recognized years ago that we shouldn’t have had to go through that. We shouldn’t have had to beg them for this,” von Frank said. “This is so personal to us. This is for my baby girl, Grace, and my other babies all standing here and for all of them that weren’t able to be here.”

The Attorney General’s Office’s fight to get the documents and bring closure to survivors of Nassar’s abuse has spanned two attorneys general, with former Attorney General Bill Schuette, who oversaw the state prosecution of Nassar and opened the office’s investigation, sharing his thoughts in a statement Friday.

“It’s been a long wait, one challenging for the Sister Survivors, but the MSU Board of Trustees have finally released the important documents I asked for in 2018 concerning the horrific behavior of Larry Nassar. I and my team, led by Angie Povilaitis, put Larry Nassar behind bars and the release of these files is an important step forward towards an open and transparent review of the actions within MSU,” Schuette said.

Although Nassar is in prison and there have been multiple prosecutions by the attorney general against employees at the university due to the investigation, Danielle Moore, a survivor of Nassar’s abuse and also board member of The Army of Survivors, said MSU needs to learn from everything that happened to better protect those who come to campus from sexual violence.

“Institutions need to learn from their mistakes so they don’t repeat the pattern and so [other] institutions don’t also don’t repeat the pattern,” Moore said.

Fellow sister survivor Angelika Martinez-McGhee shared that when she was scrolling through her Instagram on Friday, she realized that she was also at the Hannah Administration Building, where the board typically meets, two years ago.

“Throughout all of this time, it’s the showing up and being present that has really pushed this along. I think if we weren’t as vocal and just being there in person, I don’t think we would have gotten this far without demanding it,” Martinez-McGhee said.

Martinez-McGhee extended her thanks to students at MSU and alumni who supported survivors today and at meetings and gatherings in the past.

Today is a victory, the survivors and parents that gathered on campus said, although they aren’t sure what caused the board to change its mind after withholding the documents year after year. Also, without a concrete timeline of when MSU would give the attorney general the documents and knowing that the university could again withhold information from the investigation, they said there could still be a fight ahead.

Hudecz said she and her sister survivors are ready to keep pushing.

“I just really hope that the people who said yes today are saying yes to seeing this all the way through, the right way,” Hudecz said.

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As a teenager, Phil Miller dreamt of becoming a CIA field officer — a spy, he says. But incarceration derailed that dream. It seemed to derail any future ones he’d have, too.

“I was arrested at 19. I was given a 20-year sentence,” says Miller. “I definitely thought my life was over. During those years, you hear you lost all your rights because of your conviction, and there’s a whole world of opportunities that are just closed off to you.”

The CIA off the table, Miller became a jailhouse lawyer — an incarcerated person who informally helps others challenge their convictions while in prison. It suited him: He had success winning appeals and sentence reductions from inside. Still, he assumed his own sentence had imploded his future, especially the idea of one day taking his law practice beyond the prison walls.

Miller wasn’t wrong to assume this: The catalogues around 40,000 official restrictions limiting or excluding people with convictions from accessing employment, education and more in the United States. For aspiring lawyers with convictions, the pinnacle of their restriction manifests as the “character and fitness” portion of the Bar Exam, a labyrinthine mandatory background check that often excludes people with criminal records. That is to say, the bar to pass the Bar as someone with a record often feels almost impossibly high.

And yet, Miller might have been wrong about his own future. This year, he’s finishing his first year of law school at the City University of New York, deciding between a specialty in criminal or entertainment law. But, he says, he wouldn’t be where he is without support: at CUNY Law that came from the Formerly Incarcerated Law Students Advocacy Association (FILSAA). Today, a future that once seemed impossible is close within Miller’s grasp.

FILSAA is part of a growing movement of organizations working to change the overwhelming scrutiny that discourages — and often disqualifies — people with records from pursuing a law degree.

While other organizations work to tackle the barriers to the Bar on a political level, FILSAA works on a deceptively simple level, offering free LSAT training, mentorship and a needed supportive space at school for people with records.

Accustomed to hiding his past, Miller felt not just welcomed by FILSAA, but understood.

“It was like, ‘Oh wow, I can truly be myself among this group of people,’” he says.

Research backs up FILSAA’s model. , a 2019 study from Stanford Law School, found “concerns about satisfying moral character requirements,” as well as a lack of resources for those with records to navigate the character and fitness assessment, and unequal employment opportunities that “deter interested individuals from applying to law school.” Because people of color are more likely to interact with the legal system, they also bear the disproportionate weight of the problem.

Elsewhere across the country, others doing similar work are also finding success, on both individual and political levels.

For Roland Acevedo, a solo attorney based in New York City, that means personally prepping people with convictions for the character and fitness process. Acevedo uses his experience having served time to guide others. He estimates he’s worked with around 50 prospective lawyers, “the vast majority” of whom passed the Bar.

While he understands people’s hesitation and agrees the character and fitness assessment is overly restrictive, he says passing is achievable by relying on a few key principles: candor, consistency and a “non-adversarial” approach that emphasizes growth.

Dr. James Binnall also mentors prospective lawyers with convictions and claims a nearly perfect success rate, too. Binnall is the co-executive director of the , an industry group dedicated to getting more formerly incarcerated people into the legal profession. For him, progress has come through fostering community within the organization and moving the needle statewide.

Internally, CSIBA’s organization runs a listserv numbering around 200 participants. Those participants get advice and support from each other and CSIBA’s 40 organizational members. Externally, their statewide educational campaigns paired with the Unlock the Bar study have reached the California State Bar, resulting in changes including less adversarial character and fitness conferences for people with convictions, and more consideration of rehabilitation and treatment progress.

“The [California] Bar is now far more receptive to people with records as a general proposition being admitted,” Binnall summarized.

Seeing both success and need, more organizations are springing up. At Columbia University, the , designed to help formerly incarcerated people become paralegals, is in its pilot phase. The National Justice Impacted Bar Association (NJIBA) recently launched a division for current and prospective law students, already counting around 300 members.

Acevedo says that, with preparation, direct experience can actually help prospective law students stand out in the application process and be an immeasurable benefit should they become lawyers.

“You have one thing other lawyers don’t have,” says Acevedo. “You have instant credibility with a lot of your clients. They understand you’ve taken the journey, and they appreciate the fact that you’ve basically overcome. You can’t un-ring the bell, so you might as well use it to your advantage.”

Because there is no public disclosure of convictions for prospective lawyers, it’s impossible to say with certainty whether industry representation has grown overall. And funding remains a huge obstacle. While support and community go a long way, many formerly incarcerated people remain restricted by the financial burden of law school.

“It’s really easy to say if you believe in yourself and work hard enough, anything is possible,” says FILSAA co-chair Colby Williams. “But, that’s just not the reality for some people.”

FILSAA’s impact has been small in numbers but deep in value. A mentorship program they organize has four formerly incarcerated participants. Their free LSAT training attracted seven. Thanks to what Williams calls “mythbusting” , they’ve heard this year from 12 currently or formerly incarcerated people expressing interest, two formerly incarcerated students applied to CUNY Law and one has been accepted so far.

Still, FILSAA sees their model as simple and replicable. Virtually any law school could launch a similar concept. But Williams says it’s important to remember the purpose of the work and expertise at hand.

“I think early in the organization it was sort of a catch-all for people… who want to support disenfranchised people,” says Williams. “All that’s great, but it seems like when a formerly incarcerated person has an idea and the other members rally around them, we’ve made the largest strides.”

Phil Miller was one of them. He credits FILSAA with helping him to help others coming from similar situations.

“A lot of guys come out, they struggle, they stay in the same situation that led to their incarceration, and don’t really aspire to do much more. One of the reasons is because they don’t have the hope or the example that it can be done. That’s definitely the biggest value. Once you realize it’s a possibility, it really inspires and motivates you to achieve it.”

“I’m sure you hear this all the time,” said one email FILSAA received, “but it means everything to learn that there is a team of people at the school who understand the challenges we face as formerly incarcerated people on this journey. Learning about FILSAA has been a game changer.”

Williams says that their understanding of opportunity’s value keeps FILSAA working.

“Hope is a necessity. It’s like food and air but for whatever it is we call our spirits,” he says. “Finding out there’s something big that you’re able to do, you’re allowed to do, and that other people value you for, that can help you take yourself seriously.”

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