Everyone's to blame for Collingswood's Call 911 school policy

In Collingswood, school and law enforcement officials now agree on who is to blame for the district's policy of calling police for even minor student misbehavior: everybody.

After a five-hour meeting Tuesday, Camden County prosecutors, Collingswood police, and school officials agreed that they are each partially accountable for a controversial directive put in place May 25 under which schools reported nearly every incident of misconduct, including second graders roughhousing in the lunch line.

"Each agency takes ownership and responsibility for its respective roles in this matter," according to a statement signed by Camden County Prosecutor Mary Colalillo, Police Chief Kevin Carey, Superintendent Scott Oswald, Board of Education President David Routzahn, and Mayor Jim Maley. "We all agree that better communication among the parties could have avoided the resulting controversy and that the disagreements should have been handled through face-to-face discussions rather than unilateral press statements."

Tuesday's gathering came six weeks after a May meeting that both Oswald and Carey left understanding that representatives from the prosecutor's office had issued a new protocol on reporting student incidents to police. But Colalillo said Monday that her office "never issued a new directive."

"This is a miscommunication that everybody bears some responsibility for not clearing up quicker," said Maley, who attended both meetings. "We should've demanded [the changed protocol] in writing. It would've slowed this train down a little bit, made it clear what the miscommunication was before it affected kids."

"The message intended and the message received were different," Oswald said.

"My lesson from this is if ever again I hear something that doesn't make sense to me, not just to accept it but to push back and seek clarification," he said in an interview Tuesday.

Routzahn said all involved were pleased with the outcome, adding that officials are "making sure this never happens again."

Tuesday's meeting, held in the same Collingswood Community Center room as the May 25 meeting, "went through all four seasons," Maley said, asked whether there had been tension among the various parties.

But the animosity implicit in recent news releases from all sides will come to an end.

"We're done finger-pointing," Maley said.

Maley said he and school officials plan to host a public forum in the next few weeks where residents can ask questions. He said that the prosecutor will probably not attend that meeting, but that he doesn't "feel a need" for her to be there. In the past, Collingswood parents have called on Colalillo in particular to explain her role in issuing the revised protocol.

The prosecutor's office declined to comment beyond the joint statement.

But the statement failed to address some of the points of contention surrounding the new protocol. It did not assign accountability for the mistaken May 25 directive, which Maley has described as a "misunderstanding."

And it did not specify who called the May 25 meeting, noting only that it was held "after minor concerns" regarding the Memorandum of Agreement - between the school district and law enforcement - "had been discussed" by officials involved.

Colalillo said Monday that the May 25 meeting was called by the school district's attorney, but Oswald said it had been held at the request of the prosecutor's office. Carey and Maley have both said the meeting was prompted by an incident earlier in the spring at Collingswood High School, when administrators reported potentially criminal student misbehavior after a delay of a few hours. Details of that incident have not been released by officials.

Oswald said there was "no single incident" prompting the meeting and emphasized that "at no time was anybody in danger" from a failure to report student misbehavior to the police.

The joint statement also addressed a June 16 incident at the William P. Tatem Elementary School, where police were called after a third grader allegedly made a racist comment about brownies during an end-of-the-year class party. The boy's mother has said her son was commenting on the dessert, not making any racially charged remarks. But the joint statement supports the school's decision to contact the police "as the words used were much more incendiary than what has been reported."

"It was much more serious than just a student making a comment about a brownie," Oswald said, but he declined to provide further information.

The completed police report of the incident has not yet been made available. Officials have declined to comment on the student's remark, and his mother said she only knows that her son was "talking about brownies."

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