Michigan Judge Faces Outrage After Putting Teen In Juvenile Detention For Not Doing Homework
People are outraged on social media after a Michigan teenager, identified only as "Grace," has been incarcerated for not completing her online coursework when her school switched to remote learning. The teen was on probation.
In a report from ProPublica, Grace, who is 15 and has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed due to coronavirus. Without much live instruction or structure, she was easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.
Grace was on probation for assault and larceny, stemming from a fight with her mother and stealing a classmate's cell phone, when her case worker was told by Grace's mother that she was falling behind on her schoolwork.
The case worker, Rachel Giroux, filed a violation of probation against her for not doing her schoolwork. Giroux told the prosecutor she planned to ask the judge to detain Grace because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community,” according to the case notes.
Grace's mother, identified only as Carissa, later said she told the case worker about Grace's issues with virtual learning but that Grace had been working hard to stay on top of her work under less than ideal circumstances. Due to ADHD, Grace was under an Individualized Education Plan, which required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material. The program also allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she no longer had the support system, her mother said.
Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming with Grace's teacher whether or not she was meeting her academic requirements. Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” Tarpeh wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”
In a court hearing in May, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, ruled that she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the minor assault and theft charges that led to her probation.
“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said as she sentenced Grace. “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter, to the order, of the probation.”
Grace and her mother both testified that she had been struggling with remote learning because of her learning disabilities, but she was seeking help. They also testified, and it was confirmed by the probation case worker, that Grace had not had any more "violent" events since her probation started.
Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”
She sent her to juvenile detention and Grace was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs. She remains in detention today.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Grace's mother tells ProPublica. “Every day I go to bed thinking, and wake up thinking, ‘How is this a better situation for her?’”
The case has sparked outrage across the internet. See the reactions, below:
