COLUMBIA JOURNAL 

OF RACE AND LAW 
VOL. 11  JULY 2021 NO. 3 

 

ARTICLE 

REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 

OUTSIDE THE FAMILY REGULATION 

SYSTEM 

Brianna Harvey,* Josh Gupta-Kagan,†  

& Christopher Church  

The United States’ family regulation 

system often begins with well-intentioned 

professionals making child protection hotline 

calls, jeopardizing their own ability to work with 

families and subjecting the families to 

surveillance. By the system’s own standards, most 

of this surveillance leads to no meaningful action. 

Nowhere is this reality more present than in 

schools. Educational personnel serve as the 

leading driver of child maltreatment allegations, 

yet decades worth of data reveal educator reports 

of maltreatment are the least likely to be screened-

in and the least likely to be substantiated or 

confirmed. In other words, education personnel—

whether motivated by genuine concern, which may 

nevertheless be informed by implicit biases 

towards low-income families and families of color; 

fear of liability; or the desire to access services they 

believe families cannot acquire elsewhere—

overwhelm our child welfare system with 

unnecessary allegations of maltreatment. 

This reality has fundamentally 

transformed the relationship between families and 

schools. Carrying the heavy burden of mandated 

reporting laws, public schools disproportionately 

 
* Ph.D. Student, University of California Los Angeles, School of 

Education and Information Studies. 
† Professor of Law, University of South Carolina School of Law. The 

author would like to thank Gregg Strauss and Emily Suski for comments on 

earlier drafts, and Gabby Williams for excellent research assistance. 
 CHAMPS Clinic, University of South Carolina School of Law. 



576 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

refer Black and low-income families to the family 

regulation system, abdicating schools’ opportunity 

to serve these same families in the communities in 

which they reside. Rather than serving as the great 

equalizer, public schools increasingly contribute to 

the carceral state’s regulation of families. 

This Article argues that schools must shift 

their role away from the reporting and 

surveillance of these families, and instead directly 

provide and arrange for services for families. This 

change begins with sharply limiting or repealing 

mandatory reporting obligations (permitting 

voluntary reports in severe cases)—but that is only 

the start. Schools are well-positioned to create new 

pathways to the supports and services from which 

most families reported to the family regulation 

system might actually benefit. Schools are already 

a primary source of food for impoverished 

children, and can help ensure  low-income families 

access all the public benefits to which they are 

entitled. Schools can largely refer children and 

families to the same services that the family 

regulation system can—such as mental health 

services and substance abuse treatment—but 

without that system’s coercive authority and its 

associated problems. Where some services are tied 

to the family regulation system’s involvement, the 

law should permit schools to refer families 

directly. Schools know which families need legal 

services to defend their housing, access benefits, 

obtain orders of protection—or any of the myriad 

of other supports that poverty lawyers can provide. 

This shift would tie schools to the families and 

communities that they serve and benefit those 

families and communities far more than the 

surveillance and policing they experience under 

the current family regulation system. 

  



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 577 

I. Introduction ........................................................................ 578 

II. Why Focus on Schools? ...................................................... 580 

A. Public Schools: The Great Equalizer or Part of the 
Carceral Web? .............................................................. 581 

B. Schools Illustrate How This System Is Family 
Regulation Not Child Protection ................................ 584 

III. CPS Agencies Are Usually Not and Should Never Be 
the Gateway to Services .................................................... 590 

A. The Mismatch Between Family Needs and CPS 
Agency Focus................................................................ 590 

B. False Perceptions of Accessing Services Through 
CPS Agencies ............................................................... 592 

C. Narrow Cases When CPS Has a Monopoly on 
Services and the Risk that Monopoly May Grow ...... 593 

IV. An Alternative Vision: Schools Serving Families Apart 
from CPS Agencies and the Family Regulation System . 597 

A. Losing Coercion over Families .................................... 598 

B. Linking Children and Families to Services—
Without CPS ................................................................ 599 

1. Public Benefits ....................................................... 599 

2. Legal Services Referrals ....................................... 600 

3. School-Based Health Supports ............................. 604 

4. Peer Support Models ............................................. 605 

5. Increasing School Social Workers ........................ 607 

6. Paying for Reforms ................................................ 608 

V. Conclusion .......................................................................... 610 

  



578 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

I. INTRODUCTION 

America’s public schools are an essential part of the 

present family regulation system,1 the collection of public and 

private agencies and court systems which collectively intervene 

in and exercise coercive authority over largely low-income and 

disproportionately Black families in the name of protecting 

children. This system is triggered by allegations of abuse or 

neglect made to child protective services (CPS) agencies, and 

schools account for the largest single source of such allegations 

of child abuse and neglect. This Article focuses on schools’ role in 

the present system, as they represent the worst of the problems 

in that system, yet hold great promise for a new approach to 

identifying and responding to family and community adversity. 

The current system features an enormously large and 

largely ineffective legal and administrative apparatus. Pursuant 

to mandated reporting laws, millions of professionals report 

suspected abuse and neglect to CPS agencies. CPS agencies’ 

primary response is to investigate those allegations to determine 

whether the child is a victim of maltreatment and what, if any, 

services the agency should offer. CPS agencies have authority to 

remove children from families, so any such intervention is 

inherently coercive and represents state regulation of families. 

The scope of that regulation has grown to the millions of children, 

and CPS agencies classify only a minority of those children as 

having been abused or neglected, and remove an even smaller 

 
1 The authors acknowledge the importance of language through the use 

of the “family regulation system,” when referring to the multi-agency system of 

surveillance, policing, and control historically referred to as the “child welfare” 

or “child protection” system. We urge other scholars and professionals to 

interrogate the language used around this system and its actual functionality 

which has historically disproportionately harmed and oppressed BIPOC (Black, 

Indigenous, and people of color). For the purpose of this manuscript, we utilize 

the “family regulation system” in place of more frequently-used identifiers such 

as “child protective services” and “child welfare.” We use “child protective 

services (CPS) agencies” to refer to the specific state and local agencies charged 

with protecting children from abuse and neglect—a role which, as argued 

throughout this Article, should be limited to severe cases. We credit Dorothy 

Roberts for the initial conceptualization of “family regulation,” and recent 

scholarship from Emma Peyton Williams which further coined the phrase 

“family regulation system.” Dorothy Roberts, Feminism, Race, and Adoption 

Policy, in ADOPTION MATTERS: PHILOSOPHICAL AND FEMINIST ESSAYS 234 (Sally 

Haslanger & Charlotte Witt eds., 2005); Emma Peyton Williams, Dreaming of 

Abolitionist Futures, Reconceptualizing Child Welfare: Keeping Kids Safe in the 

Age of Abolition, 14–16 (Apr. 27, 2020) (B.A. thesis, Oberlin College). 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 579 

minority of them into foster care. To the extent CPS agencies 

could provide effective assistance to the majority of these 

families, research demonstrates that the agencies largely miss 

the opportunity to do so.2 

In the 1960s, pediatrician Henry Kempe’s article “The 

Battered Child Syndrome”3 galvanized states to pass laws 

requiring individuals working with children to report suspected 

incidents of physical abuse. Although Kempe’s work focused on 

severe physical abuse that medical professionals could be trained 

to identify, mandated reporting statutes quickly suffered from 

scope creep, expanding to cover many more professionals, such 

as school personnel, and broad definitions of neglect. Mandated 

reporting’s overbreadth problem is well-documented in decades’ 

worth of child maltreatment administrative data, highlighting 

that CPS is overwhelmed with unsubstantiated allegations of 

maltreatment that, when investigated, harm children, families, 

and their communities. Schools stand out for contributing to this 

failure more than any other group of mandatory reporters: they 

report more allegations to CPS agencies than any other category 

of reporters, and schools’ reports are less likely to be 

substantiated or lead to services for children. The flawed policy 

of mandatory reporting has not led to CPS agencies providing 

effective interventions to the vast majority of families subject to 

its investigations.4 Moreover, it has failed to identify most of the 

actual child maltreatment that exists in communities. Four 

iterations of the U.S. Congress’s National Incidence Study 

demonstrate mandated reporting’s underreporting problem: 

“although CPS investigates a substantial number of maltreated 

children in the nation, these children represent only the ‘tip of 

the iceberg.’”5 This mandatory reporting and CPS investigation 

structure has for sixty years failed to achieve its core function 

and unnecessarily harmed families and communities, 

particularly families and communities of color disproportionately 

subject to the family regulation system. That failure has 

 
2 See infra notes 35–36, 47. 
3 See C. Henry Kempe et al., The Battered Child Syndrome, 181 J. AM. 

MED. ASSOC. 17 (1962). 
4 A full accounting of the harms of unnecessary CPS interventions is 

beyond the scope of this Article. We rely on prior work which has established 

those harms in details. See e.g. infra notes 35–36, 47 and accompanying text. 
5 A.J. SEDLAK ET. AL, U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUM. SERV., ADMIN. FOR 

CHILD. & FAM., FOURTH NATIONAL INCIDENCE STUDY OF CHILD ABUSE & 

NEGLECT (NIS–4), at 2-2 (2010). 



580 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

incentivized schools and others to abdicate their moral 

responsibility to help children and families in need and instead 

created an adversarial relationship between schools and families. 

As such, the present CPS system is yet another manifestation of 

our nation’s systemic racism, and public schools are complicit in 

that system. 

A more hopeful story is possible. Schools can identify 

needs among children and families, and those needs largely can 

be addressed without CPS involvement. Schools can expand their 

use of social workers and counselors, and refer families to a range 

of voluntary supports and services, including public benefits, 

housing assistance, legal services, mental health care, and 

substance abuse treatment. Schools already identify and respond 

to most of these needs, and dramatically expanding existing 

efforts can achieve what six decades of mandatory reporting and 

investigation have not—improving the welfare of children and 

families. 

II. WHY FOCUS ON SCHOOLS? 

Public schools are an inextricable part of the family 

regulation system, accounting for the largest single source of 

referrals to CPS agencies of allegations of child abuse and 

neglect.6 During 2018, school personnel were responsible for 

20.5% of the 4.3 million child maltreatment reports received 

nationwide, nearly double the number of reports made by social 

services or medical personnel.7 Although Black children 

represent roughly 14% of the overall child population,8 26% of 

allegations of child maltreatment from school personnel 

concerned Black children.9 The disproportionate reporting of 

 
6 CHILD.’S BUREAU, U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUM. SERVICES, CHILD 

MALTREATMENT 2018, at 8–9 (2020), https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/

files/documents/cb/cm2018.pdf [https://perma.cc/569P-PWQ9]. 
7 Id. 
8 Child Population by Race in the United States, KIDS COUNT DATA 

CENTER (Sep. 2020), https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/103-child-

population-by-race [https://perma.cc/N3CA-S6YP]. 
9 CHILD.’S BUREAU, U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUM. SERVICES, 

NATIONAL CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT DATA SYSTEM (NCANDS) CHILD FILE, 

FFY 2018 (2019) [hereinafter 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET], 

https://www.ndacan.acf.hhs.gov/datasets/dataset-details.cfm?ID=233 

[https://perma.cc/LE72-GSN9]. Unless otherwise noted, data utilized in this 

Article were made available by the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and 

Neglect, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Data from the National Child 

Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) are originally collected by state 

https://www.ndacan.acf.hhs.gov/datasets/dataset-details.cfm?ID=233


2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 581 

Black children also cumulates across childhood; 53% of Black 

children will be subject to a CPS investigation before turning 

eighteen, compared to 37.5% of all children.10 

Of course, schools overreport and surveil Black families 

in many contexts outside of CPS. This section explores the 

intersection of schools and family regulation in those contexts, 

ultimately concluding that an expansive dissonance separates 

schools’ core, philosophical underpinnings from the modern 

operationalization of our public schools. 

A. Public Schools: The Great Equalizer or Part of the Carceral 

Web? 

Public schools serve students from the most vulnerable 

and historically marginalized communities. Upon their 

inception, schools were poised to be the “great equalizer” where  

low-income families, people of color, immigrants, and those from 

other disenfranchised groups could gain access to opportunities 

and resources historically only available to individuals from 

non-minoritized groups.11 However, today’s schools, especially 

those in high needs and impoverished communities, are 

characterized by dismal student achievement rates, low 

graduation rates and standardized test scores, high rates of 

student truancy and drop-outs, large class sizes, and poorly 

 
child welfare agencies pursuant to federal reporting requirements. Authors and 

collaborators at Fostering Court Improvement have analyzed the data and 

analyses are on file with them. Neither the collector of the original data, the 

Archive, Cornell University, or its agents or employees bear any responsibility 

for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Data are reported for the 

Federal Fiscal Year (FFY), which runs from October 1st in the preceding year 

through September 30th in the referenced year. 
10 Hyunil Kim et al., Lifetime Prevalence of Investigating Child 

Maltreatment Among US Children, 107 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 274, 277 (2017). 

Disproportionate reporting of Black children by school personnel is consistent 

with other classes of reporters, such as law enforcement and medical 

professionals. Id. However, unlike law enforcement and medical professionals, 

children interact with school personnel consistently and routinely, in a 

non-adversarial manner within their community. Moreover, educational 

personnel make more CPS referrals than law enforcement and medical 

professionals. 
11 HORACE MANN, TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT TO THE MASSACHUSETTS 

BOARD OF EDUCATION (1848), reprinted in THE REPUBLIC AND THE SCHOOL: 

HORACE MANN AND THE EDUCATION OF FREE MEN 79–80, 84–97 (Lawrence A. 

Cremin ed., 1957); PEDRO NOGUERA, CITY SCHOOLS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM: 

RECLAIMING THE PROMISE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION, at xii (2003). 



582 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

trained or inexperienced teachers.12 Often, the same schools 

experiencing these challenges further marginalize the students 

they serve by disproportionately exerting punitive and 

exclusionary discipline practices against  low-income students of 

color, particularly Black students.13 

According to data available from the U.S. Department of 

Education’s Office of Civil Rights, Black children represent 15.2% 

of student enrollment nationally.14 However, Black children 

missed a cumulative 4.6 million days of school due to 

suspensions, representing 41.9% of all suspension days.15 Black 

children account for 28.7% of school referrals to law enforcement 

and 31.9% of school related arrests.16 Even more, 32% of Black 

children eligible for special education services under IDEA were 

referred to law enforcement, and Black children with disabilities 

account for 35.3% of all school-related arrests of special education 

students.17 Black children represent only 8.2% of children 

enrolled in a Gifted and Talented program18 and only 9.3% of 

children enrolled in at least one Advanced Placement course.19 

Such disparities begin young; one 2021 academic study found 

that, even after controlling for various predictors of behavior 

challenges, Black elementary school children were 3.5 times as 

 
12 See NOGUERA, supra note 11. 
13 Erica R. Meiners, Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building 

Abolition Futures, 43 URB. REV. 547, 550 (2011). 
14 OFFICE OF C.R., U.S. DEP’T OF EDUC., CIVIL RIGHTS DATA 

COLLECTION (CRDC) FOR THE 2017–18 SCHOOL YEAR (2020), 

https://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-2017-18.html 

[https://perma.cc/PFK8-KDR8]. Of the 96,533 schools listed in the CRDC 

Enrollment dataset, all but 11 schools provided student enrollment data by race.  
15 Id. at CRDC Suspensions File Dataset. Of the 97,632 schools listed 

in the CRDC Suspensions dataset, all but 1,938 schools provided suspension 

data by race. 
16 Id. at CRDC Referrals and Arrests Dataset. Of the 97,632 schools 

listed in the CRDC Referrals and Arrest dataset, as many as 4,776 (approx. 

4.8%) schools did not provide complete Referrals and Arrest data. 
17 Id. 
18 Id. at CRDC Gifted and Talented Dataset. Of the 97,632 schools 

listed in the CRDC Gifted and Talented dataset, 41,794 (approx. 42%) schools 

did not provide Gifted and Talented data by race. 
19 Id. at CRDC Advanced Placement Dataset. Of the 97,632 schools 

listed in the CRDC Advanced Placement dataset, only 14,752 (approx. 15%) 

schools provided advanced placement data by race. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 583 

likely as white children to receive a school detention or 

suspension.20 

These inequities compound for Black students in foster 

care.21 For example, within California, which has the largest 

population of youth in foster care in the nation,22 Black foster 

youth are suspended, expelled, and placed in special education at 

higher rates than both their foster youth and non-foster youth 

peers of other races.23 The disproportionate suspension, 

expulsion, and special education placement of Black foster youth 

in schools directly entraps them in what Erica Meiners describes 

as “less a pipeline, more a persistent nexus.”24 Unlike the “school 

to prison pipeline” which describes the ways that youth of color 

are linearly funneled into systems of incarceration from schools’ 

overuse of punitive disciplinary practices, the nexus is made up 

of a “web of punitive threads,” whereby youth are tethered to 

systems that perpetuate racialized surveillance and 

imprisonment within the carceral state.25 

 
20 Matthew C. Fadus et al., Racial Disparities in Elementary School 

Disciplinary Actions: Findings from the ABCD Study, J. AM. ACAD. CHILD & 

ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY (manuscript at 4) (forthcoming 2021) (on file with 

ScienceDirect and available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.11.017 

[https://perma.cc/JN34-BCFE]). 
21 Anne Gregory et al., The Achievement Gap and the Discipline Gap: 

Two Sides of the Same Coin?, 39 EDUC. RESEARCHER 63 (2010); Susan Stone, 

Child Maltreatment, Out-of-Home Placement & Academic Vulnerability: A 

Fifteen-year Review of Evidence & Future Directions, 29 CHILD. & YOUTH SERVS. 

REV. 139, 146 (2007). 
22 Mark E. Courtney et al., Memo from CalYOUTH: Associations 

Between County-level Factors and Youths’ Extended Foster Care Participation, 

CHAPIN HALL AT THE UNIV. OF CHI. (Mar. 2019), https://co-invest.org/wp-

content/uploads/Courtney-et-al.-2019-County-level-factors-and-youths-EFC-

participation.pdf [https://perma.cc/J6YL-3PL9]. 
23 CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC., 2018–19 SUSPENSION RATE: STATE REPORT 

DISAGGREGATED BY ETHNICITY (2020), https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/

dqCensus/DisSuspRate.aspx?cds=00&agglevel=State&year=2018-

19&initrow=Eth&ro=y [https://perma.cc/F3VS-PPWR]; CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC., 

2018–19 EXPULSION RATE: STATE REPORT DISAGGREGATED BY ETHNICITY 

(2020), https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqCensus/DisExpRate.aspx?

cds=00&agglevel=State&year=2018-19&initrow=Eth&ro=y&ro=y 

[https://perma.cc/EG24-ZMSR]; CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC., COUNT OF MATCHED 

FOSTER STUDENTS BY RACE/ETHNICITY AND GRADE: LOS ANGELES COUNTY 

REPORT (2020), https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/foster/fosterGrdRace.aspx?

level=County&county=19&year=2018-19.  
24 ERICA R. MEINERS, RIGHT TO BE HOSTILE: SCHOOLS, PRISONS, AND 

THE MAKING OF PUBLIC ENEMIES 31–32 (2007). 
25 Id. 

https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/foster/fosterGrdRace.aspx?level=County&county=19&year=2018-19
https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/foster/fosterGrdRace.aspx?level=County&county=19&year=2018-19
https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/foster/fosterGrdRace.aspx?level=County&county=19&year=2018-19


584 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

For Black children, public schools fall short of being the 

great equalizer. 

B. Schools Illustrate How This System Is Family Regulation 

Not Child Protection 

When schools call CPS agencies, do schools help children, 

or work in tandem with the family regulation system to surveil 

and investigate disenfranchised families? What impact do CPS 

reports have on children, families, and their communities? School 

personnel’s entanglement in the family regulation system is a 

particularly strong illustration of a broader reality: the family 

regulation system features tremendous over-reporting of families 

to CPS agencies, with significant interference imposed upon and 

little or no benefits offered to these families. 

The family regulation system operates a massive 

apparatus to gather child abuse and neglect allegations, 

investigate those allegations, and determine how, if at all, to 

respond to substantiated allegations. CPS agencies only 

substantiate a minority of maltreatment allegations and 

agencies remove children in an even smaller minority—5.3% of 

all investigated allegations.26 This reality raises significant 

questions about the wisdom and effectiveness of our existing 

system.27 

Decades of administrative child welfare data support this 

narrative. During the 2018 Federal Fiscal Year (FFY), CPS 

agencies received referrals of suspected child abuse or neglect 

regarding 7.8 million children, or 12.9% of the nation’s child 

population.28 Low-income and Black families are significantly 

overrepresented among those subject to these referrals.29 CPS 

agencies screened out 36% of all referrals, meaning even if the 

allegations were true, they would not meet the state’s statutory 

definition of abuse or neglect.30 Of the remaining referrals, 

affecting about 4.3 million children, CPS agencies assigned about 

 
26 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET, supra note 9.  
27 See Josh Gupta-Kagan, Towards a Public Health Legal Structure for 

Child Welfare, 92 NEB. L. REV. 897 (2014). 
28 CHILD MALTREATMENT 2018, supra note 7, at 7–8. There were 

4.3 million referrals, each involving an average of 1.8 children. Id. That figure is 

used throughout this section to calculate the number of children at each stage. 
29 See supra notes 8–10. 
30 CHILD MALTREATMENT 2018, supra note 7, at 6–7. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 585 

14% to a differential or alternative response track.31 The 

remainder were investigated to determine whether the child is a 

victim. Agencies substantiated only 23% of investigated reports, 

meaning CPS investigated nearly 2.4 million children in 2018 

that they either concluded were not victims or were unable to 

gather sufficient evidence to make such a determination.32 Of 

these children deemed victims, about 39% (more than 270,000) 

receive no services after the CPS investigation.33 The remaining 

receive some kind of service from CPS, and for about 22.9% of 

victims, that “service” included a removal from their families and 

placement in foster care.34 

CPS interferes in the lives of millions of children each 

year on the basis of a single person referring their suspicion to 

CPS, and the vast majority of hotline calls lead to no provision of 

services. By the system’s own logic, then, most reports do 

relatively little to protect children. And they do little to assist 

families; a longitudinal study of families reported to CPS 

agencies found that CPS intervention made no difference in 

families’ social support, family functioning, poverty, maternal 

education, or child behavior, leading researchers to describe it as 

a “missed opportunity” to help families.35 Commentators, 

accordingly, have advocated that it is time “to rethink the role of 

mandatory reporting,” reducing the volume of reports and the 

unnecessary intervention most reports cause.36 

That conclusion is even stronger for CPS hotline calls 

from schools. At every stage of the process, allegations from 

schools are less likely to protect children. First, reports from 

 
31 Id. at 19. Alternative response tracks are typically used for low or 

moderate risk reports; they emphasize assessment of and offers of services to 

address a family’s needs rather than making a formal determination of whether 

maltreatment occurred. 
32 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET, supra note 9. 
33 CHILD MALTREATMENT 2018, supra note 7, at 78. 
34 Id. at 80. 
35 Kristine Campbell et al., Household, Family and Child Risk Factors 

After an Investigation for Suspected Child Maltreatment: A Missed Opportunity 

for Prevention, 164 ARCHIVES OF PEDIATRIC ADOLESCENT MED. 943, 948 (2010). 
36 Mical Raz, Calling Child Protective Services Is a Form of Community 

Policing that Should Be Used Appropriately: Time to Engage Mandatory 

Reporters as to the Harmful Effects of Unnecessary Reports, CHILD. & YOUTH 

SERVS. REV., Jan. 2020, at 4 [hereinafter Raz, Calling CPS]. See also Abraham 

B. Bergman, Child Protective Services Has Outlived Its Usefulness, 164 

ARCHIVES PEDIATRIC ADOLESCENT MED. 978, 978–79 (2010) (arguing voluntary 

services should replace many CPS investigations). 



586 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

schools are significantly less likely than both other professionals’ 

reports and non-professionals’ reports to allege abuse or 

neglect.37 That describes 17% of all screened in reports from 

education sources, compared with 12% for reports from medical 

and social service staff, 9% for legal and law enforcement, 6.9% 

for family friends, and 5.6% for anonymous reports.38 

Second, CPS agencies are more likely to assign reports 

from schools to an alternative response track, indicating those 

reports contain less severe allegations—14% for reports from 

schools compared with 9.6% for medical and social service 

reports, and 9.4% for legal and law enforcement reports.39 On this 

measure, reports from schools are on par with those from family 

or friends (14%) and anonymous sources (15%)40—two classes of 

reporters presumably with no formal training in the 

identification of child maltreatment. 

Third, when CPS agencies investigate child 

maltreatment reports from schools, agencies substantiate 

significantly fewer cases than reports from other sources. CPS 

agencies conclude that only 15% of children reported by schools 

and subject to an investigation are actually victims of abuse or 

neglect.41 That compares to 27% for medical and social service 

personnel reports and 39% for legal and law enforcement 

reports.42 Substantiation rates for reports from school are on par 

 
37 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET, supra note 9; Functionally, this 

conclusion operates like a decision by a CPS agency to screen out a referral. 

NCANDS does not report screened out cases, so we cannot compare those. We 

discuss data based on an analysis of referrals which CPS agencies have screened 

in but subsequently determine do not allege abuse or neglect, something which 

is equivalent to a screen out and which more frequently occurs for reports from 

schools than from other sources. 
38 Id. These results hold, albeit with tighter variance, when reports are 

limited to school-age children: 15% are screened out for failing to report any 

maltreatment, compared with 14% for medical and social service sources, 11% 

for legal and law enforcement sources, 7.4% for family friends, and 6.1% for 

anonymous sources. 
39 Id. The gap for school-age children is roughly similar: 15% of reports 

from schools are assigned to an alternative response track, compared with 11% 

from medical and social service sources and 9.9% of legal and law enforcement 

sources. 
40 Id. 
41 Id. 
42 Id. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 587 

with those from family friends (15%) and anonymous sources 

(13%).43 

School personnel’s child maltreatment allegations 

concerning Black children are especially unlikely to be 

substantiated. Only 11% of education personnel’s maltreatment 

allegations concerning Black children are substantiated, 

compared to 22% from medical reporters and 30% from law 

enforcement.44 This substantiation rate is the same for reports 

from family and friends.45 

Fourth, when CPS agencies investigate and substantiate 

reports from schools, CPS is less likely to remove children from 

their families and place them in foster care than when the reports 

are from other sources. CPS agencies remove only 16% of victims 

reported by schools, compared with 24% for medical and social 

service reports and 18% for legal and law enforcement reports. 

 
43 Id. Multiple studies have similarly discussed low substantiation 

rates from school reports. As Chapin Hall concluded, “[e]ducation personnel 

report the most cases of suspected maltreatment, but detect the smallest 

percentage of cases that reach the threshold for substantiation.” DANA WEINER 

ET AL., CHAPIN HALL AT THE UNIV. OF CHI., CHAPIN HALL ISSUE BRIEF: COVID-

19 AND CHILD WELFARE: USING DATA TO UNDERSTAND TRENDS IN 

MALTREATMENT AND RESPONSE 2 (2020), https://www.chapinhall.org/wp-

content/uploads/Covid-and-Child-Welfare-brief.pdf [https://perma.cc/3LL8-

YYVJ]. Chapin Hall’s reported substantiation rates are lower than those we 

report in the text because we have removed screened-in reports coded as not 

reporting any form of maltreatment from the denominator. See also, Bryn King 

et al., Examining the Evidence: Reporter Identity, Allegation Type, and 

Sociodemographic Characteristics as Predictors of Maltreatment Substantiation, 

18 CHILD MALTREATMENT 232 (2013). 14% of education staff reports are 

substantiated compared to 41% from law enforcement, 38% from medical 

professionals, and 35% from public social service agencies. John Kesner, Child 

Protection in the United States: An Examination of Mandated Reporting of Child 

Maltreatment, 1 CHILD INDICATORS RSCH. 397 (2008); Diana J. English et al., 

Causes and Consequences of the Substantiation Decision in Washington State 

Child Protective Services, 24 CHILD. & YOUTH SERVS. REV. 817 (2002); John E. 

Kesner & Margaret Robinson, Teachers as Mandated Reporters of Child 

Maltreatment: Comparison with Legal, Medical, and Social Services Reporters, 

42 CHILD. & SCHOOLS 222, 227 (2002). 
44 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET, supra note 9. For reports from medical 

personnel and social services, 75% of screened-in reports were investigated, and 

73% of investigations were unsubstantiated. Id. For reports coming from legal 

sources and law enforcement, 79% of screened-in reports were investigated, and 

61% of investigations were unsubstantiated. Id. For reports from family and 

friends, 77%  were investigated, and 85% were unsubstantiated. Id. 
45 Id. 

https://www.chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/Covid-and-Child-Welfare-brief.pdf
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588 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

This figure is lower than reports from family and friends (21%) 

and anonymous (23%) reports. 

Altogether, CPS referrals from schools are particularly 

unlikely to lead to protective action by CPS. Only 10% of all 

children reported to CPS agencies by schools are confirmed 

victims, and only 1.7% of all children reported to CPS by schools 

are removed from their homes. While schools account for more 

than 20% of all child abuse or neglect allegations, those 

allegations account for only 12% of total removals.46 

These data raise serious questions about schools’ role in 

this reporting and investigation apparatus. That apparatus 

mostly harms the children and families the system is designed to 

protect through unnecessary coercive interventions that do little 

to actually protect children or improve their family situations. 

These coercive interventions are themselves harmful to children 

and families, including scaring children and parents through 

CPS agency investigation and missing opportunities to help 

families.47 These harms result from our mandatory reporting and 

mandatory investigation legal structure which incentivizes 

professionals to, quite literally, phone it in when they have 

concerns about children’s safety or families’ needs for supportive 

services. In doing so, school staff usually forego opportunities to 

identify supports for a family directly, abdicating the 

responsibility to help the family to an adversarial, parental fault-

based CPS agency that is unlikely to provide much assistance.48 

Such blithe reporting practices harm the family’s trust in the 

school and thus the school’s ability to help in the future.49 

The harm of CPS investigations also extends to the 

communities in which families live. Children and families most 

often subject to CPS investigations are tightly clustered in small, 

 
46 Id. 
47 Michael S. Wald, Taking the Wrong Message: The Legacy of the 

Identification of the Battered Child Syndrome, in C. HENRY KEMPE: A 50 YEAR 

LEGACY TO THE FIELD OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT 89, 95–96 (Richard D. 

Krugman & Jill E. Korbin eds., 2013). 
48 See Gary B. Melton, Mandatory Reporting: A Policy Without Reason, 

29 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 9, 14 (2005) (collecting research showing many 

mandatory reporters consider whether to call a CPS hotline but do not offer 

additional services to a family); Gupta-Kagan, supra note 27, at 934–35. 
49 Raz, Calling CPS, supra note 36; Natalie K. Worley & Gary Melton, 

Mandated Reporting Laws and Child Maltreatment: The Evolution of a Flawed 

Policy Response, in C. HENRY KEMPE, supra note 47, at 103, 104–105. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 589 

deeply impoverished and segregated neighborhoods, 

neighborhoods replete with environmental risk. Consider the 

Thomasville Heights neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. A single 

census block group in this neighborhood epitomizes the 

downstream effects of public policies that have deliberately 

concentrated minority families in adverse community 

environments. According to census estimates,50 the 2,272 people 

who live in this block group are: 98% Black (compared to 32% 

statewide and 13% nationwide), 91% single mother families 

(compared to 28% statewide and 23% nationwide), 36% are 

unemployed (compared to 6% statewide and nationwide), 71% 

are living in poverty (compared to 17% statewide and 15% 

nationwide), and where the housing cost burden is 38% 

(compared to 28% statewide and nationwide).51 The impact of 

public policies such as redlining, the war on drugs, and welfare 

reform are compounded by the impact of mandated reporting and 

resulting surveillance by CPS that has resulted in the 

concentration of Black families residing in adverse community 

environments.52 

This tightly-clustered concentration of CPS activity, 

particularly unsubstantiated investigations, is a form of 

community disruption under color of state law. The current 

mandatory reporting system gives the disruption cover, shielding 

professionals from any responsibility for harming communities 

 
50 U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY 2014–2018 5-

YEAR DATA (2019), https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2019/acs-5-

year.html [https://perma.cc/HVD7-TV6W]. 
51 Community Opportunity Map, CASEY FAM. PROGRAMS, 

https://caseyfamily.caimaps.info/cailive (last visited May 1, 2021). Authors used 

the “Search and Select” feature to navigate to Atlanta, GA and then used the 

“Custom Area Select” tool to explore the referenced neighborhood. Referenced 

data are on file with corresponding author. 
52 Proof of this claim is beyond the scope of this paper. However, one 

author (Church) has street address level data for NCANDS from a number of 

state CPS agencies, pursuant to institutional data sharing agreements. Consider 

one such county (not otherwise discussed in this paper) with a population of 

approximately 140K. The U.S. Census Bureau has defined 11,415 block groups 

for that county. Using 2018 FFY NCANDS data, only 5.8% of block groups in the 

county contained a child or children that were the subject of a CPS investigation. 

Only 2.3% of block groups in the county contained a child or children that were 

the subject of a substantiated investigation. By contrast, 35.5% of block groups 

contained children living in poverty and 28.6% contained children living in 

households with no employed parent. CPS reports are relatively rare events, but 

rare events that appear to be spatially concentrated. 

https://caseyfamily.caimaps.info/cailive


590 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

in which they overreport concerns about disenfranchised 

families. 

III. CPS AGENCIES ARE USUALLY NOT AND 

SHOULD NEVER BE THE GATEWAY TO 

SERVICES 

Mandated reporters, including educational personnel, 

overwhelm the system with marginal cases that should not 

require CPS investigation and intervention.53 Presumably, these 

reports result from well-meaning professionals’ assessment of a 

child in danger or family in need of support. Indeed, a study 

conducted by Kelley Fong noted that many “professional 

reporters” see a report to CPS as a means for accessing support 

or services for families in need.54 This section explains why CPS 

is ill-equipped to provide such support effectively, and thus why 

schools’ reports to CPS require reevaluation. 

A. The Mismatch Between Family Needs and CPS Agency 

Focus 

There is a mismatch between what the law requires CPS 

agencies to do and the broader needs that reporters seek to 

address. Mandatory reporting is focused on identifying discrete 

allegations of child maltreatment tied to parental fault; without 

such a finding, there is no legal basis for coercive state 

intervention in families. But, much of the support families need 

results not from intentional acts of parental abuse or neglect but 

from chronic conditions and assorted adverse childhood 

experiences (of both parents and children), which often cannot, 

and should not, be tied to parental fitness. Adverse childhood 

experiences and other childhood traumas are compounded when 

they occur in oppressed communities that experience a 

concentration or chronicity of poverty, violence, racism, or other 

environmental conditions.55 The relationship between adversity 

within a family and adversity within a community is well known, 

but CPS agencies’ treatment of such conditions is wholly 

disconnected. CPS agencies respond to family adversity—such as 

 
53 See supra Part II.B; Worley & Melton, supra note 49, at 106. 
54 Kelley Fong, Getting Eyes in the Home: Child Protective Services 

Investigations and State Surveillance of Family Life, 85 AMER. SOC. REV. 610, 

620–21 (2020). 
55 Wendy Ellis & William Dietz, A New Framework for Addressing 

Adverse Child and Community Experiences: The Building Community Resilience 

Model, 17 ACAD. PEDIATRICS 7 (2017). 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 591 

parental substance abuse, domestic violence, or housing 

instability—as parental fault. However, the roots of these family 

adversities are steeped in systemic inequities that create 

generational community adversity.56 

Consider Thomasville Heights, discussed above. There is 

little doubt that a child living in such less-than-ideal 

circumstances would benefit from some kind of intervention. 

However, child welfare staff, policy makers, and courts routinely 

fail to consider the conditions that caused such less-than-ideal 

circumstances. School personnel, like other mandated reporters, 

report adverse childhood experiences while ignoring the adverse 

community environments that played a role in producing them. 

CPS investigators remain indifferent to those community 

conditions because the law requires them to identify a 

perpetrator who can be held responsible for a substantiated 

allegation, not a complete set of factors contributing to 

challenging childhood circumstances.57 

This focus on parental fault while ignoring community 

adversity is apparent in many common CPS contexts. Consider 

housing cases, where the power imbalance between landlord and 

tenants heavily favors the former, dwarfing the ability of 

low-income tenants to enforce their legal rights. Moreover, a 

troubling history of governmental housing policies has deeply 

segregated our nation into the adverse community environments 

described above.58 Yet when CPS investigates children living in 

unsuitable housing, their charge is to try to substantiate the 

allegations by identifying a perpetrator that is responsible for the 

child’s welfare, or more directly, a parent that can be blamed for 

the unsuitable housing. Domestic violence cases also fit the 

narrative. Often in child welfare cases, the perpetrator of 

domestic violence is not the child’s caretaker. However, to 

intervene, CPS needs to frame the domestic violence issue as one 

of parental fault, which they do by accusing the victim of 

domestic violence of failing to protect his or her (usually her) 

 
56 Id. 
57 See, e.g., MICAL RAZ, ABUSIVE POLICIES: HOW THE AMERICAN CHILD 

WELFARE SYSTEM LOST ITS WAY 5 (2020) (describing a system that “willfully 

ignores social and racial inequities, instead focusing myopically on the role of 

the individual”). 
58 See, e.g., RICHARD ROTHSTEIN, THE COLOR OF LAW: A FORGOTTEN 

HISTORY OF HOW OUR GOVERNMENT SEGREGATED AMERICA (1997). 



592 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

child.59 Sadly, this occurs in cases where the caretaker has 

independently done much to protect their child.60 

In the many contexts where an adverse childhood 

experience has little to do with intentional parental conduct, such 

as witnessing domestic violence or living in unsuitable housing, 

a fault-based investigative response falls short. As we discuss 

below, alternatives such as referring a family to a supportive 

service or legal aid lawyer would yield better results. 

However, outside of alternative or differential response, 

CPS will often only provide services after an investigation is 

substantiated, making a CPS investigation a prerequisite for 

support and establishing an adversarial relationship with 

families. Even more, this interaction creates a legal record to be 

forever invoked as an indictment of the parent’s fitness, 

stigmatizing families who may need support to overcome family 

and/or community adversity. 

B. False Perceptions of Accessing Services Through CPS 

Agencies 

This false perception of the family regulation system 

serving as a support to families is inconsistent with the 

historically documented harm, surveillance, punishment, and 

policing experienced by families entangled within the system.61 

It also ignores the reality that families and professionals can 

access services without CPS involvement. 

Incorrect assumptions of the system’s interactions with 

vulnerable families often ensnare them in a web of coercion and 

surveillance, one from which it is difficult to detach.62 Following 

a report to CPS agencies and substantiated investigation, CPS 

agencies or family courts often require families to complete 

services such as therapy, parenting classes, drug treatment, and 

 
59 See, e.g., Nicholson v. Scoppetta, 820 N.E.2d 840 (N.Y. 2004). 
60 Eli Hager, The Hidden Trauma of “Short Stays” in Foster Care, 

MARSHALL PROJECT (Feb. 11, 2020), 

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/02/11/the-hidden-trauma-of-short-

stays-in-foster-care [https://perma.cc/P42J-CWCP]. 
61 DOROTHY ROBERTS, SHATTERED BONDS: THE COLOR OF CHILD 

WELFARE (2002). 
62 Fong, supra note 54, at 620. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 593 

domestic violence classes as a part of their service plan.63 Many 

families and mandated reporters call CPS with the express 

purpose of accessing such services.64 In reality, access to these 

services and supports is not predicated on the forced engagement 

with CPS and can easily be obtained from community 

organizations. These services are often free or low cost and could 

be accessed by the families directly or by direct referrals from 

schools and other community-based agencies. 

Indeed, for the most frequent services from which 

families may benefit—mental health and substance abuse 

treatment—CPS need not be involved. These services are 

available through mental health and substance abuse agencies 

and funded through Medicaid.65 Unnecessary CPS agency 

involvement only serves to risk negatively impacting the 

provider’s engagement with the family.66 

C. Narrow Cases When CPS Has a Monopoly on Services and 

the Risk that Monopoly May Grow 

While most services that CPS agencies insist families 

participate in do not actually require CPS involvement, some 

discrete services currently require families to be referred to CPS. 

This requirement flows not from anything inherent in these 

services, but from flawed public policy requiring CPS 

involvement as a prerequisite to access services, creating 

perverse incentives to overreport families to the family 

regulation system. 

Consider access to safe and affordable housing—an 

endemic problem for  low-income families in America.67 In 2018, 

 
63 Amy C. D’Andrade, Parents and Court-Ordered Services: A 

Descriptive Study of Service Use in Child Welfare Reunification, 96 FAMS. SOC’Y 

25 (2018). 
64 See Fong, supra note 54. 
65 Indeed, “Medicaid is the single largest payer for mental health 

services in the United States and is increasingly playing a larger role in the 

reimbursement of substance use disorder services.” Behavioral Health Services, 

CTRS. FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVS., 

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/benefits/behavioral-health-

services/index.html [https://perma.cc/2JMZ-Y8B7] (last visited Jan. 6, 2021). 
66 J.D. Berrick et al., Partnering with Parents: Promising Approaches 

to Improve Reunification Outcomes for Children in Foster Care, 11 J. FAM. 

STRENGTHS 1, 1–13 (2018). 
67 See, e.g., MATTHEW DESMOND, EVICTED: POVERTY AND PROFIT IN THE 

AMERICAN CITY (2016). 

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/benefits/behavioral-health-services/index.html
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/benefits/behavioral-health-services/index.html


594 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

child welfare agencies reported removing more than 25,000 

children from their parents due in part to inadequate housing.68 

Recognizing that access to housing for families at risk of CPS 

involvement can prevent such unnecessary removals, the federal 

government’s Family Unification Program (FUP) provides 

priority access to a Housing Choice Voucher for families that are 

at risk of foster care due to inadequate housing.69 The federal 

government’s own research has documented that the FUP and 

other housing subsidies result in fewer school disruptions and 

child behavior problems, less adult alcohol and drug problems 

and psychological distress, and significantly reduced intimate 

partner violence.70 However, such housing services are 

“extremely scarce”71 and CPS agencies exclusively control access 

to the FUP vouchers which do exist. By federal law, CPS agencies 

are gatekeepers for these scarce resources and must certify that 

the “lack of adequate housing is a primary factor in the imminent 

placement of the family’s child or children in out-of-home care”72 

while collaborating with public housing agencies to identify 

eligible families.73 

Consider this legal structure from the point of view of a 

school. A school social worker learns that a family has been 

evicted and is moving from place to place.74 The social worker 

wants to help the family access housing options and knows the 

local housing agency just received a grant for FUP vouchers.75 

 
68 2018 FFY NCANDS DATASET, supra note 9. See also Ruth White, 

Understanding the Nexus of Child Welfare and Housing in America, in THE 

IMPACT OF HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS ON CHILD WELL-BEING 4 (Traci 

LaLiberte et al. eds., 2017), https://www.cascw.org/wp-content/uploads/

2017/04/CW360_Spring2017_WEB508.pdf [https://perma.cc/9S56-J2QF]. 
69 See 42 U.S.C. § 1437(a)(1). 
70 See OFFICE OF POL’Y DEV. & RSCH., U.S. DEP’T OF HOUS. & URB. 

DEV., FAMILY OPTIONS STUDY: 3-YEAR IMPACTS OF HOUSING AND SERVICES 

INTERVENTIONS FOR HOMELESS FAMILIES (2016), 

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Family-Options-Study-

Full-Report.pdf [https://perma.cc/NET3-55MP]. 
71 TINA LEE, CATCHING A CASE: INEQUALITY AND FEAR IN NEW YORK 

CITY’S CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM 13 (2016). 
72 See 42 U.S.C. § 1437(a)(2). 
73 See 42 U.S.C. § 1437(a)(4). 
74 Variations on the basic fact pattern may apply. For instance, the 

parent may rely on an abusive partner for housing due to a lack of alternative 

housing options, but housing instability remains the central problem. 
75 There is limited funding, and local jurisdictions must apply for FUP 

vouchers. U.S. DEP’T OF HOUS. & URB. DEV., 2019 FAMILY UNIFICATION 

PROGRAM NOTICE OF FUNDING AVAILABILITY (2019), 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 595 

The social worker cannot simply call the housing agency and 

explain how the children are at risk of harm due to housing 

instability. Rather, she must report the family to the CPS agency 

and hope that it will not only identify the housing need, but 

declare the children at imminent risk of foster care. The latter 

also requires CPS to identify the child’s parent as being at fault 

for such imminent risk. Such a report to CPS comes with the risk 

that CPS agencies will do nothing, respond too coercively to it, or 

respond but fail to provide access to a FUP voucher. 

The Family Unification Program is only one example. 

Some federal funds for “family preservation” services run 

through state CPS agencies.76 State and local CPS agencies 

provide their own set of services not accessible elsewhere, and 

some states even codify this role for CPS agencies in statute.77 

We do not attempt a full listing of supports and services which 

are provided by and must be accessed through CPS agencies; that 

task is beyond the scope of this Article. Our point is to show that 

CPS agencies have a monopoly over accessing certain services, 

and that monopoly precludes other entities—like schools—from 

helping families access such services directly. 

The most recent federal funding reform exacerbates these 

problems. The Family First Prevention and Services Act (FFPSA) 

explicitly seeks to incentivize states to spend money to prevent 

removing children from their parents to foster care, and thus 

shift spending from maintaining children in foster care to serving 

children in their families.78 This shift is welcome, but it also risks 

expanding CPS agencies’ control over services provided to 

families. Congress could have funded agencies distinct from CPS 

to provide essential services, but instead, it tied funding for 

evidence-based prevention services to CPS agencies and families 

 
https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/SPM/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA_FR-6300-

N-41.pdf [https://perma.cc/LR55-TS9F]. 
76 Title IV-B of the Social Security Act provides a modest amount of 

such funds. 42 U.S.C. §§ 621–629h. “Family preservation services” are defined 

in § 629a(a)(1). 
77 See, e.g., D.C. CODE §§ 4-1303.01a(7), 4-1303.03(a)(13) (2020). 
78 See, e.g., Family First Prevention Services Act, NAT’L COUNCIL STATE 

LEGISLATURES (April 1, 2020), https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-

services/family-first-prevention-services-act-ffpsa.aspx 

[https://perma.cc/QM9M-5VZR] (describing Family First as encouraging states 

to “develop prevention-focused-infrastructure” and permitting states to use 

federal Title IV-E funds to support services to help children remain with their 

families). 

https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/SPM/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA_FR-6300-N-41.pdf
https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/SPM/documents/2019_FUP_NOFA_FR-6300-N-41.pdf
https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/family-first-prevention-services-act-ffpsa.aspx
https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/family-first-prevention-services-act-ffpsa.aspx


596 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

reported to CPS agencies. FFPSA not only funnels prevention 

money through CPS agencies, but requires those agencies to 

identify children as “candidate[s] for foster care,” defined as 

“being at imminent risk of entering foster care . . . but who can 

remain safely” out of foster care with the help of certain 

prevention services.79 FFPSA funds can be used for specific 

services deemed to have some significant evidence base. So far, 

the federal government has certified several such services, 

including certain mental health and substance abuse treatments, 

as “well-supported,” “supported,” or “promising.”80 Notably, there 

is nothing specific to these services that should require CPS 

agencies to refer families to them; they should be Medicaid-

eligible services open to families referred by themselves or any 

professional that knows them. 

Again, consider this legal structure from a school’s 

perspective. If a school becomes aware of significant child 

misbehavior and substance abuse, and has concerns about the 

effectiveness of a parent’s response to these issues, it could 

reasonably refer the family for Functional Family Therapy, a 

family-based intervention found to achieve positive results 

responding to those issues.81 FFPSA structurally incentivizes 

CPS agencies to become an access point for this service. 

Consequently, this encourages schools to refer the family to CPS, 

which will presumably investigate and determine if the child is a 

candidate for foster care, rather than refer the family directly to 

services. While we applaud FFPSA for directing funding to such 

services, we question why, in cases like this, schools should be 

pushed to use CPS agencies as a middleman and not pushed to 

refer families directly to Family First providers. 

 
79 42 U.S.C. §§ 675(13), 671(e). 
80 Find a Program or Service, TITLE IV-E PREVENTION SERVS. 

CLEARINGHOUSE, https://preventionservices.abtsites.com/program?combine_1=

&prograting%5B1%5D=1&prograting%5B2%5D=2&prograting%5B3%5D=3&p

age=0 [https://perma.cc/SK5H-WYBC] (last visited May 1, 2021). A complete list 

is available by filtering for “well-supported,” “supported,” and “promising” 

programs. 
81 Id. 

https://preventionservices.abtsites.com/program?combine_1=&prograting%5B1%5D=1&prograting%5B2%5D=2&prograting%5B3%5D=3&page=0
https://preventionservices.abtsites.com/program?combine_1=&prograting%5B1%5D=1&prograting%5B2%5D=2&prograting%5B3%5D=3&page=0
https://preventionservices.abtsites.com/program?combine_1=&prograting%5B1%5D=1&prograting%5B2%5D=2&prograting%5B3%5D=3&page=0
https://preventionservices.abtsites.com/program?combine_1=&prograting%5B1%5D=1&prograting%5B2%5D=2&prograting%5B3%5D=3&page=0


2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 597 

IV. AN ALTERNATIVE VISION: SCHOOLS 

SERVING FAMILIES APART FROM CPS 

AGENCIES AND THE FAMILY REGULATION 

SYSTEM 

The preceding sections support a demand for a new 

vision: CPS agencies certainly have an important role in 

responding to severe allegations of abuse and neglect where 

children are at imminent risk, but their forced foray into 

investigating and overseeing families living in abject poverty is 

misplaced. To address adverse childhood experiences that 

manifest in adverse community environments, public schools 

must have the autonomy and purpose to serve families outside 

the family regulation system. 

The autonomy that schools need to serve children outside 

the family regulation system may require legislative and policy 

changes. Schools need access to the important services and 

funding streams currently monopolized by CPS, or the ability to 

refer families directly to such services without using CPS.82 

Mandated reporting statutes need to be limited; education 

personnel should report severe child maltreatment when state 

coercion is needed to protect children, but the majority of other 

reports need not go to CPS.83 Definitions of maltreatment, 

particularly neglect, may need to be revisited to disentangle 

adverse childhood experiences, adverse community 

environments, and other social concerns from intentional and 

willful conduct by parents.84 

Freedom from legal mandates to involve CPS will permit 

schools to reimagine their role in supporting families. Already, 

research demonstrates that reporters call CPS out of a desire to 

help families, not only because the law requires them to do so.85 

Thus, when that desire to help families can be satisfied without 

calling CPS, reporters should have no difficulty transitioning to 

this alternative vision, which we discuss more fully below. 

 
82 See supra Part III.B–C. 
83 See, e.g., Raz, Calling CPS, supra note 36; Abraham Bergman, A 

Pediatrician’s Perspective on Child Protection, in C. HENRY KEMPE, supra note 

47, at 63, 63–69 (2013); Wald, supra note 47; Worley & Melton, supra note 49. 
84 See Josh Gupta-Kagan, Finally Time for Realistic and Determinate 

Standards in Family Court, 68 JUV. & FAM. CT. J. 31 (2017). 
85 Fong, supra note 54, at 620. 



598 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

A. Losing Coercion over Families 

Building a stronger structure for schools to provide or 

refer services and supports directly to families, rather than 

forcing schools to work through CPS agencies, would circumvent 

CPS agencies’ coercive authority over families. Reduced coercion 

is a feature of the alternative vision discussed herein, as it 

empowers parents to use the services and supports they desire, 

and increases their opportunities to do so. Avoiding school-

induced CPS agency coercion also promotes schools and families 

working effectively together. Finally, it reflects a recognition of 

CPS agencies‘ primary tool—not new services, but coercion. As 

one school social worker remarked, “[When CPS is involved,] I 

think parents either hear it differently or out of nervousness and 

fear of ‘what if I don’t accept this service?’”86 

This admission—that reporters who call CPS agencies 

are at least conscious of those agencies’ coercive power—raises a 

range of concerns. It requires a subjective judgment that a family 

is obstinately refusing to comply with the school’s 

recommendations—rather than legitimately disagreeing with 

those recommendations or facing obstacles to following them—

and that exercising coercive power will lead to positive outcomes. 

It raises concerns that implicit bias in such judgments will 

contribute to racial and other disparities in reporting. Indeed, 

many CPS social workers express negative opinions of Black 

families;87 a similar risk likely applies to school personnel. 

We recognize that coercion is sometimes—albeit rarely—

necessary to protect children from maltreatment: in those cases, 

reports to CPS are necessary and appropriate. However, reports 

to CPS simply to link families to voluntary services are 

unnecessary and inappropriate. Only when a professional or 

mandated reporter has suspicion of severe risk to a child should 

they report their suspicion to CPS. 

We simultaneously recognize that even this alternative 

vision will raise concerns that any school-based services or 

referrals would come with too much surveillance and coercion. 

We respond in several ways. First, whatever coercive authority 

schools have over families is less than that of CPS agencies; that 

 
86 Id. at 621. 
87 Dorothy E. Roberts, Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic 

Punishment of Black Mothers, 59 UCLA L. REV. 1474 (2011). 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 599 

is why advocates for reforming the family regulation system call 

for investing in services through agencies separate from CPS.88 

Second, we recommend enacting these changes in the context of 

broader reforms which would limit the scope of CPS agency 

authority, such as narrowed definitions of abuse and neglect, 

narrowed mandatory reporting and mandatory investigation 

laws, and strengthened legal protections against unnecessary 

removals. Such reforms would limit the threat that schools would 

call CPS agencies to more severe cases. Third, we emphasize that 

many of the service referrals described below involve referrals to 

outside entities that would not have a duty to report families’ 

confidential data to schools. Fourth, as described below, many of 

the individuals who schools could hire to interact with parents 

could be parents’ peers and other community members. 

B. Linking Children and Families to Services—Without CPS 

When schools (and other reporters) use CPS to refer 

families to services, reporters and CPS risk a loss of trust and 

engagement with the family. CPS inherently has a “dual role”—

surveillance and assistance89—and the former can undermine its 

effectiveness at the latter.90 Reforms to the family regulation 

system should establish new pathways to access resources 

without requiring CPS; the more CPS agencies are limited to 

cases where coercive authority is necessary to protect children, 

the more the family regulation system’s scope will shrink, leaving 

space for a new child and family well-being system to emerge. 

Schools provide fertile ground for such a child and family 

well-being system. This section outlines how schools can identify 

families’ needs for public benefits, legal services, and mental 

health care, and how reorienting resources away from CPS 

agencies supports such a system. 

1. Public Benefits 

Schools know which children and families require income 

supports and other forms of public benefits, and they can also 

 
88 See, e.g., Parents to City Council: Fund Communities, Not ACS, RISE 

MAG. (Nov. 3, 2020), https://www.risemagazine.org/2020/11/fund-communities-

not-acs [https://perma.cc/7SV2-ATWM]. 
89 LEE, supra note 71, at 89. 
90 Lucas A. Gerber et al., Understanding the Effects of an 

Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, 116 

CHILD. & YOUTH SERV. REV. 116, 125 (2020). 



600 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

take on the administration of public benefits to which families 

may be entitled. Schools already manage financial eligibility for 

programs under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch 

Act.91 Schools already know92 which children are homeless 

(broadly defined93) and must provide them with transportation to 

continue attending their home school94 and with a “coordinated 

system” to help children and parents exercise their legal rights 

under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.95 

Schools need not stop there. They could assist families 

with applying and accessing other government financial 

benefits96 like Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program 

(SNAP), Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, 

Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and housing assistance. 

These services should not require involvement with the CPS 

agency. Where the law requires CPS involvement—as with the 

Family Unification Program described in Part III.C—the law 

should change to permit a more direct and less coercive path to 

that assistance. 

2. Legal Services Referrals 

Helping families obtain public benefits is important, but 

when a child is wrongfully denied Social Security disability 

benefits, when a landlord refuses to make repairs, or when the 

family encounters a range of other challenges, the family may 

benefit from and desire legal assistance. Legal assistance can 

address many of the underlying conditions that currently lead to 

CPS agency involvement, and thus can help prevent the need for 

such involvement, a point the federal Children’s Bureau recently 

 
91 School Lunch Programs Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1751–1769j. 
92 State education agencies report some of these data. See, e.g., New 

Data Show Number of NYC Students Who Are Homeless Topped 100,000 for 

Fifth Consecutive Year, ADVOC. FOR CHILD. N.Y., (Dec. 3, 2020), 

https://www.advocatesforchildren.org/node/1675 [https://perma.cc/LW3W-

MJ7K] (using state education department data to document number of homeless 

students). 
93 The legal definition is broad enough to include anyone doubling up 

with friends or family after an eviction. 42 U.S.C. § 11434a(2). 
94 42 U.S.C. § 11432(e)(3)(C). 
95 42 U.S.C. § 11432(e)(3)(E)(i). 
96 The examples used in this section are governmental benefits. 

However, the same reasoning applies to schools connecting families with 

community resources and organizations that have additional support to promote 

the social determinants of health. 

https://www.advocatesforchildren.org/node/1675


2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 601 

emphasized.97 Schools should establish relationships with legal 

aid organizations so families may have access to preventative 

legal advocacy. 

The subject matter of preventative legal advocacy is the 

bread and butter of poverty law practice, helping parents defend 

against an eviction or take action against a landlord to improve 

housing conditions, obtain or maintain public benefits, obtain 

legal protection against an abusive partner, arrange for 

temporary care of a child while the parent is away for inpatient 

drug treatment, a military deployment, incarceration, or other 

reasons.98 These legal needs make up America’s well-documented 

“justice gap”—the inadequate or unavailable legal assistance for 

the millions of  low-income families who encounter these or 

similar civil legal problems.99 

School partnerships with legal services organizations can 

help fill that gap when legal needs affect children, and schools 

can identify and refer families who likely need legal services. 

This proposal echoes what medical providers do in medical-legal 

partnerships; medical personnel and social workers in their 

clinics or hospitals identify families who face some legal obstacle 

to improved health, such as poor housing conditions or access to 

 
97 ADMIN. FOR CHILD. & FAMS., U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUM. SERVS., 

CIVIL LEGAL ADVOCACY TO PROMOTE CHILD AND FAMILY WELL-BEING, ADDRESS 

THE SOCIAL DETERMINATES OF HEALTH, AND ENHANCE COMMUNITY RESILIENCE 

(2021) [hereinafter CIVIL LEGAL ADVOCACY]. 
98 See VIVEK S. SANKARAN & MARTHA L. RAIMON, U. MICH. L. SCH. 

SCHOLARSHIP REPOSITORY CTR. CASE CLOSED: ADDRESSING UNMET LEGAL 

NEEDS & STABILIZING FAMILIES, 2 (2014), 

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=oth

er [https://perma.cc/7H8V-FP2R] (noting several common fact patterns for legal 

services). See also AM. ACAD. OF ARTS & SCI., CIVIL JUSTICE FOR ALL: A REPORT 

AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE MAKING JUSTICE ACCESSIBLE INITIATIVE 30 

(2020) [hereinafter CIVIL JUSTICE FOR ALL], 

https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/publication/downloads/2020-Civil-

Justice-for-All_0.pdf [https://perma.cc/EE2T-FELC] (noting family and housing 

law as accounting for 60% of all problems addressed by Legal Services 

Corporation-funded legal services organizations). 
99 LEGAL SERVS. CORP., THE JUSTICE GAP: MEASURING THE UNMET 

CIVIL LEGAL NEEDS OF LOW-INCOME AMERICANS (2017), 

https://www.lsc.gov/sites/default/files/images/TheJusticeGap-FullReport.pdf 

[https://perma.cc/2B2V-U973]. See also, e.g., U.S. DEP’T OF JUST., CIVIL LEGAL 

AID 101, at 2 (2018), https://www.justice.gov/lair/file/828346/download 

[https://perma.cc/CBV4-MMXD] (reporting that a majority of low-income 

Americans seeking free civil legal aid “are turned away because of the limited 

resources available”). 

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=other
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=other
https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/publication/downloads/2020-Civil-Justice-for-All_0.pdf
https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/publication/downloads/2020-Civil-Justice-for-All_0.pdf
https://www.lsc.gov/sites/default/files/images/TheJusticeGap-FullReport.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/lair/file/828346/download


602 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

public benefits, and refer the family to a legal services provider. 

Some have identified such partnerships as mechanisms to keep 

children and families from being perceived as needing CPS 

involvement.100 

Schools (and especially school social workers) can 

similarly flag potential clients for legal services organizations. 

Just as medical-legal partnerships feature formal agreements 

between medical clinics and legal services providers, schools and 

legal services providers would need to reach agreements. Indeed, 

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently 

recommended that legal services organizations partner with a 

variety of entities, including “educational institutions,” building 

off the medical-legal partnership model, to address the yawning 

access-to-justice gap in this country.101 Others have identified 

school-based legal services as a tool to fight against the school-to-

prison pipeline.102 

Such a structure would not be without some tension. 

Families might have claims against the school district in school 

disciplinary or special education matters, so schools might 

question whether referring families to lawyers could conflict with 

the school’s interests. That tension is real, but resolvable. 

Patients may have medical malpractice claims against medical 

clinics, yet medical-legal partnerships have thrived. Family 

defenders providing pre-petition representation to parents 

investigated by CPS agencies for abuse and neglect have built-in 

tension with those agencies in every case, yet frequently agencies 

refer families for such representation, and pre-petition 

representation is an important and expanding practice.103 If 

those models can overcome tension between partners, the same 

can occur with school-legal partnerships, and a new pathway to 

legal services can be built to provide services to keep children 

safe and away from CPS agencies. 

 
100 Kara R. Finck, Medical Legal Partnerships and Child Welfare: An 

Opportunity for Intervention and Reform, 28 WIDENER COMMONWEALTH L. REV. 

23, 24 (2019). 
101 CIVIL JUSTICE FOR ALL, supra note 98, at 21. 
102 Barbara Fedders & Jason Langberg, School-Based Legal Services as 

a Tool in Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline and Achieving Educational 

Equity, 13 U. MD. L.J. RACE, RELIGION, GENDER & CLASS 212, 229–35 (2013). 
103 See infra note 112 and accompanying text. 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 603 

Indeed, several local examples have been developed. The 

Chicago Law & Education Foundation has grown since 2010 to 

partner with several schools to provide legal services to 

low-income children and families.104 The Atlanta Volunteer 

Lawyers Foundation began a “Standing with Our 

Neighborhoods” initiative in 2016, which has grown to place 

lawyers in nine public schools to help families encountering 

housing instability.105 In 2018, the Moran Center for Youth 

Advocacy in Evanston, Illinois, opened a school-based civil legal 

services clinic focused on family law, housing, public benefits, 

and immigration issues,106 and operates that clinic alongside an 

existing program representing children and families in special 

education and school disciplinary matters,107 demonstrating that 

such representation need not doom school-legal services 

partnerships. The School-Based Health Alliance has identified 

school-based health centers that are tied to their own medical-

legal partnerships, effectively tying schools to legal services.108 

Other school-based legal clinics have operated in Connecticut,109 

New York,110 and Los Angeles.111 

 
104 History, CHI. L. & EDUC. FOUND., https://lawclef.org/about-

us/history/ [https://perma.cc/P5S9-K5UT] (last visited Oct. 18, 2020); Programs, 

CHI. L. & EDUC. FOUND., https://lawclef.org/programs/ [https://perma.cc/2KJM-

Z48H] (last visited June 2, 2021). 
105 Standing with Our Neighbors, ATLANTA VOLUNTEER LAWS. FOUND., 

https://avlf.org/standing-with-our-neighbors [https://perma.cc/98FC-5BL3] (last 

visited Oct. 14, 2020). 
106 School-Based Civil Legal Clinic, MORAN CTR. FOR YOUTH ADVOC., 

https://moran-center.org/what-we-do/school-based-civil-legal-clinic 

[https://perma.cc/E85D-3QJT] (last visited Oct. 18, 2020). 
107 What We Do, MORAN CTR. FOR YOUTH ADVOC., https://moran-

center.org/what-we-do [https://perma.cc/YN2W-8T4T] (last visited Oct. 18, 

2020). 
108 SCH.-BASED HEALTH ALL., SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH & MEDICAL-

LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS (2018), https://www.sbh4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/

08/School-Based-Health-and-Medical-Legal-Partnership.pdf 

[https://perma.cc/Y7BS-MNHK]. 
109 Linda Conner Lambek, Students Can Get Legal Help at School; 

Attorney Opens Clinic at Harding High, CONN. POST (May 13, 2014), https://cca-

ct.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CT-Post-Harding-5-13-14.pdf 

[https://perma.cc/4J5D-FVL8]. 
110 Children’s Project, VOLUNTEERS LEGAL SERV., 

https://volsprobono.org/projects/childrens/#partnerschildren 

[https://perma.cc/E27D-UK38] (last visited Oct. 18, 2020). 
111 Linda Jacobson, School-Based Legal Clinic Addresses Needs of Los 

Angeles Immigrant Families, HIGHER ED DIVE (May 10, 2019) 

https://www.sbh4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/School-Based-Health-and-Medical-Legal-Partnership.pdf
https://www.sbh4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/School-Based-Health-and-Medical-Legal-Partnership.pdf
https://www.sbh4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/School-Based-Health-and-Medical-Legal-Partnership.pdf
https://cca-ct.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CT-Post-Harding-5-13-14.pdf
https://cca-ct.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CT-Post-Harding-5-13-14.pdf


604 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

Our suggestion for school-based legal referrals takes one 

of the most important trends in child protection law—calls for 

expanding “pre-petition” representation, in which child 

protection agencies refer parents to legal services organizations 

when the agencies identify a need for such services112—a step 

further. Like any other service, there is nothing inherent in it 

that should require parents to be referred to CPS agencies to 

access it. Thus, while we welcome the expanding focus on parent 

representation and pre-petition representation for families 

already referred to CPS, we seek an alternative pathway to 

provide such legal services before such CPS involvement occurs. 

3. School-Based Health Supports 

Schools are uniquely positioned in communities to serve 

as a conduit for services and resources for students and their 

families. This is best demonstrated through their ability to 

provide medical and mental health support, especially to 

students from historically marginalized backgrounds who often 

struggle to gain access to adequate medical services within their 

community. 

Schools, especially those with a School-Based Health 

Center (SBHC), may serve as a primary point of access to health 

care for these youth.113 SBHC’s have expanded since they were 

initially started in the 1960s and are now located in over 2,300 

schools. They are often composed of a collaborative team of 

professionals including medical doctors, dentists, mental health 

practitioners, health educators, social workers, nutritionists, and 

other support staff who work together to meet the needs of the 

 
https://www.highereddive.com/news/school-based-legal-clinic-addresses-needs-

of-los-angeles-immigrant-families/554559/ [https://perma.cc/6SNK-JCGP]. 
112 See, e.g., Gianna Giordano & Jey Rajaraman, Increasing Pre-

Petition Legal Advocacy to Keep Families Together, AM. BAR ASS’N. (Dec. 15, 

2020), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/childrens-

rights/articles/2020/winter2021-increasing-pre-petition-legal-advocacy-to-keep-

families-together/ [https://perma.cc/QV3F-RXXQ]; CASEY FAM. PROGRAMS, 

STRATEGY BRIEF: TRANSFORMING CHILD WELFARE SYSTEMS 2 (2020), 

https://caseyfamilypro-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/media/20.07-QFF-TS-

Preventive-Legal-Support.pdf [https://perma.cc/9TW3-3M6G] (“In some cases, 

families can also self-refer or be referred by other sources (such as the courts or 

community-based agencies).”). The “common elements” of such pre-petition legal 

services, however, involve CPS agency referrals. 
113 Michael Arenson et al., The Evidence on School-Based Health 

Centers: A Review, 6 GLOB. PEDIATRIC HEALTH 1, 3 (2019). 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 605 

youth and families they serve.114 School-based health services 

serve an integral role in addressing health disparities for youth 

and families from medically underserved communities which 

historically are more likely to engage with the family regulation 

system and to have their children removed and placed in foster 

care.115 Partly due to environmental stressors and experiences 

with complex trauma,116 foster youth commonly face mental 

health challenges, and they often go untreated due to lack of 

access to appropriate care. It has been widely documented that 

foster youth that have had numerous adverse childhood 

experiences are more likely to struggle academically in school 

and to experience substance use issues,117 homelessness, 

incarceration,118 and mental health challenges.119 Schools have 

the opportunity to disrupt this cycle by providing foster youth 

and other students (especially students at risk of becoming foster 

youth) with necessary mental health and medical services to 

address these needs in a non-coercive manner outside of CPS 

agencies. Collaboratively, health professionals and schools can 

work together to invest in youth and communities while ensuring 

that those that experience the most systemic barriers thrive. 

4. Peer Support Models 

Peer support models are slowly expanding within 

organizations serving families in the family regulation system, 

as a result of the growing recognition of the power differential 

between CPS agencies and families.120 Broadly defined, a peer 

 
114 Id. at 2–3. 
115 Katherine Sanchez et al., Fostering Connections and Medical 

Homes: Addressing Health Disparities Among Children in Substitute Care, 32 

CHILD. & YOUTH SERVS. REV. 286 (2010). 
116 Patricia A. Resick et al., A Critical Evaluation of the Complex PTSD 

Literature: Implications for DSM-5, 25 J. TRAUMATIC STRESS 241, 242 (2012). 
117 J.P. Mersky et al., Impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences on 

Health, Mental Health, and Substance Use in Early Adulthood: A Cohort Study 

of an Urban, Minority Sample in the U.S., 37 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 917, 920 

(2013). 
118 Youngmin Yi & Christopher Wildeman, Can Foster Care 

Interventions Diminish Justice System Inequality?, 28 FUTURE CHILD. 37, 39 

(2018). 
119 Brenda M. Morton, The Grip of Trauma: How Trauma Disrupts the 

Academic Aspirations of Foster Youth, 75 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 73, 74 

(2018). 
120 How Do Parent Partner Programs Instill Hope and Support 

Prevention and Reunification?, CASEY FAM. PROGRAMS (June 4, 2019), 

https://www.casey.org/ parent-partner-program [https://perma.cc/D7TH-L9S8]. 



606 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

support specialist is a parent or child who has previously 

experienced and navigated a system, such as the family 

regulation system, and receives training to support someone 

currently navigating that system.121 Peer support models have 

long existed outside the family regulation system, including some 

efforts in schools. Increased use of peer support models can both 

expand supports available to families and mitigate the risk that 

greater school involvement with families will become a new form 

of coercion. 

Grassroots parent organizing efforts have brought 

together parents, schools, and community members to address 

inequality. Much of the parent organizing in underserved schools 

is developed out of the desire to address disparities in education 

and the local community.122 Within Los Angeles, parents from 

underserved districts have joined together to advocate for the 

rights of their children through the formation of organizations 

such as the Community Asset Development Re-defining 

Education (CADRE) program. CADRE parents seek to disrupt 

the carceral logics within schools through policy change, 

community resiliency, base building, leadership development, 

campaigns and movement building, and coalition building.123 

This grassroots organization has increased parent involvement 

within their community schools and strengthened parents’ 

ability to advocate for themselves and their children through 

know-your-rights trainings, legal clinics, and engagement in 

participatory action research. Their work has helped to pass 

policies that have aided in decreasing school suspension rates 

within South Los Angeles. 

The efforts of parent-led organizations within schools are 

also a safety mechanism for families and children by providing 

them a voice and support to ensure that schools do not perpetuate 

further coercion over vulnerable families. Parents involved in 

these grassroots efforts are often more engaged in their children’s 

education and are empowered to speak up about the injustices 

they see within their communities and schools. Schools can 

 
121 Id. 
122 Kysa Nygreen, Competing Paradigms of Educational Justice: Parent 

Organizing for Educational Equity in a Neoliberal Reform Context, 49 EQUITY & 

EXCELLENCE EDUC. 202, 202 (2016). 
123 Strategies, CADRE, http://cadre-

la.org/newhome/whatwedo/strategies [https://perma.cc/XZ8B-F23H] (last visited 

Feb. 25, 2021). 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 607 

harness the power of these grassroots movements by bringing 

parents to the table as partners to build coalitions and networks 

of support. 

Peer support models have a growing evidentiary base, 

with a diverse range of improved outcomes related to substance 

abuse, mental health, and family preservation.124 Peer support 

models should be embedded in schools to ensure that parents in 

the community are formal school personnel that are charged with 

identifying and working beside peer families that are 

experiencing family or community adversity. 

5. Increasing School Social Workers 

Implementing the proposed changes will require a 

significant scaling up of work that schools already undertake to 

identify and address children’s and family’s needs. To achieve 

that scale, schools will need significantly more staff, especially 

social workers and other professionals and peer and community 

supports. The National Association of Social Workers 

recommends that schools have a ratio of one social worker for 

every 250 children, and one social worker for every fifty children 

with what they describe as “intensive needs.”125 Presently, 

schools fall far short of this measure—nationally, there is an 

average of 0.28 social workers per school, according to U.S. 

Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights,126 and the 

ACLU has calculated the average national ratio to be 2,106 

students to one social worker.127 

Moving to the recommended ratios requires addressing 

concerns that more school social workers would funnel more 

children to the family regulation system. We emphasize that 

increasing the numbers of school social workers should occur as 

 
124 CASEY FAM. PROGRAMS, supra note 120. 
125 NAT’L ASS’N OF SOC. WORKERS, NASW STANDARDS FOR SCHOOL 

SOCIAL WORK SERVICES 18 (2012), 

https://www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=1Ze4-9-

Os7E%3D&portalid=0 [https://perma.cc/2PY4-YS99]. 
126 U.S. DEPT. OF EDUC., OFFICE OF C.R., supra note 14 (demonstrating 

that of the 97,533 schools listed in the CRDC School Support dataset, all but 

twenty-one schools provided data on the number of full-time equivalent social 

workers on staff). 
127 AM. CIV. LIBERTIES UNION, COPS AND NO COUNSELORS: HOW THE 

LACK OF SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH STAFF IS HARMING STUDENTS 13 (2019), 

https://www.aclu.org/report/cops-and-no-counselors [https://perma.cc/C4BU-

FFHC]. 



608 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

part of broader reforms shifting away from the reporting and 

investigation status quo and limiting school reports to CPS 

agencies to more severe cases. Recognizing that such a shift will 

require significant legal changes to mandatory reporting statutes 

and cultural changes within schools, we recommend several 

additional steps to ensure that additional school social workers 

facilitate voluntary, and not coercive, supports and services for 

families. School social worker job descriptions should make clear 

that their role is to offer supports and services to families. While 

voluntary reporting to CPS agencies would remain even if our 

recommendation to limit mandatory reporting is adopted, job 

descriptions should make clear that such reporting is only 

appropriate when social workers (or other school staff) suspect 

severe abuse or neglect. Relatedly, expanding the number of staff 

to help families obtain useful supports should not rely entirely on 

school social workers. Peer and community supports, discussed 

in Part IV.B.4, should be used as well. 

6. Paying for Reforms 

Enacting the reforms proposed in this section would 

require addressing concerns about cost, especially costs of more 

school social workers and services provided by schools. Much, if 

not most, of additional funds needed for more school social 

workers can be obtained from reorienting funding from the 

existing family regulation system and school-to-prison nexus. 

Shrinking the scope of CPS to focus on protecting children from 

severe—but relatively rare—forms of maltreatment would free 

up many social workers and the public dollars used to pay them. 

That funding stream could be redirected from CPS agencies to 

school systems. 

Relatedly, shrinking schools’ financial contributions to 

the carceral web described in Part II.A would free up money for 

school social workers and other staff. Many school districts spend 

significant sums on policing students, even elementary school 

students, an activity shown to increase school-based arrests but 

not school safety. Nationally, public schools employ more police 

officers than social workers—more than 27,000 police officers 

compared to 23,000 social workers128—and students of color are 

 
128 U.S. COMM’ ON C.R., BEYOND SUSPENSIONS: EXAMINING SCHOOL 

DISCIPLINE POLICIES AND CONNECTIONS TO THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE 

FOR STUDENTS OF COLOR WITH DISABILITIES 165 (2019), 



2021] REIMAGINING SCHOOLS’ ROLE 609 

particularly likely to attend schools with police but no 

counselors.129 For instance, the Richland County School District 

One130 spends more than $2.3 million annually to pay for a total 

of forty-nine police officers in its schools, twenty-eight of which 

are assigned to elementary schools.131 Most of those funds could 

be redirected to school social workers without jeopardizing 

safety. School districts can also access alternative funding 

streams to help pay for this Article’s proposals, such as Medicaid 

which can help support mental health and substance abuse 

services as well as case management in certain circumstances.132 

The first step of covering the cost of services to families is 

to maximize funding from already existing sources. As noted 

above, Medicaid funds mental health services,133 one of the 

primary services schools could provide. The federal Children’s 

Bureau has catalogued a range of funding sources for civil legal 

services for impoverished families.134 

These steps can cover much of the reforms we propose 

without requiring new funding. Some new funding may, of 

course, also be required, which we submit is justified as a moral 

imperative to serve children and families more effectively, and as 

a long-term investment to help children avoid harmful outcomes 

in the legal system, schools, employment, and beyond. 

 
https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2019/07-23-Beyond-Suspensions.pdf 

[https://perma.cc/AJJ6-THUD]. 
129 Id. at 51. 
130 This is the home district of Josh Gupta-Kagan in Columbia, South 

Carolina. 
131 Data on total cost and numbers of school resource officers (SROs) 

are taken from memoranda of agreement between the district and two separate 

local law enforcement agencies for the 2019–20 school year. RICHLAND CNTY. 

SCH. DIST. ONE & RICHLAND CNTY. SHERIFF’S DEP’T., MEMORANDUM OF 

AGREEMENT 2019–2020 & ADDENDUM 1; RICHLAND CNTY. SCH. DIST. ONE & 

COLUMBIA POLICE DEP’T., MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT 2019–2020, at 1. The 

District confirmed in a FOIA response that its expenditures for SROs came from 

general funds. RICHLAND CNTY. SCH. DIST. ONE, FOIA REQUEST RESPONSE 

(Aug. 10, 2020). 
132 See, e.g., SUBSTANCE ABUSE & MENTAL HEALTH SERVS. ADMIN. & 

CTRS. FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVS., JOINT INFORMATIONAL BULLETIN: 

GUIDANCE TO STATES AND SCHOOL SYSTEMS ON ADDRESSING MENTAL HEALTH 

AND SUBSTANCE USE ISSUES IN SCHOOLS (July 1, 2019), 

https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib20190701.pdf 

[https://perma.cc/QTZ3-99J7]. 
133 See sources cited supra note 65 and accompanying text. 
134 CIVIL LEGAL ADVOCACY, supra note 97, at 7–13. 



610 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:575 

V. CONCLUSION 

Schools’ roles in the present family regulation system 

powerfully illustrate the failures of that system. Schools are the 

largest single source of child abuse and neglect hotline reports to 

CPS agencies, but their reports are especially unlikely to be 

investigated, substantiated, or lead to meaningful protective 

action. Instead, they lead to unwanted and largely unhelpful CPS 

agency intervention and coercive regulation of families. For 

families that could benefit from voluntary supports, this CPS 

agency involvement represents a missed opportunity to provide 

more effective and less coercive assistance. 

Schools also represent the promise of a different 

approach. School staff are in a position to know when families are 

in need of assistance and to provide such assistance directly, 

through partnerships with legal services and other community 

providers. Such assistance would require both a significant 

change in law, so schools would not be legally required to report 

families to CPS agencies, as well as in culture, so school staff 

would work collaboratively with families, and significant 

personnel and funding changes. However difficult, these changes 

are possible, and would help usher in a profoundly more effective 

way to assist children and families currently poorly served by 

CPS agencies.