They aren't involving kids in the legal system. It's like a junior court system that doesn't even have a judge. They aren't even located in a court house. Most are handled lawyers, more serious offenses have to be signed off by a judge. The final responsibility to pay resides with the parents so no it can't go on a kids credit report, if the parent fails to pay they can get the money from the parents taxes like any other debt.

Also the school administrators determine if a police officer gets involved, so this isn't like situations where either a kid has repeatedly failed intervention by school officials or there's a problem that increasingly becoming common, like kids carrying vape pipes. No different than in the days when you couldn't bring cigarettes to school, friends of mine would ditch them under people's plants and bushes near the school as to not be caught with them.

Here's your problem many times:

“Instead of counseling these children, they are giving them tickets,” said the mother. “When they are handing out citations in this volume, you have to stop and say, ‘What’s going on here?’”

Hum, since most these kids this isn't first time situation and they have been counseled by the school, the parent notified just exactly how is it the school's responsibility to lay that off on? Shouldn't home be where "counseling and guidance" is best determined? Given that if the kid isn't listening to the parent just how much respect do you think they have for the school? The days of a principle and teachers monitoring the halls is a bygone era, just take a look at some videos of kids taking on teachers physically in the classrooms.

We are talking Illinois here also. Just the amount of sexual assaults and rapes in some of these schools is absolutely shocking. Some of the stuff I read I'd fear for my life having to attend some of these schools. You ever read the stories also of kids who are murdered by gangs on their way to and from school? You think the school made these kids that way?....you'd better think again.

Maybe this is the best thing for some of these kids. A trip through kiddie court to get idea of where they are headed if they don't adjust their behavior. I know people's heads would explode but in seriously horrendous schools they should put a jail cell somewhere. Maybe telling kids to go sit inside a jail cell for awhile voluntarily to get a feel for what it's like to find yourself living in one might be a good experience for a deterrent.

One of the most memorable heart breaks I have witnessed was sitting in a prison visiting my brother and across the hall in another area there was the intake area. Most the visiting room and intake room had large windows across from each other. The faces of those kids, that's exactly what young 17, 18, 19 year old's are, I can't even begin to describe the looks, if any where coming in there for murder they were looking at exactly what the rest of their lives were going to look like. Gates, cider blocks and windows.
One day, a long time ago that was my brother I was looking at, he's been in for thirty five years. He was a product of his upbringing not a product of having been given a ticket for discipline by forces that shouldn't have been the ones doing the disciplining or teaching children the boundaries of appropriate behavior. If parents were doing their jobs, if parents were still allowed to spank a kid or give them a good slap up alongside their heads when they needed it instead of calling the cops and having the parent arrested some of these extremely out of control kids might experience some real meaning behind the words attitude adjustment. That temporary moment of lost of pride, hurt feelings or injured ego is way better than a lifetime behind bars.