This article was reported in collaboration with The San Antonio Express-News and Big Local News at Stanford University as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
Over the past decade, school districts across Texas have sought to make classrooms safer by swelling the number of police officers on campuses and taking a tougher stance on misbehavior. But the crackdown has had an unexpected consequence: sweeping tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system.
