Did the Progressive 'Broward County Solution' Cost 17 Student Lives?

Did the Progressive 'Broward County Solution' Cost 17 Student Lives?:
""We're not compromising school safety.  We're really saving the lives of kids," boasted Michaelle Valbrun-Pope, executive director of Student Support Initiatives for Broward County Public Schools, in August 2017.
Valbrun-Pope was referring to what an article by Jeffrey Benzing in Public Source calls the "Broward County Solution."  
As Benzing relates, Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state's juvenile justice system. 
County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: "lower arrests by not making arrests."
Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones.  
The results impressed the people who initiated the program. 
Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.
One particular motivation behind programs like Broward County's was the pressure from multiple sources to reduce the statistical disparity between black and Hispanic student arrests on one hand and white and Asian student arrests on the other..."
Read on!