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Minneapolis Public Schools Is Rethinking Police Presence In Schools. Here Are 3 Reasons Equity-Focused School Systems Should Do The Same After The COVID-19 Pandemic

This article is more than 3 years old.

Equity has been a recurring theme for educators across the country responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Equity was front and center as leaders sought to overcome the inequitable barriers to distance learning. Equity called for educators to think of novel, but necessary ways to engage families in academics. And equity is certainly a key consideration for planning for a new school year that recognizes all the ways school closures have disparately impacted some student groups academically more than others.

But with racial tensions flaring nationally because of the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, it has become more and more apparent that the fight to narrow racial gaps in academic achievement are inseparable from the broader cause of achieving racial justice in our schools. Exemplifying this connection, a Minneapolis Public Schools board member announced his proposal to sever the district’s ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Yesterday, school board member Josh Pauley, citing the department’s “blatant disregard for black lives,” announced his proposal to end the relationship that pays the police department more than a million dollars annually to place 14 officers in their schools.

Known as school resource officers (SROs), at a national level, 43,000 SROs patrol or are stationed at 43% of schools across the country. Given their local community’s overwhelming rage towards the Minneapolis Police Department, the school board’s proposal to terminate this arrangement may seem like an isolated, extreme instance in which rethinking police presence at schools is appropriate. But this district is not alone. A Denver Public Schools school board member is considering a similar proposal for to sever their partnership with Denver’s police force, and education advocates have longed called for the elimination or reduction of SROs on school campuses. For equity-minded school leaders, there are at least three reasons to consider terminating or drastically reducing the quantity and role of SROs as part of their plans to reopen schools this fall.

1. The presence of school resource officers increases student disciplinary involvement and reduces students academic results.

School resource officers, at a minimum, should be resources for the schools they are intended to serve. A study looking at the impact on SROs on schools in Texas called this basic premise into question. In this study, schools receiving federal funding for school police saw no changes in their high school disciplinary rates, but a 6% increase in their middle school disciplinary rate. Notably, this increased rate is not attributed to serious, violent offenses, but low-level offenses and school conduct code violations that would normally be handled by the school itself. This study, which analyzed data for 2.5 million students, also noted that schools receiving three-year federal grants for SROs experienced a 2.5% lower graduation rate decrease and a 4% lower college enrollment rate than other schools.

These results are unsurprising. The troubling fact that schools with SROs refer students to the juvenile court system for the reason of “disorderly conduct” almost five times more than schools without SROs leaves no wonder why students have fewer educational opportunities when attending schools with SROs. The public should be outraged about stories where an SRO body-slammed a teenage girl for refusing to put away a cell phone, an SRO arresting a 6 year old for having a temper tantrum, or SROs arresting students for a water balloon fight are not rare occurrences at schools with SROs.

School resource officers do not just add to the inequities in the school-to-prison pipeline. They are the school-to-prison pipeline.

Also unsurprising? The fact that the students involved in the cell phone, temper tantrum, and water balloon incidents were Black. Black students represent just 16% of the overall student population, but account for 31% of students suspended at least once, 42% of students suspended more than once, and 31% of school-related arrests. Students cannot learn if they are not in school. Any equity-minded school systems leader, therefore, must recognize that racially disproportionate disciplinary and academic impact of SROs require an immediate rethinking of their continued role in schools. School resource officers do not just add to the inequities in the school-to-prison pipeline. They are the school-to-prison pipeline.

2. With dwindling school budgets, social distancing requirements forcing radical ideas about how school is set up and future school closures possible in a second wave of COVID-19 infections, the status quo on school resource officers is increasingly hard to justify.

The economic consequences of the COVID-19 are primed to severely hurt school systems. Leaders of the largest school districts in the country warn of financial consequences to public schools far more devastating than cuts made in the Great Recession. With cuts of up to 25% potentially leading to layoffs of 275,000 teachers, how can the system continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on school resources officers?

Even if SROs were essential to school safety in the brick and mortar context, there is little reason to maintain the same level of SRO support when schools reopen. With the guidance for opening schools released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month, experts and leaders are painting a a picture of what school will look that bears no resemblance to the status quo. Some of these ideas include alternating schedules with cohorts of students coming every other day or different halves of the day, delivering in-person instruction only to certain grade levels and certain students with special learning needs, and simply maintaining a 100% distance learning environment until there is a vaccine. Maintaining the same level of staffing for SROs makes little sense given these scenarios.

Further, even though President Trump claims that he will not order a nationwide shut down if a second wave of the novel coronavirus comes this fall, there is no reason to think that school system leaders and governors will not take matters into their own hands and order schools closed as so many did well before he issued his national social distancing recommendations. If schools will serve far less students in-person and face an appreciable risk of closing for significant periods of time throughout this school year, now is a good of a time as any to rethink the need for and quantity of SROs posted in schools.

3. Equity requires prioritizing investment in school counselors over school resource officers, now more than ever.

Students returning to school in the fall will be recovering from a tremendous level of disruption. Beyond recognizing that the school closures negatively impacted some students far more than others, there is also the reality that with over 100,000 victims losing their lives to COVID-19-related illnesses, and almost 1.8 million confirmed COVID-19 infections, so many students will inevitably return to school personally traumatized by this unprecedented pandemic.

The status quo for supporting mental health needs before this crisis was already unacceptable. School systems can barely support the needs of students prior to the pandemic, where it was estimated that 1 out of 5 cases struggle with mental health issues. Couple this with the fact that these is a nationwide shortage of school counselors, counselor-to-student ratios well above the recommended limits and alarming cuts to school counselor budgets leads to a clear conclusion that we are not prioritizing the social-emotional health of our students. With these needs undoubtedly being heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is even more justification for prioritizing investment in school counselors over SROs.

School safety matters. But with student mental health challenges being a common trait for several shooters in mass school shootings that have led to the increased focus on school security, the questionable positive impacts of SROs, and the very real challenge of prioritizing budgets in dire economic times, equity-minded school leaders have ample justification to reject the inequitable normal of SROs in schools.

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