Remove police from our public schools.
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Hi!
I've been itching to write something about racism in education. My full-time job works to bring yoga and mindfulness to schools, so I've seen how education upholds racism first-hand, and feel passionate about dismantling it – for this generation and those to come.
The recent conversations on removing police from schools skims the surface of a much broader conversation on the school-to-prison pipeline, which I'm committed to covering in a future issue. I could've kept writing this for another week – so know there's more information to come. And I highly encourage you to use the references to get more context than this email contains.
As always, you can invest one-time on Paypal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza) or monthly on Patreon to keep these conversations growing. I'm so grateful to be learning and unlearning with each of you.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Efforts to remove police officers from schools are happening in cities across the country. Search to see whether those conversations are happening in your community, and how you can support (whether signing a petition, making calls, etc).
2. Reflect: How would your life be different if you were arrested at 12 years old?
GET EDUCATED
Our reckoning with law enforcement is happening in schools
As conversations on defunding the police turn into political action, many major school districts across the country are pledging to remove police officers from schools (Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Milwaukee). Most prominently, the Oakland school district will "eliminate its police department by the end of the year and hire more social workers, psychologists, or ‘restorative justice practitioners’ as part of their George Floyd Resolution" (Time). And on June 18, the American Federation of Teachers – one of the country's largest teacher unions – officially called for the separation of school safety and policing as part of their commitments to combat racism against Black students (AFT website).
“Our schools do not need police. We need mentors to help guide us through school and to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.”
Denilson Garibo, student representative on the school board, recent graduate of Oakland High School (Time)
Brief history of SROs
School resource officers, or SROs, law enforcement personnel that are responsible for safety and crime prevention in schools (Brookings) have been in schools since the 1950s, initially created to build rapport between local law enforcement and youth. These officers have the same training, the same capabilities and the same resources as other members of the police or sheriff's department -- but their roles are more multifaceted, ranging from security to settling disputes, monitoring bus traffic, and even standing in for teacher and administrators (CNN). I couldn’t find hard data on this, but the National Association of School Resource Officers’ website says that most SROs are armed (website).
The Columbine High School massacre in 1999, and then the series of school shootings of this past decade justifiably prompted schools across the U.S. to increase their SRO staffing. These initiatives were accelerated with support from the Trump administration after the Parkland shooting (Daily Signal). You can also read about how the Trump administration also rescinded previous policies designed to protect minorities from excessive disciplinary actions (NYTimes). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 42% of public schools reported employing at least one school resource officer during the 2015-16 school year.
Racial disparities in discipline
But studies have proved that police officers in schools are disproportionately disciplining students of color. During the 2015 – 2016 school year 290,600 students were referred to law enforcement agencies or arrested, according to the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Of them, 31% of them were Black (although only representing 15% of the student body). 65% percent of the arrests were students of color or mixed races. (Full report on their website). Black students are also more likely to attend schools with SROs, more than students in any other racial or ethnic group.
These insights align with how disproportionate arrest rates are outside of the classroom (ABC News), and how SROs contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept coined by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, that looks at the many ways school climate contributes to youth to transition from the classroom to incarceration (Justice Policy Institute). We’ll be discussing school-to-prison pipeline in a future newsletter.
Note: these studies also show disproportionate disciplining of students with disabilities – so consider how intersectionality comes into play, and how necessary the proposed alternatives can be for students with different identities.
And interactions between SROs and students are becoming increasingly violent, another trend reflected in broader culture. Last winter, an SRO in Florida was fired after grabbing a middle school student’s hair and yanking her head back (Orlando Sentinel). Another SRO officer in North Carolina lost his job after he repeatedly slammed an 11-year-old boy to the ground (Buzzfeed). Note that both of these officers were reprimanded, likely because both incidences were caught on camera.
Take the story of Kaia Rolle, a 6-year-old first-grader in Orlando who was charged with misdemeanor battery, cuffed and put in the back of a police car after having a temper tantrum in her classroom (Orlando Sentinel). Florida has no laws around the minimum age of arrests, along with twenty-seven other states (see the minimum age for arrests for each state at the National Juvenile Defender Center).
So, where do we go from here?
Is there a way to reform police in schools? Perhaps. After the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, the Jennings School District in St. Louis County, Missouri worked with the local police force to ensure that the SROs represent at least 75% of the student demographic, which is predominantly Black or at least come from the neighborhoods in the district (CNN).
And supporters of SROs in schools are advocating for this. A father who lost his daughter in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting is encouraging districts to reconsider, citing that SROs have helped juvenile arrests decline over the past 12 years (CNN). Police officers emphasize that officers in school can help build positive relationships between students and law enforcement, and change the stereotypes against officers (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). An article from the Wisconsin State Journal also identifies that removing police officers from the local high schools reduces the limited number of Black men as role models in the classroom – although this brings up a whole other issue of the lack of diversity in teachers and administrators in schools across America (Wisconsin State Journal).
But the rationale behind the defund the police movement applies here: what if we’re past the point of reform? And how could we invest in missing infrastructure to create other resources that students need? Consider that there are 1.7 million students that attend schools with police, but no counselors (ACLU). Schools with such services “see improved attendance rates, better academic achievement, and higher graduation rates as well as lower rates of suspension, expulsion, and other disciplinary incidents. Data shows that the presence of school-based mental health providers not only improves outcomes for students but can also improve overall school safety” (ACLU).
And this Brookings study notes that since so many SRO policies were designed reactively to violence (and justifiably so), they need much more careful consideration to create equitable, long-term solutions that support all students (Brookings). In addition, studies indicate that, considering school shootings are horrifying but rare, building this reactionary infrastructure might do more harm than good for the health and wellbeing of students, calling more action around gun control instead (Washington Post).
Investing funds from police into counselors – along with other mental health support and nurses, or after-school programming, arts and music, mindfulness programming, and much more – is all the more urgent as the impact of coronavirus ravages school budgets (NYTimes). And as we watch the stress and anxiety of both this global pandemic and the protests impact the Black and brown youth of our country (NYTimes), it’s due time to consider taking direct action, and defunding police in schools create safe spaces for kids to learn and grow – and disrupt a larger narrative of policing Black people and other communities of color.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Disproportionate policing against communities of color is happening both generally and in classrooms
School districts in major cities are moving to remove officers in schools
Funds from SROs can be re-allocated to counselors and other support services for students
Removing police officers in schools can help to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
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