Chicago Board of Education Votes to Remove the Last 57 Police Officers from CPS Schools
Chicago Board of Education Votes to Remove the Last 57 Police Officers from CPS Schools
The Chicago Board of Education unanimously votes to remove school resource officers from CPS schools by 2024-2025 to embrace a failed restorative justice whole school safety policy.
Not everyone was happy with my recent article about school resource officers and the effort to remove police officers from schools. I had concerns. The need for officers serving in schools existed but the justification was not based on winning metrics. I knew that there would be some reaction, but few had the courage to put their name to any criticism that I shared.
The information that was questioned and opposed was developed from meta-studies that evaluated all of the cumulative academic studies available at the time. They pooled the results of those studies and identified the outcomes of some widely held beliefs that turned out to be inaccurate. The top three reasons justifying sworn uniformed police officers in schools was wasted by data.
Reader reactions ranged from a proposal to speak at the national conference to a demand that I retract statements (of fact) from my article. My credibility was questioned. The chief would stop by my office for 15 seconds in May and tell me to keep three squads of SROs focused on violent crime initiatives for eleven weeks. I would be told this days before school ended. I loved those days and we spent a lot of time on the road. From then on I planned in late March staffing and measurable goals for the summer.
The negative feedback from my previous article was from police officers serving schools who don't realize that their school board members will vote to remove police from schools by the next school year. What they didn't understand was that I was blueprinting their sole survival plan.
Why did the Chicago Board of Education unanimously decide to remove police officers from schools?
In Chicago, the community feedback played a crucial role in shaping this decision. The support for removing police officers from schools came from various groups who advocated for alternative approaches to enhancing school safety without relying on law enforcement. The Chicago Board of Education unanimously voted, a body that which fluctuates between being the 3rd and 4th largest school district in the nation with 350,000 students, to remove the last school resource officers out of the final 39 district schools where they served. The support for removing police officers from CPS schools came from various groups who advocated for alternative approaches to enhancing school safety without relying on law enforcement.
The process to remove school resource officers from Chicago Public Schools has been going on for some time. In fact, the final 57 Chicago Police Department School Resource Officers posted in schools had reached the point of statistical irrelevance.
What steps are being taken by local school councils to promote school safety?
The plan in the remaining schools is to remove uniformed police officers from schools and create a whole school safety comprehensive strategy to implement restorative justice. This practice focuses on repairing harm from wrongdoing by reconciliation via dialogue and a holistic approach to school safety. It hasn’t been a smashing success. If it was, I would be first in line advocating for its adoption.
Like communism, supporters blame the failure of their superior system as the wrong people in charge.
In the case of restorative justice, three barriers to adoption and success are (1) lack of proper training and implementation, (2) inconsistent support and buy-in from stakeholders including teachers, administrators, and parents, and (3) limited resources and time constraints.
Success stories are rare but alluring. In California, the Oakland Unified School District began using the program at a failing middle school in 2006. Within three years, the pilot school saw an 87% decrease in suspensions, with a corresponding decrease in violence. The practice was so successful that by 2011 Oakland Unified School Board made restorative justice the new model for their school safety policy handling disciplinary problems. However, since then Oakland has become a national example of failure on crime. The Oakland NAACP, in 2023, literally protested for more cops.
While I question, at times, the role of officers in schools, officers are a vital necessity in many of the schools in Chicago. Some schools are dangerous and having an officer on site is a good idea. But, we are instead seeing the role of the school resource officer diminish. Chicago Board of Education mirrors many other districts and cities in committing to not have officers, even where they are obviously necessary.
“However, growing public concerns about the role of SROs in the punishment and arrest of students, particularly Black students, for minor misconduct (e.g. Gleit, 2022; Hirschfield, 2008; Homer & Fisher, 2020; Nolan, 2011), have led over 50 districts serving over 1.7 million students to end or cut back their SRO programs since May of 2020 (Riser-Kositsky et al., 2022).”
Considering that there are 49.4 million public school students in the United States, and only 51.4% had SROs or equivalent, nearly 4% in the last three years is a significant erosion.
Regardless of whether you agree, the key principles that we are still selling for keeping officers in schools, all three fail on the best data, and decision makers are noticing. Check out my previous article for a complete description of how they fail.
1. Safety and Security
2. Building Positive Relationships
3. Counseling and Education
We must work on new reasons, and they must be valid reasons, to get and keep officers in the schools where they are needed. It should be inarguable that there are schools, especially in Chicago, where officers are needed.
Please remember in prayer all of our peace officers serving in schools.
References
https://www.weareteachers.com/restorative-justice/
https://www.cato.org/blog/school-resource-officers-police-presence-schools-doing-more-harm-good
https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai21-476.pdf
https://oppaga.fl.gov/ProgramSummary/ProgramDetail?programNumber=2039
Excellent, as always.
And this is spot on:
"Like communism, supporters blame the failure of their superior system as the wrong people in charge."
It never ceases to amaze the lengths some will go to embrace and promote illogical ideas, even when it's to the detriment to the people they purport to care about.
I love the fact that there was push back from SRO's who haven't fully understood your message, that feelings don't have a seat at the table, facts do. I am in favor of pulling officers from schools and putting them back in roles that support the mission of serving and protecting. If they are not being allowed to enforce laws, and when they are called upon to engage students displaying unacceptable behavior, then put them in a position to actually do their jobs. We as a profession are involved in too many initiatives that place the officer and department in a loose-loose situation. After rethinking this initiative, let the school board figure it out. Im sure there are valid arguments for some schools to have a police substation placed on campus, but that would require cops to do their jobs. Thank you Roland for continuing to be the voice or reason, especially at times when folks like me want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.