Chicago is advancing an effort to scrap a $10.3 million program that places police officers in Chicago Public Schools and direct their full removal by the 2024-2025 academic year.
Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson is backing a measure to remove school resource officers and find a different plan to “create a comprehensive whole school safety policy” without them. The new policy is being requested from Chicago Public Schools by June 27 for the Chicago Board of Education to tally a final vote.
“The pattern is the same in cities across the country — activists push to get rid of school resource officers. Parents, staff, and students disagree and voice their support to keep them,” Erika Sanzi, Director of Outreach for Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Examiner. “Obviously, a police officer assigned to a school needs to be the right fit and excel in de-escalation. But removing police from schools in areas where violence has soared seems like another example of putting ideology ahead of what’s best for students and communities.”
Before the 2023-2024 school year, the school board approved the $10.3 million contract with the Chicago Police Department to fund schools that wanted to keep their officers. Only two of 40 school councils voted to remove officers last spring, according to the Chicago Tribune, and one school only voted to remove one of their two officers.
The new resolution points to one from August 2020 that directed the school district to phase out school resource officers, creating an alternative “for CPS students in every school that prioritizes their physical and social-emotional well-being, learning, and transformation.” It also offers examples of 14 schools that have gotten rid of 28 officers since that time. School resource officers, who are uniformed CPD officers responsible for student safety, have been active in Chicago Public Schools since 1991, and 39 of the 634 district schools decided to retain the officers on campus.
The new resolution, however, calls for a hard end to school resource officers in schools by the upcoming academic year, requiring orders for them to be removed by the first day of classes.
Principles at Chicago schools and some city aldermen have taken issue with the plan to remove officers as a Chicago Department of Education vote on the resolution looms.
According to CBS Chicago, Chicago Principals & Administrators Association president Troy LaRaviere said the school board acted unilaterally without the input of district principals.
“Our principals are concerned about school shootings nationally,” LaRaviere said. “The reality they face — at least the 39 principals who voted to keep those SROs — the reality they face is more local, and that’s not what we see on the TV. It’s the violence we see and hear about every single day.”
LaRaviere, whose organization represents Chicago principals, also explained that an officer assigned to a school has the opportunity to build a relationship with students — and the reality is that officers will still have to show up to schools regardless of whether SROs are stationed there on a full-time basis.
“If you don’t have an SRO, what are you supposed to do? You don’t have the SRO with the relationships. You have to call 911. And then you have to get the luck of the draw,” LaRaviere said. “Cops with no relationships with the children show up, and you’re more likely to get the kind of interaction between cops and children. The same kind of interaction you’re trying to prevent, you just created a situation where you’re more likely it get it.”
Moreover, NBC Chicago obtained a meeting through a public records request showing pushback from Chicago aldermen on the issue of removing SROs.
“I do want to say that I wholeheartedly am disappointed in your decision to remove the police officers from our Chicago Public Schools,” 29th Ward Alderman Chris Taliaferro said in a briefing to board members. “I think a lot of our principals and our [Local School Councils] made it very clear that some of our schools do, in fact, require and need police officers to be present. I think your decision places our students at more risk and harm than ever before.”
“Many of you don’t have children in these schools, especially in inner-city schools, especially on the West Side and South Side of Chicago,” he continued. “That’s like me saying it’s okay to put our kids at risk because my kid isn’t there.”
“I am definitely not in support of removing the ability for Local School Councils to make the decision on their school resource officers,” 28th Ward alderman Jason Ervin added. “Just yesterday, we had a melee over at Westinghouse, and without the support of the police department on scene, that situation could have been exponentially worse.”
Proponents of removing police officers from schools, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, claim that having an officer presence at school is racist, argue that they abuse children, and say that “staffing school with police officers creates an environment that is not conducive to learning, development, or the safety they are ostensibly there to provide.”
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In Chicago, according to data released in 2020, 408 students were arrested in school, and 73% of alleged offenses were committed by black students. Enrollment data also showed black students made up 36% of students in the district.
The calls to get rid of SROs started after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide riots, at which time then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot cut the school district’s contract with the Chicago Police Department in half rather than get rid of it entirely.