The Board of Education is directing Chicago Public Schools officials to remove police officers from dozens of high schools by the beginning of next school year.
The move marks a major victory for students and activists who have been protesting police presence in schools due to the disparate policing of black children and children with disabilities. And this comes after Mayor Brandon Johnson last month gave his blessing to terminate the school district's $10.3 million contract with the Chicago Police Department.
A school board resolution announced Tuesday and scheduled for a vote on Thursday requires CPS to take a comprehensive approach to student safety and require new measures to “address the root causes and contributing factors” to student discipline disparities. He asked them to formulate a policy. The priority, the board said, is to help students recover from trauma, deal with the situation through restorative justice, and re-engage children who are becoming disengaged from school.
The resolution added that “the policy must specify that the use of SROs within the district's schools will end by the start of 2024-2025.” The board said it looks forward to the district “continuing its strong partnership with the Mayor's Office and the Chicago Police Department, which have and continue to provide critical support to all schools.”
This year, 16 schools will have two officers and 23 schools will have one officer. More than half of the remaining high schools served by CPS's 91 districts no longer have police officers. And there are no officials at elementary schools.
Since the 2020 social justice protests, dozens of schools have voted to fire one or both officers in favor of “school-wide safety plans” that include alternatives to police. CPS awarded these schools $3.9 million to hire new staff and fund new programs. Some schools say these resources have proven essential in helping students heal from trauma and find ways to de-escalate potentially harmful situations before they lead to violence or police.
Critics of the sweeping dismissal of school officials had hoped that CPS would leave decisions in the hands of individual local school boards, as it has for the past three years. Many say school communities should be able to decide what they feel is safe and that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate.
The remaining officers are concentrated in majority-black schools, with two-thirds having at least one officer, raising concerns about racially disparate policing, according to a WBEZ analysis. ing. And now, most of the schools that wanted to remove police officers have done so, with just one other school voting last year to do so.
A 2020 Sun-Times analysis found that students attending Chicago high schools with police officers on campus were four times more likely to have police called on them than students at high schools without police officers on campus. did. There was also a clear difference in the rate at which black students were policed compared to other students.
Research has not shown that the presence of school officers prevents school shootings.
CPS officials are considering expanding “patrol units” of officers to patrol areas around schools as a way to quickly respond to outside threats to students.
