CPS dropping cops didn't change whether students, teachers feel safe, U of C study reveals
BITD, I advised Chicago’s public schools, as well as the Clinton administration, that adding more gun-toting cops wouldn’t make schools safer.
In the wake of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, while making the case for smaller schools and learning environments, I advised Chicago’s public schools, as well as the Clinton administration, that adding more gun-toting cops wouldn’t make schools safer. I offered lots of evidence to show that safe school environments were the product of a culture based on the relationships built between teachers and students and among the students rather than cops, locker searches, and cameras. The latter only succeeded in raising the expectation of violence.
The Clinton advisory panel took note of my own "passionate advocacy for smaller schools with lower teacher-student ratios that have a proven record of decreasing incidents of school violence." It noted that such advocacy made no inroads to a US Congress that was all about charter schools and downsizing and closing failed public schools. The call for building new and creative school environments on a human scale seems, in hindsight, almost utopian.
Fast forward a few decades and now I’m reading an analysis by the University of Chicago put out Wednesday, that confirms our findings and shows a reduction in high-level discipline infractions at schools that have gotten rid of their building cops or School Resource Officers (SROs).
Sarah Karp and Nader Issa at WBEZ report:
Student activists have insisted that police escalated conflicts, disproportionately policed Black children, and put them in danger of being thrust into the criminal justice system for in-school behavior. But a lot of high schools have feared that removing their officers would mean losing important adults who had relationships with students, helped with discipline, and made parents feel their kids’ schools were safe.
They quote the Principal of one of Chicago’s Black flagship high schools.
Rashad Talley, the principal at Wendell Phillips Academy High School, believes healthy safety and discipline practices are more about the staff’s relationship with students and not whether the South Side high school has police in the building every day.
“It’s hard for me to pinpoint whether a [school resource officer] makes that much of a difference because I could be an SRO and have a great relationship with a kid,” he said. “I don’t think it matters, the title of the person, or the position of the person. It matters, that relationship.”
More from Karp and Issa:
Phillips was one of three Chicago high schools that were the first to remove police officers in summer 2020 amid protests against police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd police killing. Phillips didn’t have a functioning local school council, so Chicago Public Schools officials instructed the principal to talk with the community and make the decision.
Dozens more schools have removed one or both of their officers in the past few years. Now only 39 district-run, noncharter high schools have them, or a little less than half. CPS is pulling cops from all the remaining schools in the fall.
Because some school communities still feel safer with SROs, I’ve been opposed to mandating cops out or defunding them and have argued for Local School Councils and school communities to make the decisions about how best to use school safety funds. I still believe that.