Opinion
School Climate & Safety Opinion

The Police-Free Schools Movement Made Headway. Has It Lost Momentum?

Removing officers from school hallways is only the start
By Judith Browne Dianis — June 21, 2021 4 min read
Image of lights on police cruiser
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

It’s been just over one year since George Floyd’s murder sparked a national conversation on the role of police in our communities and in schools. The decadeslong fight for police-free schools was finally propelled into the national spotlight as numerous school districts nationwide severed ties with local police.

Youth organizers, activists, and supporters of the movement (myself included) rejoiced that the pendulum on ridding schools of police—particularly in communities of color—finally began to swing toward meaningful change. The public has finally begun to recognize that police are more likely to criminalize students than protect them fromexternal threats.

As a leader in the police-free schools movement, I’ve spent20 years organizing and helping advocacy organizations combat discriminatory school discipline policies that disproportionately push students of color out of the classroom and into the criminal legal system. I’ve worked with school districts in Denver;Alexandria, Va.; andMiami-Dade County to define and limit the role of police in schools. When we issued the first national call to action for “police-free schools” with the Alliance for Educational Justice in 2018, grounded in years of youth organizing, people did not believe police-free schools were a possibility.

My, how times have changed.

When the Minneapolis school boardcut ties with the Minneapolis police department last June—in the city where George Floyd was killed—a domino effect followed in other cities, including Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, and Portland, Ore. Following years of demands from the Black Organizing Project, the Oakland, Calif., school board even committed to abolishing the school district’s police department. These wins continue today: As recently as last month, Alexandria, Va., divested $800,000 from its school police budget and reinvested those funds in mental-health supports. In fact, at least 35 school districts across the country have taken steps to end policing in their schools since Floyd was murdered last year.

But as districts prepare to reopen their schoolhouse doors this fall, the pendulum seems to be shifting back to business as usual.

The U.S. Department of Justice continues tooffer schools hundreds of millions of dollars under the guise of “school safety” to monitor students through anonymous reporting systems, social-media surveillance, and threat-assessment teams that coordinate with law enforcement. These are dangerous and unproven practices that disproportionately criminalize Black and brown students.

A few months after cutting ties with the Minneapolis police department, the city’s school board employed tools to digitally surveil their students. The school board also hired “school safety specialists” to provide security as a “bridge” between in-school interventions and law enforcement. Many of these “specialists” had law-enforcement backgrounds, which means, yes, the policing continues even when the officers themselves are removed.

Removing officers from school hallways plays just one small part in taking down the school policing system. Let’s begin with the definition of what police-free schools entails: dismantling school policing infrastructure, culture, and practice; ending school militarization and surveillance; and building a new liberatory education system.

Schools cannot be fully “police free” until each one of these steps is taken.

Getting police physically out of schools is only the beginning. We must listen to what young people need to feel safe and free in their schools and then follow through. Student demands might include a school-based violence-interruption model that does not involve law enforcement, such as the one at Black Swan Academy in the nation’s capital. They might include theBlack Sanctuary Pledge—as organized by Freedom Inc. in Madison, Wis., and inspired by Oakland’s Black Organizing Project. The pledge asks educators to not call the cops on children and to educate themselves on what students need to have a sanctuary in their schools. Other worthy demands include investing in restorative and transformative justice, offering mental-health supports, and giving students and families who’ve suffered the most at the hands of police decisionmaking power in schools.

Despite last year’s national uprisings, we have witnessed police continuing to harm and kill Black and brown people. In April, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryantwas killed by a Columbus, Ohio, police officer who shot her several times in front of her foster care home. Ma’Khia was wearing the same crocs that my beautiful daughter wears. The officer who took her life is the same kind of officer that would be trusted by the Columbus school district to “protect” children like Ma’Khia from harm in their places of learning.

Just this January, as students began returning to school in person, a young Black girl in Kissimmee, Fla., was body-slammed to the floor by a school resource officer. The assault was so gruesome that the girl’s mother says she is “suffering from memory loss, headaches, blurry vision, and sleep deprivation.”

Students cannot and will not be safe at the hands of law enforcement, let alone more law enforcement. The experiences of countless students, educators, and families have taught us that police in schools create a toxic climate and fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. There is no evidence that school police officers make students safer; in fact, there is only evidence they make students and schools less safe.

Every dollar spent on police, metal detectors, and surveillance cameras is a dollar that would be better invested in trained professionals that support, not criminalize children. Children deserve spaces where they can learn, thrive, and feel safe to just be. Until then, the fight continues.

Related Tags:

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Mathematics Webinar
Pave the Path to Excellence in Math
Empower your students' math journey with Sue O'Connell, author of “Math in Practice” and “Navigating Numeracy.”
Content provided by hand2mind
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Combatting Teacher Shortages: Strategies for Classroom Balance and Learning Success
Learn from leaders in education as they share insights and strategies to support teachers and students.
Content provided by DreamBox Learning
Classroom Technology K-12 Essentials Forum Reading Instruction and AI: New Strategies for the Big Education Challenges of Our Time
Join the conversation as experts in the field explore these instructional pain points and offer game-changing guidance for K-12 leaders and educators.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Climate & Safety Teachers With Guns: District by District, a Push to Arm Educators Is Growing
The number of districts with armed educators is rising. An inside look at one of them.
12 min read
Educators with the Benjamin Logan Local School District receive training from the Logan County Sheriff's office to join the district's armed response team in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on June 26, 2023.
Educators with the Benjamin Logan Local School District receive training from the Logan County Sheriff's Office to join the district's Armed Response Team in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on June 26, 2023.
Eli Hiller for Education Week
School Climate & Safety Let's Talk About When Cars Need to Stop for School Buses
A refresher course on the rules of the road involving stopped school buses.
1 min read
Collage of school bus, cars, stop sign and a neighborhood map.
Laura Baker/Education Week via Canva
School Climate & Safety Opinion School Police Officers Should Do More Than Just Surveil and Control. Here’s How
SROs should be integrated into schools as a means to support students and create a safe, humanizing environment.
H. Richard Milner IV
5 min read
opinion sro school police 80377388 01
Dynamic Graphics/Getty
School Climate & Safety 4 Tips to Keep Students' Misbehavior From Sapping Up Class Time
Students' misbehavior has become one of educators' top concerns. Schools need a more deliberate approach to handle it, an expert says.
6 min read
Image of young students in a classroom
Parker Davis and Alina Lopez, right, talk about words and acts that cause happiness during morning circle in teacher Susannah Young's 2nd grade class at Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 4, 2017. Social-emotional learning has been found in research to have a positive effect on students' behavior, but it's not a quick fix for misbehavior.
Ramin Rahimian for Education Week-File