A vote by a deeply divided Chicago Board of Education to end its contract with the Chicago Police Department has failed, split along gender lines.
The $33 million agreement pays for police officers who are stationed in schools. Students protested the board vote last year, accusing the district of turning schools into miniature police stations, but the pressure has been even greater following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The board was heavily split on the matter, with three members — Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Luisiana Melendez and Amy Rome — voting in favor of ending the police contract, while Board President Miguel del Valle, Vice President Sendhil Revuluri and members Dwayne Truss and Lucino Sotelo voted to keep police in schools.
Despite vocal opposition to having the resource officers in CPS buildings — including from many students, parents and educators — the mayor and schools chief have spoken in favor of maintaining the officers but continuing to give local school councils the choice.
Currently, 144 officers are assigned in pairs to 72 schools. There are another 48 mobile school officers and 22 sergeants.
The board members who tried to end the contract characterized it as a civil rights issue, citing research on the school-to-prison pipeline and significantly higher rates of police notifications for Black students than for white students.
“I’m a Black mother, I’m a resident of the South Side of Chicago, I’m a former (Local School Council) member, I’m a former high school college counselor and a historian and an education researcher who studies race and education in Chicago. And in all of these roles I am clear that police do not belong in schools,” said Todd-Breland, who presented the motion.
Rome implored the board to take a stand against police brutality, saying, “It’s unacceptable to support a slow and gradual improvement of what is a well-researched and documented history of disproportionate criminalization of Black and brown students in our schools.”
Rome said she’s spoken with students who fear officers will put them in the police gang database or, if they are undocumented, report them to immigration authorities.
Wednesday’s decision won’t be the last word on the issue. The police contract the board upheld was due to end in August. Another would have to win board approval for police to be back in schools in the fall, should they reopen.
CPS Chief of Security Jadine Chou told the board there will be room for changes to any new police contract, with some already underway.
In his rationale for keeping officers in schools, Truss talked about his work with youth along with recent cases of young lives lost to gun violence, naming 3-year-old Mekhi James and 13-year-old Amaria Jones, both killed over Father’s Day weekend.
“My reality is, I live in Austin,” he said, describing his neighborhood as a microcosm of violence where some children feel safer at school than at home. “SROs are needed in the schools that want them.”
Prior to the start of the meeting, about 30 youth, mostly CPS students, showed up outside del Valle’s home.
Around 10:15 a.m., del Valle went outside and told student protesters that he would vote against ending the contract with the Police Department, eliciting boos.
“I’m a CPS student and I believe cops should not be in CPS schools,” someone could be heard calling out on a video of the exchange that was posted on Twitter. “Why won’t you listen to me? Don’t you care about my voice?”
The board motion to end the contract stated the district must “identify ways to holistically support, rather than criminalize, students.” The motion cites a “well-documented history of police misconduct, abuse, violence, and disregard of human dignity and Black life.”
CPS data for last school year show about 37% of police notifications were for Black male students and 23%were for Black female students, though each of those groups only makes up 18% of the student population. In contrast, slightly more than 1% of police notifications were for white female students and 2.5% were for white male students, who each account for 5% to 6% of students.
Chou acknowledged there is still a disproportionate number of police notifications involving Black students, but said the district has been working to eliminate disparities in discipline and the data show CPS is moving in the right direction.
In early meeting remarks, CPS CEO Janice Jackson reiterated her belief that local school councils are best poised to make decisions about officers in each school.
“I don’t believe that a top-down mandate makes sense in this situation,” Jackson said. “… My personal views on this continue to evolve, but I also want to make sure that we do the right thing.”
Jackson said she welcomes scrutiny into the school resource officer program and pointed to reforms and restorative practices already in place.
The Chicago Teachers Union and others want the $33 million spent on police reallocated entirely to restorative justice and trauma supports, economic development and affordable housing for CPS families.
In comments to the board, CTU President Jesse Sharkey argued that police in schools do not make students safer, but instead criminalize them.
He asked the board not to “hide behind the rationale” of local school council power, as the contracts are centrally authorized. If the councils were offered the amount of money that goes toward officers and given choices of how to use it, the results would be different, he said.
Also during the meeting’s public comment period, students called in from outside del Valle’s house as he appeared on screen from within. One student led the group in chants, with students repeating each line.
“We are here to demand the defunding of the police,” he said, “To get CPD out of CPS. … We as a youth don’t feel safe with police in my school. Police are not meant for schools.” When it came time to vote, del Valle said he could still hear the students outside.
Another speaker, Marvin Hunter, the pastor of Grace Memorial Baptist Church, said he’d heard compelling arguments from both sides. Hunter is the great-uncle of Laquan McDonald, the teenager who was shot 16 times and killed by Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was later convicted of second-degree murder. Referencing that case, Hunter said police don’t understand children and the use of officers in schools needs to be rethought.
“The truth of the matter is, speaking as a resident of the city … the optics of having police officers in the schools is not a good look from the perspective of the community,” Hunter told the board. In his community, he said most people have been traumatized in one way or another by police.
Dian Palmer, of Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents CPS support staff, said the district was facing a question of moral priority. Board members could end the school-to-prison pipeline by removing police from schools “and listening to the youth who have been organizing and demanding” that change for years, she said.
“Schools are supposed to be a sanctuary for children,” Palmer said. “… Instead they are met with armed police officers. … Childhood mischief is met with the criminal justice system.”
Since Floyd’s killing, the Minneapolis Board of Education, and school boards in several other U.S. cities, have cut ties with their police departments – a demand Chicago activists have been making for years. In addition to students, parents and educators, an unusually large number of Chicago City Council members spoke at the meeting, for and against the police contract.
Nodding to his prior experience on an LSC, Ald. Nicholas Sposato, 38th, said, “there’s no group better suited to make decisions about school safety” than elected local school councils.
Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, asked what the board’s response would be if a school officer pressed a knee into a student’s neck for nearly nine minutes, and called it a “straw person idea” to argue police need to be in schools in case there was a shooter.
Pointing out not all CPS schools have officers, Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, said the schools that do have police presence are among those where children are already the most traumatized.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, said many of his colleagues who spoke in support of school officers drew from anecdotes, but said, “We need to be driven by research. We need to be driven by evidence, and the evidence says very clearly the impact of police officers in our schools is negative.”
South Side Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, has also submitted a City Council ordinance that would sever the city-school tie.
