Dear Board of Ed, End the CPS police contract
We can rethink this. Many cities are doing just that.
Here is the letter I just sent to the members of the CPS Board of Education, who will be voting Wednesday on whether to retain or rethink the police presence in Chicago Public Schools.
It’s beyond my imagining that they would choose to end or even re-envision this contract, which costs $33M ($12M more than last year) and which will somehow be administered by Local School Councils. Most LSCs probably don’t know they have this power, and sadly, if an LSC chooses not to bring police into their school, thereby ostensibly saving the district money that could be spent elsewhere, there is no “get a social worker instead” option.
But who knows, maybe this time around our appointed board will act less appointed than past appointed boards. There are some really, truly good people on this board, who know a lot, and care a lot, about children and adolescents. I am hoping they will listen to thousands of CPS students who are fearful and tired of going to school in little carceral communities. Why do we allow our schools to be shaped in this image?
I’m sure we’ll need to write a lot more letters before this is all over. Why don’t you pen your own and send them to the board, the mayor, and the CPS CEO?
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Dear [Board of Ed member],
I am writing to urge you to end the police presence in Chicago Public Schools.
1) The schools are not safer for having police present.
2) The cost is too high in a district that cannot even supply librarians and nurses to every school.
3) Efforts to reform the behavior of school police that unfairly targets Black and Latinx students have not proven effective.
4) Students themselves feel vulnerable and under attack in their own schools and it is to these voices we should listen to most closely.
First, schools are not safer with police in them. In fact, the presence of officers themselves escalates conflict and creates dangerous situations for students. Not all situations are as extreme as the 2019 incident at Marshall High School where officers pushed and dragged Dnigma Howard down a flight of stairs for having a cell phone out. But school police in Chicago have accumulated thousands of complaints that do not go viral on video, as documented in this excellent interactive map. Some officers have 10, 20, 40, 50 or more complaints against them. And in the past three years 316 children between 6 and 10 have been involved in police incidents. This does not sound like safety to me.
Second, our schools are famously, cripplingly underfunded. Most have nurses but once a week. In a district of 640 schools, 108 have librarians. The audiologist at my daughter's school serves 60 kids across several schools. As for social workers, the ratio is 1 to 865 students. In the face of these dire shortages, what are we doing spending $33M on SROs? And somehow, now the decision to place SROs is in the hands of LSCs. What kind of contract has such a concrete, specific cost for one side, yet the specifics on the other side are not specified? What if 80% of our LSCs decide not to staff an SRO--then the district will be getting what, exactly, for its $33M investment? This money--a $12M increase from the prior year--could be going to so many better uses.
Third, reform efforts have not helped. Back in 2012 Board president Miguel del Valle said:
"Extreme measures like suspensions, expulsions, and arrests don’t make our schools safer—and can in fact make things worse, by damaging the trusting student-teacher relationships that are the foundation for a safe learning environment. They disproportionately impact the educational futures of our Black, Latino and special education students. And their use is out of control here in Chicago, where every single day hundreds of students are suspended out of school and dozens more are arrested."
While police incidents in schools overall have gone down since 2012, the shameful racial disparities remain unaffected by any reform efforts. Students of color were the target of 95% of police incidents between 2015 and 2018. This targeting of our black and brown youth is a crisis that we cannot reform our way out of.
Finally, we must listen to students themselves on this issue. Students have been organizing energetically around this issue and it is critical we hear what they are saying. They do not feel safe in schools with police presence. The campaign #CopsOutCPS comprises an informative website, a petition with ~25K signatures, rallies and marches all over the city, and an impressive study. I urge you to look at all of it. Listen to these young people. Hear what they are imploring us to hear.
And please vote to remove the police presence from our CPS schools.