Advocates who doubt the benefits of police in schools are not leaving superintendents, principals and other administrators in the dark when it comes to making schools safer. A range of organizations are encouraging safety-minded K12 leaders to focus on social-emotional learning, counseling, restorative justice and other approaches that some stakeholders see as more preventative and more equitable than using armed officers to enforce school discipline.
Most educators are familiar with research that shows Black and brown students and youth with disabilities face disproportionately harsh discipline in schools. For instance, a recent report found that 80% of the 285 documented police assaults on students from 2011-2021 were against Black students, according to a new study of K12 public safety by the nonprofit Center for Policing Equity.
Using police to enforce discipline often fails to address the underlying causes of a student’s behavioral problems and may hinder the accommodations the child needs to succeed, the nonprofit contends. “School safety requires investing in effective programs that reduce bullying, violence, and misbehavior that disrupts learning,” the Center argues. “It also requires ending unnecessary, inequitable, and widespread systems of police enforcement and surveillance so that students can learn without fear of criminalization or deportation.”
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The group acknowledges that school resource officers can be a comforting presence for some students who are experiencing difficulties at school or at home. “This can also be said of officers responding to a call for service—when compassionate professionals bring their best to critical situations, those they have helped are often grateful,” the study continues. “CPE looks well beyond individual officers, however, and studies the policies, procedures, and culture that placed those officers in those situations and has for so long created the unjust, ineffective and unequal policing that the organization was founded to address.”
Alternatives to police in schools
A range of educational and public health approaches may better equip educators with the skills and resources to prevent disruptive behavior and make schools safer overall. Black students, disabled students, LGBTQ+ students, Indigenous students, Hispanic students and other vulnerable children most affected by disproportionately harsh discipline should have a role in reforming school disciplinary policies, The Center for Policing Equity contests.
Here are its recommendations for ending school-based policing and SRO programs:
- Redirect state and federal funding for SRO programs and police-school partnerships toward public health approaches.
- School districts should implement policies specifying that staff may not call the police to address student behavior unless there is an emergency.
- Repeal laws that require school administrators to call the police for minor student misbehavior.
- Decriminalize truancy, curfew violations, and other status offenses.
- Decriminalize consensual “sexting” between teenagers of similar ages.
- End school-based drug testing and the use of drug-sniffing dogs.
- Ban facial recognition software in school video surveillance systems.
- Ban remote access of cameras and microphones on school-owned tablets and laptops.
- Remove vague language in school discipline policies and codes of conduct to reduce the risk of inequitable application.
- Ban corporal punishment, seclusion and restraint in K-12 schools.
- Explore social-emotional learning and trauma-informed school environments to prevent school violence.
- Require school districts to collect and report data on staff-initiated student-police contacts.
- Require police to document the outcome of student referrals as well as all investigatory detentions and uses of force.
For more details on these approaches, read “Redesigning Public Safety: K12 Schools.”
