Durham graduate wants School Resource Officer money spent on nurses, therapists

Aissa Dearing says she has seen students handcuffed and pushed against lockers in school hallways.

The 2020 graduate of Durham Public Schools recently wrote an open letter asking the school board to shift spending on school resource officers to other services to help students like nurses, therapists and substance-abuse specialists.

Dearing, who attended J.D. Clement Early College High School, regularly saw SROs in her elementary and middle schools, she said. There weren’t any in her high school, but she saw them at football games and when she visited friends at other schools for lunch.

She did not like a lot of what she saw.

“I have both witnessed and been a party to interventions by School Resource Officers (SROs) that escalate situations with students in the name of school safety,” she wrote in the letter. “These situations could have been better addressed by counselors, social workers, and others with a background in working with children rather than law enforcement.”

With three Black children in school, school board Chair Mike Lee says he gets where Dearing and others are coming from. But he said SROs are unlikely to be disbanded until the school district finds other ways to protect its students.

“I fully understand the sentiment of what’s happening now, however, as a person in governance, we have to think about the 34,000 students and their safety in our buildings,” Lee said.

Opening a conversation

In a phone interview, Dearing said she decided to write to the school board based on her experience of 13 years in the Durham Public Schools and what she has seen elsewhere.

“I’ve seen students get handcuffed and pushed on top of sheriff’s cars,” she said. “I’ve seen students handcuffed in the hallways and pushed up against lockers.”

Lee said he is open to talking about the future of the SRO program and to creating a Student Council on Discipline and School Safety.

In the 2019-20 school year, there were 22 SROs across 17 schools, The News & Observer reported.

A survey found most students feel safer with them, Lee said.

The 2019 Durham Public Schools Student Climate Survey was given to fifth, seventh and 11th graders. About 7,000 student responded responded, with about half of the students saying they worry about crime and violence in school. 80% saying they feel safer with security present and 13% saying they stay home because they don’t feel safe at school.

The school system makes information about SROs publicly available. The News & Observer requested the SRO program’s incident report database from both Durham Public Schools and the Durham County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday afternoon. The Sheriff’s Office is working on the request, but Durham Public Schools has not yet acknowledged receiving it.

SROs a continuing debate

This is not the first time SROs at Durham Public Schools have been debated.

Sheriff Clarence Birkhead said told The N&O last year the SRO program should be revamped, but that given the number of school shootings across the nation, the officers are needed in Durham’s schools.

Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry however, said in a 2019 interview, “I think for some kids, school resource officers are the opposite of safety.” Deberry also said her office would stop accepting criminal referrals from schools and would refer cases to community resources like Teen Court.

Lee says he understands the concerns.

“As a parent of two black boys and one black daughter at the Durham Public Schools system, I fully understand the where the desire to remove SROs comes from and I fully understand the implications of what could happen at a school to help perpetuate the school to prison pipeline,” Lee said. “But I have to think about the 34,000 students, 4,500 staff that are under our care.”

This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 4:42 PM.