Should Wake keep police officers on campus? School board is reviewing the issue.
Wake County school leaders are reviewing the school resource officer program to decide whether to continue having armed police officers on campus.
School board chairman Keith Sutton said everything is on the table, including keeping the school resource officers or replacing them with alternatives such as more school counselors trained to deescalate situations. Sutton said creating a school district police force — an idea previously dismissed as being too expensive — is also up for discussion.
“There’s no foregone conclusion either way that we’re keeping them or getting rid of them,” Sutton said in an interview with The News & Observer. “Part of this process is to go through a thorough review of the program, the efficacy of the program. We’ll look at options and alternatives, and from there reform our practices and how we use law enforcement in schools.”
Sutton also chairs the board’s new safety and security committee, which held its first meeting this week.
Role of police in schools questioned
The review comes as groups such as the Wake County Black Student Coalition have held multiple protests calling for the removal of police from schools. The group says officers are creating a hostile school environment for Black and brown students.
Black students accounted for 61% of the referrals to the adult and juvenile courts, Teen Court and other diversion programs filed last school year by school resource officers. Black students only make up 22% of the district’s enrollment.
Victoria Smith, a senior at Enloe High School in Raleigh and founder and president of the Wake County Black Student Coalition, said it would still be a case of “wolf in sheep’s clothing” if Wake created its own security force.
“When you have people in schools policing students, with badges and guns who aren’t being properly trained to deal with students who have mental health crises, that’s still not benefiting students,” Smith, 17, said in an interview.
The school system pays law enforcement agencies to provide officers at every high school and most middle schools. Apex and Holly Springs also provide officers, at no charge to the district, to rotate among the elementary schools in their towns.
The number of school resource officers has increased sharply over the past 20 years following mass school shootings, including at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
But some districts have canceled their school resource officer contracts following this summer’s national backlash over the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of white police officers.
Wake surveys public about SROs
The school board voted in June to continue the school resource officer program for the 2020-21 school year while it conducted a review and got more community feedback.
Through Oct. 23, the district is surveying students, school employees, parents and the community about the school resource officer program. Links were directly sent to students, staff and parents.
“I reviewed the survey with my kids,” Sharon Gambler, a Wake County parent, tweeted Wednesday. “My daughter wanted to know who was going to be there in case of a school shooting if we get rid of SROs.”
The community can go to https://bit.ly/3jsWkVc to take the survey, which includes questions such as whether you think most students are treated appropriately by SROs and if you think the presence of the officers make schools safer.
Sutton said the board will consider the survey responses as part of its security review.
Police at elementary schools questioned
At their first safety and security meeting, Sutton had board members list the “foundational questions” they’ll review.
One of the foundational questions is whether Wake should allow school resource officers at elementary schools. Sutton said some people have questioned whether SROs are needed there because no law enforcement action has been reported at the elementary schools in Apex and Holly Springs.
Superintendent Cathy Moore said having officers at elementary schools helps children build a positive relationship with police at a young age. The committee asked staff to find out more about what the officers do at the elementary schools.
“As a parent of a Holly Springs elementary student, I have a real problem with this board interfering in the local decisions of our town or any other town offering this service to its schools — which are vulnerable, soft targets for bad actors,” A.P. Dillon, a frequent critic of the district, tweeted Wednesday.
Harden or soften schools?
Another foundational question, the committee agreed, is whether Wake should “harden” or “soften” schools.
Hardening schools can include providing more visible security measures such as additional officers and surveillance cameras and installing metal detectors.
Softening schools can include hiring more counselors and psychologists to try to improve the climate of a school to reduce the risk of aggression and violence. School board member Christine Kushner said research from Israel shows that softening schools works.
“Expanding those health professionals and softening our schools actually improve safety, keep our kids safer, give our students a sense of agency and belonging in school that decrease incidents and disciplinary disruptions,” Kushner said at the safety committee meeting.
School board member Chris Heagarty says more needs to be done in schools to deescalate situations before they become violent.
”There’s still a role for safety and security, especially where there’s outside threats that can come into the school,” Heagarty said at the committee meeting. “But in how we treat and how we respond to our students, I think we need to look at how we’re deescalating and preventing conflicts rather than just coming in to deal with the consequences.”
The board is working under a deadline for deciding about the school resource office program. The contracts for the officers and a memorandum of understanding with the area law enforcement agencies expire at the end of the school year.
Smith, the Enloe student, said she’s skeptical the district will remove the officers. In the meantime, she said they’ll continue to lobby the board to remove them.
“They’re politicians,” Smith said. “We’re going to fight for what’s right. In our hearts of hearts, we know what’s right is right and what is truly harming students.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
