Oakland schools chief, board: No more district police

Oakland’s superintendent and a majority of the school board have backed a proposal to get rid of the district’s police department and redirect the $2.8 million now spent on armed officers to students despite opposition from more than two dozen principals.

The measure, the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department, aligns with efforts in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver and Portland to terminate contracts or other agreements with law enforcement to police schools.

Floyd, a black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, leading to global protests against police brutality, specifically against African Americans and other people of color. Demonstrators have called for police reform — both on the streets and in schools.

Board members Shanthi Gonzales and Roseann Torres introduced the proposal at the school board meeting Wednesday, with a final vote expected in two weeks.

“It has become clear that the District can no longer sit quietly and employ its own police force amid countless acts of violence, particularly against black men and boys,” the proposed resolution reads. “The perpetuation of the schooltoprison pipeline is incompatible with our goal of creating safe, healthy, and equitable schools for all district students.”

Superintendent Kyla JohnsonTrammell announced her support at the board’s meeting Wednesday, saying she supports creating a safety plan that does not include a police department, which the district’s Police Chief Jeff Godown also backs, she said.

“I am continuing to process my raw emotions of anger, frustration and grief,” she said, speaking of the death of Floyd and other people of color at the hands of police. “It is responsible to stand united in community to call for racial justice. It is long overdue.”

Her support, with the backing of the majority of school board members, virtually assures that the district police department will be eliminated following a vote on the issue on June 24.

Few school districts in the state or country have their own police department. Los Angeles Unified also has one.

San Francisco school officials have a memorandum of understanding with the city’s police department, outlining when and why officers would be on campuses and under what conditions they could arrest students.

But board members there are considering dissolving the relationship, said school board President Mark Sanchez. He said he has received 4,000 emails in recent days supporting the idea. There is a groundswell to acknowledge a history of “police doing bad things to young people of color.”

In Oakland, school board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge is in the minority, if not alone, in opposing the elimination of the school police force.

The district’s police department costs $2.5 million — or 0.3% of the $800 million budget. It’s unclear if the district will save money or spend more to hire Oakland city police officers to staff football games or other events requiring security, like those now handled by district police.

In addition, school staff — teachers, principals, counselors and other administrators — call for police help more than 2,000 times every year, according to district data. From June 2019 to January 2020, the calls resulted in three arrests.

Keeping police out of schools requires not calling police to come to schools, Hinton Hodge said.

“You’ve got to show me that teachers are going to call the police less,” she said.

The board member, who is African American, said she understands the fury around police brutality and calls for defunding law enforcement.

“People are like, we’ve really had enough of you.”

Hinton Hodge is joined by at least 28 school principals who submitted a letter earlier this year opposing the elimination of the district police department, saying it’s about prioritizing safety. They noted that Oakland school police officers respond quickly to lockdowns, weapons on campuses, theft, mental health issues and violations of restraining orders, among other needs.

“Unlike OPD officers, who come with guns, OUSD police officers come trained with deescalation and restorative practices,” the principals said.

The Black Organizing Project has worked to eliminate the Oakland Unified police agency for more than a decade, saying in its 2019 plan for policefree schools, that the district is “contributing to unsustainable and degrading structures of antiBlackness.”

“The continued presence of armed police in our schools is a blatant contradiction of everything OUSD claims to stand for,” according to the Oaklandbased organization. “By having police in the enclosed public space of school buildings, the district is exposing Black students and students of color to early police contact and higher chances of being criminalized.”