Schools boot police off campuses
Districts plan to put savings toward structural budget deficits
Two San Jose school districts have joined a nationwide movement to eliminate the presence of police officers on campuses by terminating their contracts with the San Jose Police Department.
The Alum Rock Union and East Side Union High School districts’ boards of education unanimously decided Thursday night not to renew yearslong contracts with the city’s Police Department that funded school resource officers and were expiring this summer.
San Jose Unified — the city’s largest public school district — will discuss its contract with the Police Department at the next board meeting Aug. 6.
“Thank you, community, for coming together, thank you for speaking up on behalf of our children. We look forward to walking with you all in truth for the best outcomes for all of our children,” Alum Rock board member Corina Herrera-Loera said at the meeting.
The terminated contracts will free up $100,000 for Alum Rock and $700,000 for East Side Union, which they plan to use to help offset budget shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic and state funding cuts.
The moves align with similar decisions to terminate contracts with the police in schools across the nation, including in San Francisco and Oakland — a response to calls for police reform and redirecting law enforcement funding following the death of George Floyd when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes last month.
But unlike many of other public school systems, law enforcement and education officials in San Jose took a prior step to diminish the role of officers in schools. At the beginning of 2018, the city’s Police Department met with education leaders on the city’s east side to update their agreements and make clear that police officers would be at the public high
schools only to ensure safety, not administer punishments to rowdy students.
During the 2019-20 school year, officers who patrolled East Side Union’s schools, which serve more than 26,000 students, issued 31 citations and made five arrests — four of which resulted from fights that broke out.
East Side Union Superintendent Chris Funk said Thursday the law enforcement data clearly indicates that having officers on campus “does not prevent” students from misbehaving and there weren’t enough campus incidents to “warrant having officers on campus.”
Police officers still may be used to monitor afterschool events, such as football games where adults and other outside community members may come onto campuses, but they no longer will patrol during regular school hours, Funk said. The district’s previous contract with the Police Department allowed one school resource officer per campus, though because of limited availability and a short-staffed police force only Mount Pleasant and Evergreen Valley high schools consistently saw officers on campus in recent years, Funk said.
Officers also still will be permitted to come onto school grounds for criminal investigations, but board member Pattie Cortese asked administrators to explore an agreement with the Police Department that
would require parental notification and presence before interviewing students.
The current sentiment is a stark departure from the push in recent years to increase safety and security measures on campuses following deadly school shootings such as those in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut.
But when a board member pointed that out, Funk said “the chances of an active shooter being on campus is very, very low.”
The district will establish a task force in the fall to create new policies for supervision and safety protocols in each of its schools.
Dozens of parents, teachers and community advocates — with newfound backing from elected officials and education leaders — called into the Thursday night East Side Union and Alum Rock board meetings to raise their concerns about officers disrupting student learning and causing fear and anxiety, particularly among students of color.
A Change.org petition created by East Side Union families to terminate the agreement between the district and the San Jose Police Department garnered more than 2,100 signatures in two weeks.
Daniella Acosta, a recent graduate of James Lick High School, told the East Side Union board that school resource officers on her campus have brought her — and other students of color — substantial stress.
“I have grown up with police officers knocking on my door since the age of 3 and gradually became a trigger for my anxiety,” Acosta said. “When I see them on campus, I feel traumatized.”
Julia Souza, an attorney at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, told the Alum Rock board that the district needs to focus on “supporting children and families and not criminalizing them.
“Cutting the contract is a good start — but it’s just that,” Souza said about their agreement with San Jose Police Department. “ARUSD needs to continue implementing wholesale reform of all school interactions with police, especially when staff are calling the police for children with special needs.”
In addition to eliminating school resource officers, East Side Union’s board also proceeded with a plan Thursday night to create a new ethnic studies graduation requirement for high school students. Once the framework is developed, the requirement will apply to students entering their freshman year in the fall of 2022.
Alum Rock School District last week voted to create a committee to explore its own options to implement ethnic studies for its students. The district hopes to launch a pilot program for the 2021-2022 school year.
In upcoming meetings, the Alum Rock school board plans to discuss new options for how administrators and teachers should respond to crimes on campus moving forward, such as establishing new policies around student safety and emergency management.