Dozens of Chicago high schools that continue to employ school-resource officers to protect students and staff from violence will no longer be allowed to do so under a plan coming before the far-left city’s education board this week.
The “Resolution to Create a Comprehensive Whole School Safety Policy,” which is on the board’s Thursday meeting agenda, would prohibit the 39 city schools that continue to utilize school-resource officers from continuing to do so next school year.
If approved, the resolution would direct Chicago Public School leaders to develop “a holistic approach to school safety at every District school” that “addresses root causes” of violence, and that focuses on “restorative justice” and “healing-centered practices.”
The effort to eliminate officers from schools has been a priority for progressives and racial-justice activists who contend that black students and students with disabilities are disproportionately policed and disciplined by in-school officers. It also comes after at least four students were killed in three shootings near Chicago schools in recent weeks.
Opponents of mandating the removal of school-resource officers say that it risks the safety of students and employees, and that it is ideologically driven.
“Removing Chicago Police offices from public schools is a mistake with potentially tragic consequences,” Paul Vallas, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO and mayoral candidate, wrote in a column for the Illinois Policy Institute. “It is driven by misinformation and ideology and naively ignores the escalating violence engulfing our youth.”
Last year, four students were shot — two of them fatally — at Benito Juarez High School. The school’s leaders had previously voted to remove officers from the building, Vallas noted.
Eliminating police officers from schools was a priority for far-left activists in the wake of 2020’s racial justice protests and riots. Rather than eliminate officers from Chicago schools completely, then-mayor Lori Lightfoot allowed individual Local School Councils to decide if they wanted to keep them. For the schools that chose to eliminate their school-resources officers, the school district offered $3.9 million to hire new staff and fund alternative safety programs.
While more than half of the city’s district-run high schools no longer have officers, 39 schools voted to keep one or two full-time officers, according to the resolution. The officers who remain are concentrated in majority-black schools, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Activists opposed allowing even a minority of schools to keep officers in their buildings.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, a left-wing activist and former Chicago Teachers Union lobbyist who defeated the more moderate Vallas in last year’s election, campaigned on removing all of the remaining officers from Chicago schools. He backed off for a while after he was elected, but in late January he gave the education board his approval to end its $10.3 million contract with the police department, saying “there’s no qualms from me there,” according to the Sun-Times.
Mark Grishaber, the principal at Chicago’s William Howard Taft High School, said in an email to National Review that he believes the Chicago Board of Education should “listen to each school’s Local School Council and the school voice, when it comes to making decisions involving their kids’ safety and the safety of each school.”
“My students, parents, and teachers overwhelmingly want to keep our SROs,” he wrote.
Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said that if his department’s contract with the school district does end, “we will adjust,” according to CBS News. “We’re not going to be offended because we’re voted out of the schools. We’re just going to continue to do the work we do, and make sure that these kids are safe — especially at the schools where we know that we’ve had some problems with fights and violence.”
Some city aldermen opposed to removing school resource officers have said they’ve heard from parents concerned about their children’s safety.
In his column, Vallas pushed back on the allegation that Chicago police target minority students for discipline, noting that black and Latino students make up the vast majority of the city’s student body. He said the push to remove officers has been an ideological priority for the Chicago Teachers Union “as part of their work to defund police.”
He also noted that the effort to eliminate the rest of the officers from schools comes as the education board is moving to eliminate selective enrollment high schools and charter schools.
“The board’s focus on making schools less safe while reducing quality school options seems foolish and reckless,” Vallas wrote. “Poor and minority students will have fewer choices for schools that are both good quality and safe.”
Chicago’s move to eliminate the last of its school resource officers comes as several school districts across the country are moving in the opposite direction.
Last year, school leaders in Denver voted to re-instate school resource officers amid deteriorating safety conditions. School districts in Phoenix, Ariz., Alexandria, Va., Montgomery County, Md., Washington D.C., and Pomona, Calif., have also voted to re-hire school officers or to back of plans to phase them out.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a comment from William Howard Taft High School principal Mark Grishaber.