LA school board votes to replace school resource officers with “school climate coaches”

LA school board votes to replace school resource officers
with “school climate coaches” 1

LOS ANGELES, CA- On Tuesday, February 16th, the Los Angeles school board voted unanimously to replace school police officers on campuses with staff trained in de-escalation strategies and conflict resolution techniques. 

The school board also unanimously voted and approved a $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan. According to reports, the board voted to cut 133 school police positions, which include 70 sworn employees, 62 non-sworn employees, and one support staff member.

In place of the officers, school climate coaches will be stationed at all secondary schools. Police officers will remain on call to respond to emergencies and incidents on campuses and have a current goal of a three-to-five minute response time. 

Reportedly, the school climate coach role will be to assist administrators and staff to support a safe and positive school culture and climate for all students and staff. The school climate coaches will be trained to do the following:

Implement positive school culture and climate;

Use social-emotional learning strategies to strengthen student engagement;

Use de-escalation strategies and support conflict resolution;

Build positive relationship and elevate student voices;

Eliminate racial disproportionately in school discipline practices; and

Understand and address implicit bias.

Individual schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District will not be able to “opt” to have officers stationed on their respective campuses. The ability to opt in was in the initial proposal, but was taken out through an amendment by board member Kelly Gonez. She said:

“Our jobs are to serve students and if you’re causing harm to a small group of students that is enough to address the action that is causing harm, even unintentionally causing harm.”

The approved $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan will allocate its funds as stated below:

$4.4 million for curriculum and instruction, including expanding diverse representation, inclusion of black authors and social justice connections;

$2.4 million for teacher professional development;

$2 million for school curriculum grants for schools to supplement their curriculum to make it more inclusive to black students;

$2 million for community partnership to work with organizations that have demonstrated success with black students;

$30.1 millions for school climate and wellness to reduce over-identification of black students in suspensions, discipline, and other measures through targeted intervention;

$7.9 million for psychiatric social workers;

$7.6 million for counselors;

$2.9 million for school climate coaches;

$6.5 million for restorative justice advisors; and

$5.2 million for flexible climate grants.

53 schools have been identified as “targeted schools” for the plan, including Crenshaw, Dorsey, Fairfax, Gardena, Hamilton, Narbonne, Venice, and Westchester high schools.

These schools have been identified as “targeted schools” because of their black student enrollment as well as several other factors including absence and suspension rates. 

Joseph Williams, of Students Deserve Justice and who was called into the board’s meeting, said that while the school board did not vote on their “Reimagining Student Safety” proposal, the Black Student Achievement Plan was closer to their goals than the district’s December 2020 version. He said:

“There are so many things that we’re advocating for as part of this plan and we’re so happy to see that the superintendent has amended his proposal from what he proposed in December to actually center what students and community members have been asking for and the resources in a targeted way that students and community members have been asking for.”

School board members also voted to prohibit the Los Angeles School Police Department from using oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray, which is also know as pepper spray, on students. According to previous guidelines, the school officers were allowed to use the OC on students for “self-defense or defending others from imminent threat or physical force of violence.”

Additionally, the approved proposal includes the development of oversight and accountability committees, including:

the Black Student Achievement Steering Committee, which will develop and monitor strategies to improve achievement;

the Black Student Achievement Staff Working Group, which will be made up of LAUSD staff and will oversee and evaluate initiatives; and

the Oversight and Accountability Team, which will be responsible for day-to-day monitoring.

Board member Kelly Gonez said during the recent meeting:

“Obviously this is a big undertaking and required a lot of coordination, but I know we know and all believe that our black students are certainly worth this effort.”

Board member George McKenna, who voiced opposition for the proposal, but voted yes said:

“If in fact, school police are unnecessary, who are you going to call when stuff his the fa and how do you measure that which was prevented and never occurred because the presence of a police officer was a prevention.”

He added:

“The parents expect us to have safe schools and if you think the police are the problem, I think you got a problem yourself.”

Prior to the vote, a survey was presented to board members which collected responses from more than 35,000 LAUSD high school students, 6,600 parents, and 2,300 certified and classified staff members on high school campuses. 

According to the survey results, 51% of LAUSD students feel that having school police on campus makes the school safe, but only 35% of black students said they felt it made the school safe. Additionally, a quarter of black females said they do not feel safe with school police on campus.

The survey also found a significant portion of parents and staff that opposed or were neutral regarding a potential, significant reduction of the school police department budget by 90% over the next three years. only 14% of parents and 23% of staff were in support. 

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NYC: 68 City Council candidates sign pledge to remove police, metal detectors, security scanners from schools

February 1st, 2021

NEW YORK CITY, NY – A group of 68 City Council candidates within New York City have signed on to a petition, or as the petition refers to itself a “mandate”, that aims to remove not only police officers from public schools – but also metal detectors and security scanners from New York City’s public school system.

This petition, or mandate, or whatever you’d like to call it has been dubbed as the “Young People’s Vision for Police Free Schools”.

The rhetoric that ensues within this petition regurgitates, almost to the point of being ad nauseum, talking points alleging that certain racial minorities suffer from the presence of police officers and metal detectors in public schools within New York City:

“For generations, Black and Latinx communities have organized to remove police from our public education system to end the mass criminalization of Black and Latinx youth and break the school-to-prison and deportation pipelines.”

For the record the term ‘Latinx” appears within this petition four times.

The word “Latinx” is not a real word – it’s rather a bastardization of the words Latino/Latina in an effort to create a gender-neutral term to demonyms that stem from a gendered language, namely Spanish.

The ongoing theme of this petition is that police being in schools is somehow a threat to specific portions of the student body:

“The presence of police, surveillance, and invasive security measures pushes our most vulnerable students further to the margins. We know our history and understand police have been embedded in New York City public schools to police our movements and restrict our freedoms.”

This petition conveniently doesn’t host any data to substantiate the accusations like police being present within New York City public schools is an effort to dictate movements and restrict freedoms.

Speaking of not sharing any data to substantiate points made, this petition further alleges that there is “no substantial evidence that police or metal detectors” make schools safer:

“There is no substantial evidence that police or metal detectors create safer school communities.”

Keep in mind, this is the same city where two 15-year-olds and one 17-year-old were arrested in November of 2020 for fatally stabbing a 20-year-old woman. And during the 2014-2015 school year in NYC, nine guns were confiscated at schools in the city.

Within the first three months of 2016, there were four guns confiscated. And reports in subsequent years showed that weapons busts were occurring in increased numbers – growing by 26% from 2014 to 2018

For perspective, the number of “dangerous instruments” that were seized across the five boroughs in the 2017-2018 school year were 2,903. Or, slightly over an average of 16 “dangerous instruments” recovered every day during the 180-day school year. 

And for additional perspective – 34% of those “dangerous instruments” seized during the 2017-2018 school year were discovered via metal detectors. 

Imagine that.

While failing to showcase what this lack of “substantial evidence” is with regard to police and metal detectors not helping keep schools proactively safe, this petition alleges that there’s a “growing body of research” that police “criminalizes” certain portions of the student body:

“However, there is a growing body of research that illustrates that the presence of police in schools criminalizes Black, Latinx, TGCNIQ, immigrants, and students with disabilities.”

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To save you, the reader, the hassle of navigating what “TGCNIQ” means – we at Law Enforcement Today found the acronym stands for “transgender, gender non-conforming, intersex, and queer”.

The fact is that no one within NYC’s public schools is getting dragged out of class in handcuffs for simply being black, brown, disabled, or identifying within the realm of TGCNIQ.

Outside of the allegations that police and metal detectors somehow criminalize the minority youth in NYC public schools, there was a list of demands within the petition that are as follows:

  • Remove all police personnel from New York City public schools. Do not transfer their supervision to the Department of Education.
  • Remove all metal detectors, scanners, and invasive security measures from New York City public schools.
  • Remove NYPD from responding to mental health crises in schools and from entering schools for any school related matters.
  • End all zero tolerance policies and practices, and prohibit arrest, summons, and juvenile reports [of] non-criminal violations and misdemeanors, which disproportionately impacts black and brown young people.

The aforementioned list of demands is part of what the petition refers to as a means to “divest from our criminalization”. And with all that divesting, this petition would rather have the following implemented:

  • Fully fund and implement restorative practices at all schools by 2022.
  • Fully fund an increased school support staff, including guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, restorative justice coordinators, and academic and social support staff.
  • Establish a system wide mental health continuum and increased funding for mental health support for all students.
  • Ensure all students have access to: culturally responsive education, high quality and comprehensive selection of sports, arts, and elective courses, college access support including student success centers.

Essentially, this presented petition alleges that measures used to keep students safe are somehow inherently unsafe to students, despite the fact that metal detectors aren’t hurting anybody and police in New York City aren’t frivolously arresting students in school without cause.

And from there this petition also wants to end “zero tolerance policies and practices”, which schools that host those policies (be they in New York City or across the country) utilizes the enforcement of those policies for particularly egregious conduct that can transpire in school.

Common forms of zero tolerance policies within schools relate to things like sexual harassment, bullying, bringing weapons to school, bringing narcotics to school – all pretty bad things and some being criminal, which is why schools have crafted and adopted zero tolerance policies.

And then there’s the portion that notes that the petition wants to “prohibit arrest, summons, and juvenile reports [of] non-criminal violations and misdemeanors”.

For those unaware, a misdemeanor offense in New York is any crime that carries a potential sentence of more than 15 days but less than 364 days of incarceration.

And examples of these misdemeanors that are classified in New York consist of theft of up to $1,000, third degree assault, forcibly touching someone sexually, graffitiing someone’s property, stalking which causes fear, and public lewdness (a.ka. “flashing” someone).

Those are just a few short examples of misdemeanors that this petition would like to see NYC students not get arrested for while at school.

The rationale being employed in this petition, and of those who signed it, is highly questionable – to say the least.

Sen. Murphy proposes legislation to remove resource officers from schools (despite Sandy Hook massacre in his state)

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), along with three other lawmakers, introduced a bill that would pave the way to remove school resource officers (SRO) nationwide and replace them with a counseling system.

In a press release from July 30, 2020, Murphy said:

“Tens of thousands of kids are arrested at school every single year and a disproportionate number of these students are black and latino.”

Reportedly, that are more than 10,000 SROs currently serving in schools across the county, including in Connecticut. Their goal is and always has been to protect children. 

However, this new legislation push argues that their presence has the opposite effect. When Murphy introduced the “Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act,” he was joined by other progressive Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar. Murphy said:

“Police shouldn’t be in schools. There are plenty of better ways to ensure that our schools are safe places to learn.”

He argued that students get arrested for minor things, which introduces them to the juvenile system at an early age and makes it potentially bright future much more difficult. He wrote:

“If we are going to begin to tackle systemic racism in this country, we must start by addressing the racial inequalities in our education system, and getting police out of classrooms is a necessary first step.”

Some parents are understanding of this proposed legislation, but the majority of the thousands responding to Murphy’s Facebook post did not agree. They worry about school safety. Casey Calvert of Vernon wrote:

“We’re living in a scary world, so you never know when police will be needed.”

Before becoming a senator, Murphy was a Congressional Representative for Newtown during the horrific school shooting at Sandy Hook where on December 14, 2012, 20 school children and six adults were killed.

Back in 2017, Murphy told CNN that it would feel like a “personal failure” if he doesn’t make progress on the issue and “epidemic” of gun violence. He said:

“It wasn’t that I didn’t have an emotional connection to the issues that I worked on prior to Sandy Hook, but this was different. This was a calling and a mission in a way that I had never felt before.”

Since Sandy Hook, there have been over 400 school shootings. In 2018, there were 97 school shooting incidents at K-12 schools in the U.S., which is more than any other year on record. 

Now, just eight years after Sandy Hook and at a time that gun violence is at an all-time high, Murphy is pushing for police to be out of schools. When announcing the “Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act,” Murphy referenced Sandy Hook and said:

“In Connecticut, in the wake of a horrific school shooting, many schools hired police officers to enhance the peace of mind of parents. But, not we have plenty of evidence to show that there are far better ways to ensure kids’ safety and that these police officers are contributing to a civil rights crisis that we must address.”

If the legislation were to pass, not only would the bill divert federal funding away from supporting officers in schools, it would also support local agencies that want to terminate their contracts with police departments.

School resource officers in Annapolis, Maryland may soon only enter schools mainly during an emergency, a plan the bill sponsor says will help minority students feel more comfortable. Police reiterate that this bill presents safety concerns.

The bill, SB0245, sponsored by Sen. Arthur Ellis (D-Charles), establishes numerous restrictions on school resource officers. This bill prohibits SROs from entering schools “except under certain circumstances.”

The bill also requires that SROs wear street clothes rather than a police uniform, while concealing their firearm unless needed. Clyde Boatwright, president of the Maryland State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police said that his organization plans to testify against the bill due to concerns over school safety. He said:

“It would put our school in great danger for attacks from the outside if we didn’t have our school officers staged in the building.”

An SRO responded to a fatal shooting at Great Mills High School in 2018 within one minute, returning a single round of fire before the shooter, who killed one student and wounded another, committed suicide.

The Maryland Safe to Learn Act of 2018 required schools to prove they either have a designated school resource officer or “adequate local law enforcement coverage.”

Now, with the introduction of this new bill, Maryland school systems will move away from the legislation that was passed in 2018. Just a year ago, local school boards in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties considered putting an end to their SRO program. 

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Sen. Chris Murphy calls police racist, demands replacing them with counselors in schools

July 30th, 2020

This editorial is brought to you by a former Chief of Police and staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.

WASHINGTON, D.C.- For those of us who live in the northeastern part of the country, we have the unfortunate honor of having the most ignorant, tone-deaf, angry partisan people representing us in the United States Senate.

From Schumer and Gillibrand in New York, to Warren and Markey in Massachusetts, the northeast has it’s fair share of clowns in the upper chamber of Congress.

However, no state can compare to the two senators from Connecticut, “Da Nang” Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. Clearly though, when it comes to ignorant buffoons, Murphy takes the prize.

Considering he represents the state where the most egregious school shooting in history took place, it is shocking that he thinks it’s a great idea to remove police from the schools.

On Thursday, Murphy, along with the other clowns in the clown car, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with left-wing Marxist sympathizers Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced a bill which would remove school resource officers from schools and replace them with counselors, WFSB in Hartford reported.

“Tens of thousands of kids are arrested at school every single year and a disproportionate number of these students are black and Latino,” Murphy said.

According to WFSB, there are currently more than 10,000 SROs serving in schools nationwide, with the goal of protecting children.

The problem as we see it is that some schools view the police that are assigned as SROs in their schools as the disciplinary arm of the school system, which was never the intent.

Yes, police officers are there to do their job in enforcing the law, however in many cases, schools used the police to enforce school rules, which sometimes led to pushback from the students which escalated to criminal violations.

It seems like, at least in some cases, schools didn’t want to deal with their own disruptive students and called the SRO in to do so.

Murphy said that SROs don’t make schools safer.

“It’s time to get police officers out of our schools,” Murphy said. “The evidence shows these officers don’t make our schools and (sic) safer. In fact, research has shown [they] can increase physical danger to young people.”

The chief of the Wolcott (CT) Police Department, Ed Stephens disagrees with Murphy’s assessment. His town has three SROs in the school system, and he says they are absolutely beneficial.

“Our function in the school is to protect the students from outsiders coming into the school. That’s the number one function to keeping those children safe,” Stephens said.

He also said that the police are there to develop relationships with the kids.

“Their function is to build rapport with students. We don’t want children in schools to be afraid of the police., we want to see them as a friend. It’s like the old beat cop in the neighborhood. They’re the beat cops in the schools,” the chief said.

Likewise, the superintendent of the Stratford (CT) Schools said that while she could see both sides, she agreed that the program could be beneficial.

“My way of looking at SROs is let’s show students as they’re growing up that police officers are interested in their well-being,” Janet Robinson said.

Ironically, Robinson was the superintendent in Newtown, CT., when the Sandy Hook school shooting took place in that community. Twenty first graders and six staff members were killed in that incident, which led to a hue and cry for additional police officers in schools as SROs.

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In 1999, two gunmen entered Columbine High School in Columbine, CO., where twelve students and one teacher were murdered. At that time, there was an armed officer in the building, a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, who actually engaged with the gunmen and called for assistance over the radio. Had that deputy not been on scene, it is likely many more students and/or teachers would have been massacred.

Robinson also said that she didn’t want kids to get arrested.

“The officer really has to be able to identify with the kids and really be personable and so that I’ve seen, I’ve seen a very successful SRO and it’s phenomenal. I’ve seen several successful ones and that does matter,” she said.

“I have an SRO in one of my schools and walks into the cafeteria at lunch time and high five him, they talk to him, he can talk to the kids if the kids have a little problem. Just talk to them about it,” Robinson said.

Murphy is always quick to criticize police officers, yet he has been silent on the violent riots taking place in cities nationwide, which have included violent assaults on police officers. Murphy, like all of the Democrats is more worried about November 3 than he is about keeping the country, and apparently the students safe. This bill is another slap in the face to police, which we have come to expect from this in-over-his-head dipstick.

In his bill called the “Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act,” Murphy is quoted as saying, “Police shouldn’t be in schools There are plenty of better ways to ensure that our schools are safe places to learn.”

He claimed that students are arrested for minor things and get into the juvenile justice system early, which makes a potentially bright future much more difficult.

“If we are going to begin to tackle systemic racism in this country, we must start by addressing the racial inequities in our education system. And getting police out of classrooms is a necessary first step,” he wrote.

Parents and his constituents, however, disagree with Murphy and he heard about it on his Facebook page, with a majority opposing the bill. Murphy got absolutely eviscerated by some of the responses. Parents said that the safety of students demanded it.

“We’re living in a scary world, so you never know when [police] will be needed,” said Casey Calvert of Vernon.

“So instead of bridging relationships you think its better to divide? Our school resource officer is a mentor to our kids. BTW the teachers union is going to give you an earful,” said Christian Calemmo.

And, our favorite, from Janet R Mariano- “We the people said NO to removing police. We are your boss Chris, your (sic) not listening to us. You are a puppet for the Democratic party attempting to destroy our country. You need to go!!!” 

One post in particular was directed to Law Enforcement Today. It was posted by someone on their page and Murphy was tagged in it. She attached this letter to it:

LA school board votes to replace school resource officers with "school climate coaches"Chris Murphy Letter Facebook Page screenclip

“Years ago you sent this letter to me upon reading an article about me in the Hartford Courant. You even hand wrote a ‘congrats’ message. 

“As a young woman living in Newtown during the wake of Sandy Hook how can you say schools doe not need SROs? I always knew I wanted to do this job, but after seeing and living through my hometown suffer[ing] so much heartache and grief after the elementary school shooting, I made it my mission to become a police officer. 

“I am not the 1% and either are my brother and sister officers who to this day would run towards danger with me while the rest of the world, including you run the other way. 

“Six years ago I fit your political agenda. Today I don’t” 

To show you exactly how tone-deaf Murphy and the rest of the anti-police, pro-criminal crowd are, keep this in mind. Murphy was the Congressional representative in the district where Sandy Hook is located prior to somehow getting elected to the Senate. In fact, Murphy addressed that shooting in pushing to remove SROs from schools.

“In Connecticut, in the wake of a horrific school shooting, many schools hired police officers to enhance the peace of mind of parents. But now we have plenty of evidence to show that there are far better ways to ensure kids’ safety and that these police officers are contributing to a civil rights crisis that we must address.”

Brian Foley, who used to be the Deputy Chief in Hartford but now has gone to the dark side as a state employee appointed as the assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection spoke to that.

“I think it’s up to the schools to decide how they’re going to protect their students and what’s the best way to do that. I think there’s a lot of opinion out there, but there are certainly statistics and data to support that taking officers out of schools lowers arrests in schools,” Foley said.

So, let’s go back to Murphy’s statement, “…there are far better ways to ensure kids’ safety…” At Sandy Hook, besides the 20 children who were killed, other victims included Rachel D’Avino, a behavioral therapist, Anne Marie Murphy a special education teacher, Mary Sherlach, a school psychologist, and  two teachers, Victoria Leigh Soto and Lauren Rousseau, and Dawn Hochsuprung, the principal of the school.

Bureaucrats such as Murphy feel that putting more nurses, psychologists, behavioral therapists and so on will make the kids safer. The Sandy Hook shooting shows just how absurd that statement is. This type of “logic” is the same as those who suggest that sending counselors to domestic disturbances, among the most dangerous and potentially violent calls police respond to, is a good idea. 

Clearly, if there was an armed officer on-scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, we would likely not have 20 dead children and six dead adults. SROs in other schools across the country have also prevented school shootings and we don’t know how many were prevented because a would-be shooter knew there was an SRO in the building.

There are also other benefits to having SROs in school. According to the Chicago Tribune, a two-year study conducted by Canada’s Carleton University of an SRO program in Toronto, which covered five high schools showed that it had prevented or minimized property damage, injuries and deaths from violence and drug overdoses, and reduced the need for 911 calls.

In addition, the same study showed that the SRO program increased the likelihood that students would receive necessary social services and healthcare help and would also enhance feelings of safety among students and staff. In conclusion, the report said that for every dollar invested in an SRO program, at least $11.13 of “social and economic value was created.”

It should be noted that all the sponsors of this bill—Murphy, Warren, Omar, and Pressley have been outspoken in advocating for defunding of police.

It should also be noted that not ONE sponsor of this bill has spoken out against the violence rampaging through our major cities.

SLikewise, not ONE sponsor of this bill has condemned the violent assaults on police officers across the country, where officers have been shot, stabbed, attacked with professional grade fireworks, been bombarded with bricks, rocks, frozen water bottles and all manner of objects, with three officers who may be permanently blinded after being targeted with lasers to their eyes. NOT ONE!

I have known and still know officers that serve in the capacity of school resource officers. In fact, I also served as a school resource officer. All of the officers I know that serve in that capacity are caring, dedicated, and concerned officers.

Men and women who serve in the capacity of SROs have a strong belief in what they are doing, and are there for the right reasons…to serve as a resource for students and staff, to portray a positive image of law enforcement officers, and to develop relationships with the kids so they trust the police.

I have personally experienced a student who had developed a relationship with me that led to a child abuse arrest and conviction, all because the student trusted me. I have seen this numerous other times in my career among other officers.

However as always, far-left Democrats want to throw out the baby with the bath water. Instead of looking at ways where SROs could be better utilized and try to integrate them into an overall school safety and student advocate program, they look at this as a way to once again demonize police officers, because at the end of the day, all that stands between a lawful society, which Democrats clearly don’t want and tyranny, which Democrats clearly do want is the police.

Chris Murphy once again proves why it’s such an embarrassment to have this numb nut representing Connecticut in the Senate.

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