Chicago School Board Votes to Renew Contract With City’s Police

(Bloomberg) -- The Chicago Board of Education voted to renew its contract with the city’s police department for one more year and also directed the district to figure out how to phase out the use of officers amid a national debate to reform student safety and curb systemic racism.

The board, which oversees 638 schools with 355,000 students in Chicago Public Schools, voted narrowly with 4 yeas, 2 nays and one abstention, in favor of the one-year contract with the Chicago Police Department for up to $12 million in the 2020-2021 school year. That’s down from $33 million in the previous year. The board in June narrowly upheld its agreement with the department for the 2019-2020 academic year to station officers in schools.

The board also adopted a resolution directing the district’s Chief Executive Officer Janice Jackson to provide a comprehensive plan by March 2021 for schools currently using so-called school resource officers “to phase out their use.” Local community councils in CPS decide if they want to keep police officers, and as of Aug. 18, 55 schools had chosen to keep officers for the 2020-2021 academic year while 17 opted out.

Board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri advocated for the alternative plans to improve student safety.

“Like any change, it will take time,” said Revuluri, who voted for the contract with the police department. He added that the agreement is better with its added governance measures than before but still has a lot of room to improve.

Calls to remove officers have grown amid outrage across the country over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Since June, school districts in Minneapolis, Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver and Portland, Oregon have decided to sever the ties with local police departments.

The Chicago school district is working to tighten requirements for police who work in schools, and will more closely monitor performance and strengthen the complaint process. New eligibility and selection criteria for so-called school resource officers will require they have “excellent” discipline records, including no sustained allegations within the past five years involving excessive use of force. The police department’s chief of bureau operations will interview all candidates, verify eligibility and provide a written attestation that candidates have been vetted to meet the criteria.

While Chicago police data shows an 80% reduction in student arrests in Chicago Public Schools between school year 2012 and 2019, “unacceptable” levels of racial disparities still exist and the percentage of arrests attributed to students of color remains persistent, according to a district presentation on Wednesday.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, one of two who voted against the contract, said that she wants police out of schools because of the institutional challenges and racial disparities.

“When will enough be enough?” Todd-Breland said.

The board’s plan to develop a process to potentially phase out police from schools “doesn’t go far enough,” Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, which reiterated a call to end the contract, said in a statement.

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