Chicago Public Schools principals take issue with board's plan to remove police officers
CHICAGO (CBS) -- On the same day a teenage shooter walked into an Iowa school, killed one student, and wounded five other people, there is a push to remove school resource officers from Chicago public schools.
Discussions about removing police officers from schools go back years, but the decision had been left to individual schools. Now, administrators say Chicago's school board is pushing to take away the choice, and all the officers.
Of the 40 high schools that voted on the question of resource officers during the present school year, 39 voted to keep police officers in their schools. Principals are now pushing back and wondering why the decision isn't going to remain theirs.
We sat down with Troy LaRaviere, president of The Chicago Principals & Administrators Association and a onetime mayoral candidate.
"Principals were told there was going to be a meeting on December 15 to get their input," LaRaviere said.
LaRaviere represents those principals, and said the meeting with the Chicago Board of Education he was talking about did not involve any input.
"They were told that the board had made a unilateral decision, without the input of the people who actually run the schools," LaRaviere said.
A total of 40 local school councils for CPS high schools voted this school year on Whole School Safety Plans – which were developed in 2021 by CPS and community organizations with the goal of reimagining safety plans for schools in a trauma-informed fashion.
The question of whether to remove school resource officers is part of the Whole School Safety Plans.
A total of 16 of those 40 schools opted to go on having two school resource officers, while 23 maintained one. Only one school voted to remove both its resource officers.
Schools that voted to remove officers were offered special funds. The schools that traded in one or both officers received about $3.7 million to implement "alternative safety interventions."
LaRaviere gave an example of why 16 schools chose both officers over any funding, from a principal on the Southwest Side who protected a student from another with a weapon.
"She stood between him and his access to that school to protect that child, and he pulled out a gun, and put it in her face, and said, 'Get out of my way,'" LaRaviere said, "and she said, 'I'm not moving.'"
He added that school shootings – like the one that just happened Thursday in Iowa – are a concern that is never far from school administrators' minds.
"Our principals are concerned about school shootings nationally," LaRaviere said. "The reality they face – at least the 39 principals who voted to keep those SROs – the reality they face is more local, and that's not what we see on the TV. It the violence we see and hear about every single day."
Furthermore, LaRaviere said, a school resource officer can get to known and build a relationship with students. But if there is no school resource officer, he said, police will still need to come to schools from time to time.
"If you don't have an SRO, what are you supposed to do? You don't have the SRO with the relationships. You have to call 911. And then you have to get the luck of the draw," LaRaviere said. "Cops with no relationships with the children show up, and you're more likely to get the kind of interaction between cops and children. The same kind of interaction you're trying to prevent, you just created a situation where you're more likely it get it."
LaRaviere, and the principals he represents, calling for the school board to listen to them before making any decisions.
"We'd be happy to meet with the board so they can get a better understanding. We know they have good intentions, but they don't have the best information right now - at least they don't have all of the information," said LaRaviere, "and we would love an opportunity to help them get it."
The next school board meeting is set for Jan. 25. Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th) said there will be at least a dozen alderman there specifically to talk about this issue.
As of early Thursday evening, there had been no response to requests for comment from the Chicago Board of Education, the Mayor's office, or the Chicago Teachers Union. CBS 2's Tara Molina also tried to contact the schools that voted to keep both officers, but none got back to her.