DPS School Board Vice President Auon'tai 'Tay' Anderson addresses reintroduction of SROs

After shootings at East High School, the Denver School Board says it wants to bring back armed student resource officers because of concerns about guns in schools.

Now a group is asking all seven board members to resign.

Last week, a student at East High School shot two deans during a pat down - a process he was required to go through every day.

He was later found dead.

One of those administrators remains in the hospital but has been upgraded from serious to fair condition.

The biggest concern parents, students and staff have are about safety.

For weeks, the students have pushed for safety measures, particularly at East High.

At Monday's press conference, DPS School Board Vice President Auon'tai 'Tay' Anderson addressed many of these safety concerns, as well as the board's immediate decision to bring student resource officers back to schools.

Anderson spoke about why the board decided to get rid of SROs in 2020, pointing to the over-policing of Black and brown students.

He also noted that, at that time, the school board voted unanimously to end their contract and phase out SROs.

But after recent violent events, particularly those at East High, the school board received over 1,000 emails asking to bring police back to schools.

A handful of people, however, say that police in schools is not the answer.

Anderson says with the reintroduction of SROs, we might run into the same issues we saw before they were originally removed.

"The removal of SROs wasn't to remove what we would say is a 'bad cop,'" Anderson said. "We were sending a message that it's ridiculous that only 18 individuals know how to interact with young folks. And that's what we're seeing again, is with the reintroduction of SROs, the same 18 individuals that we had before are coming back. There's not an issue with that, it's the fact that we as a city must have a police department where all officers can interact with students, not just a select group."

CBS News Colorado reached out to the Denver Police Department to learn more about those 18 SROs Anderson mentioned but have not heard back.

We also reached out to the mayor's office for a response to Anderson's comments and have not heard back from them either.