This is a call for SAISD to defund on-campus police officers and redirect the money to mental health and restorative justice workers. During the 2019-20 school year, SAISD spent $6.4 million on the SAISD police department, and they do not plan on bringing that number down.
Pushing money into school policing only reinforces the criminalization of students, instead of promoting safety on school campuses. Having on-campus officers directly feeds the school to prison pipeline. When police are involved in school discipline, they often escalate situations that could have easily been taken care of by administrators. This easily criminalizes students and feeds into the school to prison pipeline. SAISD also has a significant population of undocumented families, and having law enforcement on campus puts them at a higher risk of deportation.
Furthermore, having armed personnel on campus has not statistically been proven to make schools safer. Instead, Black and Latino students are put at a greater risk of falling victim to police brutality. This has been seen in SAISD, specifically in 2016 when a 12-year-old girl was body-slammed by a school police officer. There is also no statistical evidence that police make campuses safer during school shootings or other instances of armed violence at schools.
So, instead of fueling a system that criminalizes youth, we need to direct money into programs that provide long term solutions to ending violence. Investing in counselors, social workers, and restorative justice facilitators cultivates a healthy environment in which students are able to build skills that prevent violence.
