Police officer teaching elementary school children about safety. ©iStock.com/asiseeit

Police officer teaching uncomplicated schoolhouse children nearly prophylactic. Credit: iStock.com/asiseeit

A new police that encourages schoolhouse districts to consider alternative approaches to school safety beyond just posting police on their campuses was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this week, merely days afterwards the U.S. Department of Justice awarded $44 million to beef up the number of police force officers in schools nationwide, including California.

The two approaches to school safety – ane encouraging alternative approaches to law enforcement such as using conflict resolution practices and mental health professionals and the other focusing on increasing law presence – encapsulate the still heated debate about how to continue students rubber from harm. In a sign of how divisive the event of school policing remains in California, Associates Beak 549 deliberately refrains from restricting what police force can do on campus and leaves it up to school districts to make up one's mind which student behaviors call for mental health intervention and which crave police action. As originally proposed, the bill would have limited school police to handling dangerous or physically violent situations simply that language was removed in committee.

The law now simply "encourages" districts to update their school safety plans to include clear guidelines for roles and responsibilities of mental health workers and school counselors as well as police officers in creating prophylactic school environments.

Merely fifty-fifty merely encouraging districts to include these alternative strategies in their safe plans is viewed as victory by Rubén Lizardo, deputy director of the Oakland-based nonprofit inquiry and advocacy organization PolicyLink, which co-sponsored the bill. He said that putting mental wellness workers on par with police officers in ensuring schoolhouse safety was significant step that could lead to increased adoption of emotional supports and interventions in schools. "If in that location'south a superintendent that wants to tap into a behavioral program, he could at present legitimately say, 'Our state's approach to campus safety includes this,'" Lizardo said.

Just lobbying for the pecker provided a vehicle for advocates of alternative approaches to brainwash legislators about what Lizardo called the "inadvertent negatives" of police on campus, including what studies have identified equally the disproportionate number of arrests of African American and Latino youth and the referral of tens of thousands of students to the juvenile justice organization for misdemeanors such as disorderly deport and minor schoolyard fights.

In the Los Angeles Unified Schoolhouse District, for instance, school police handed out well-nigh x,200 misdemeanor tickets to students in 2022 for fighting, daytime-curfew violations and other pocket-size infractions that community groups say might better exist handled by schoolhouse officials or counselors, according to an account published by the Middle for Public Integrity, an investigative news organisation. Of those ticketed, 43 percent were children 14 or younger, including an 11-twelvemonth-old who was ticketed, suspended for one mean solar day, handcuffed, driven to the constabulary station, booked, fingerprinted and photographed in a mug shot for what the citation termed a "mutual fight" over a basketball game, according to the account. Research has found that suspending, expelling or referring a student to the juvenile justice system increases the gamble that the student will drib out of school and become incarcerated as an adult.

Clarification for campus police

This clarification of roles is as well being pursued at the national level through the School Discipline Consensus Project, an effort launched by the Council of State of Governments Justice Center in coordination with the federal Supportive School Field of study Initiative of 2011. The project, which is collecting data on school subject and will convene experts in schoolhouse safety, behavioral health and law enforcement, studies the same question that California lawmakers have asked: What, if any, office should local police force enforcement play in enforcing a school'due south code of conduct?

The California law gives a nod to research that has tied a reduction in school break and expulsion rates to interventions such as the framework known as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a system used in an estimated 750 California schools to evaluate programs that teach social and emotional skills. The law encourages schools to identify a priority on mental health and intervention services and to create a positive school climate, a loosely defined term that relates to how connected and supported students experience at school.

Advocates praised the constabulary as "a victory for youth and families" that could increase conflict resolution practices and decrease school expulsions and referrals to the juvenile justice system, co-ordinate to a statement from the Dignity in Schools Campaign, a national coalition of advocacy groups including the Youth Justice Coalition in Los Angeles and the American Ceremonious Liberties Union of Southern California.

In schools, police officers are known as schoolhouse resource officers merely they work for city or county law enforcement departments and are most frequently paid by federal, state or urban center funds. Typically, they are assigned to the same school or schools for several years in a row, to strengthen their collaboration with school administrators, teachers and students. Their duties may include teaching the anti-drug curriculum called D.A.R.Due east. to students, patrolling school grounds and hallways, and intervening in student conflicts, including allegations of bullying.

Schoolhouse resource officers are the fastest growing segment of police enforcement, co-ordinate to the National Clan of Schoolhouse Resource Officers, which estimates that more than x,000 police officers serve in schools nationwide. The number of officers dramatically increased afterward the mass shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, the same year the U.Southward. Department of Justice Office of Customs Policing Services initiated the "COPS in Schools" grant program, according to a 2022 written report published in Justice Quarterly, edited by the University of Criminal Justice Sciences. "The increased apply of law in schools is driven at least in part by increased federal funding," the study states.

Ensuring student safety

In Washington, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promoted increasing police officers in schools as a necessary safety step.

"In the wake of past tragedies, it's articulate that we need to be willing to accept all possible steps to ensure that our kids are safe when they become to school," Holder said in a news release announcing the funding Sept. 27.

The Justice Department grants include well-nigh $6 one thousand thousand to fund school police officers in 44 California cities and counties, including funds to put eight more police officers in Modesto schools, two boosted officers in Hayward schools and iv additional officers in Chula Vista schools.

Officers in schools depict the experience as a fashion to build relationships with students and contribute to an orderly school environment.

"The positive thing about having officers assigned to high school and heart school is that they become to know the kids," said Sgt. Ozzie Dominguez, spokesman for the Visalia Police Department, which received a $350,000 grant that would bring three constabulary officers to middle schools in the Visalia Unified Schoolhouse District, awaiting approval from the city council. "They're able non just to respond promptly, but ideally prevent things from happening." Screen Shot 2013-10-03 at 5.32.19 PM

Joseph Grubbs, president of the California School Resource Officers' Association, acknowledged criticism of school resource officers and their potential touch on on higher schoolhouse break rates, but he said the officers' principal focus is ensuring the safe of all students.

"I am not a big advocate of suspension," he said. "If a child does something stupid, we're not going to reward him by suspending him. But if this is a kid who is out of control every single day making this a terrible learning environment for all the other kids, nosotros've got to get him out of there."

A 2010 report published by the U.Due south.  Justice Department and authored by Barbara Raymond, a program managing director at The California Endowment, points to the lack of solid research showing that schoolhouse resource officers necessarily brand schools safer.

"It volition be apparent that despite their popularity, few systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of SROs be," states the report, "Assigning Law Officers to Schools." The study notes, "Studies of SRO effectiveness that accept measured actual safety outcomes have mixed results. Some show an comeback in safety and a reduction in law-breaking; others show no modify. Typically, studies that report positive results from SRO programs rely on participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of the plan rather than on objective evidence."

This week, the Dignity in Schools Campaign is belongings a National Week of Action Against Schoolhouse Pushout that seeks to reframe the dropout issue as a crisis of school discipline practices that are exacerbated by the presence of police force on campus.

On Th, the entrada showcased "restorative justice" models of discipline and disharmonize resolution at FreeLA Loftier School, a school for academically at-gamble students in Inglewood, and at Augustus Hawkins High School in s Los Angeles. "These approaches focus on building salubrious relationships betwixt teachers and students, and treating discipline as a teaching moment, rather than an opportunity to punish and push kids out of school," said the Nobility in Schools Campaign.

Jane Meredith Adams covers student wellness. Contact her or follow her @JaneAdams.

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