school police

Nearly six months after a momentous decision to abolish its school police department, the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education agreed at a meeting Wednesday night to endorse a safety plan that relies on “culture and climate ambassadors” instead of cops.

Despite a bitterly divided school board, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted on Tuesday to strip $25 million from its school police department, after mounting protests have highlighted the experiences of Black students on campus.

Amid ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, two of California’s largest school districts  this week joined other education leaders across the country pressured to rethink their policing of students.

For young people like Zahria Thomas, schools are too often places where black and brown youth are seen as threats, not as students. When she was 16, the Inglewood resident was arrested at her Los Angeles high school, in front of her classmates, after she responded angrily to a teacher’s racist remark.

In the 2016-17 school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) budgeted $67.34 million of its $13.5 billion budget for school police. Restorative justice programming, meant to help improve student behavior and provide alternatives to suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, received only $10.81 million.

California’s schools are quick to call in police for relatively minor offenses, behavioral issues or classroom disruptions, according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California.