On Thursday, the Chicago Board of Education voted to end its contract with the Chicago Police Department and no longer allow any uniformed officers on any of the district’s campuses.
As Fox News reports, the vote was taken after an eight-hour board meeting that featured speeches from teachers, students, and city officials. Out of 634 schools in the city, only 39 still had uniformed police officers patrolling the campus. Police officers were first assigned to protect Chicago schools back in 1991.
Some students claimed, without evidence, that police officers disproportionately targeted minority students, while others baselessly claimed that the officers’ presence made them scared.
Others who spoke at the meeting suggested that the decision be left up to the individual schools, rather than a sweeping edict made by the board that would encompass every school in the district.
The board ultimately voted in favor of a new policy called the “Whole School Safety Policy,” which included the elimination of uniformed officers’ presence on campus. The plan will be presented to the board in the summer for a final vote; if approved, it will go into effect for the 2024-2025 school year.
“We want to be clear that many schools will still employ physical safety personnel like security guards at points of entry, and crossing guards and Safe Passage workers to ensure students can get to and from school safely,” the board said in a letter after the vote. “Some schools will also continue to use physical security tools such as security cameras or metal detectors. Furthermore, each school will still maintain a relationship with their local Chicago Police Department ‘School Sergeant,’ a position assigned to each police district to provide safety support to schools.”
The board also said that the funding previously used to support uniformed officers will instead be spent on “alternative safety positions, resources, and interventions.”
Efforts to remove police officers from schools were supported by the far-left Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which first began calling for such a change amidst the race riots in 2020, which were sparked by the accidental fentanyl overdose death of George Floyd.
“These students along with the parents, teachers and staff that support them have looked at the data, experienced the brutality and are calling for police-free schools,” CTU said in its statement in June of 2020.
No doubt this will see better behaved students in a more relaxed environment with less threats of mayhem and violence…