School Boards and the Consideration of Policing on School Campuses: Concerns and Decisive Priorities

• In Event: Stakeholder Examination of Equity Concerns, Student Learning, Safety, and School Policing

Abstract

In the United States, school boards are charged with policy-making and oversight of school districts. Many school boards create policy and regulations for both student discipline and campus safety, including decisions about the scope and role of law enforcement on campuses. The purpose of this paper is to examine how and why our school board decided to cancel district contracts with the local police department for on campus Student Resource Officers (SROs), and to share reflections on the experience of a single school board member on the long process involved in reconsidering the role of police in the district and on its school campuses. The paper uses qualitative research methods, relying on school board minutes, and first person experience to develop a narrative accounting of how community concerns were balanced against school board member’s understanding of their fiscal and oversight mandate.
Theoretical Frameworks: The paper’s goal of understanding and change in policies relating to safety and police utilizes a theoretical framework of Systems Change, which holds that systemic change can only happen when some aspect of change, as an aspiration, reaches all the component parts of the system. This paper focuses on how community and student resistance prompted change in one particular component, the school board.
Methods: The study is based on critical examination of publically available historical documents, including school board minutes and journalistic interviews along with first-person accounts in order to deepen the understanding of how profoundly community and student activists impacted the decision-making processes and how school board members viewed their roles and responsibilities.
Scholarly significance: This paper shares how the view that board members were, and should be politically neutral, was a barrier to serious engagement with community concerns and equity-advancing policy making.

Author

• Eleanor Maoz, University of California - Los Angeles