Tacoma schools to evaluate contract with police. Some people don’t want officers on campus
A request by the Tacoma teachers union last week to remove school resource officers (SROs) from campuses because some students felt unsafe has led the district’s school board to evaluate its agreement with the Tacoma Police Department.
As a result of the request and concerns flooding in from the community, the Tacoma Public Schools Board of Directors held a meeting Thursday to discuss safety and security in schools.
While the members stopped short of any immediate action to remove SROs, the board asked Superintendent Carla Santorno to come up with a plan to evaluate the district’s relationship with the Tacoma Police Department.
“We need to have dialogue with (TPD) to tell them that while it appears the relationship on campus is mostly positive, there are issues that may be fleshed out through a deeper surveying of our students and their experience, and that there are things that absolutely have to change regardless of whether we’re in a contractual relationship or not,” board president Scott Heinze said.
The board advocated for surveying students about their experiences and reaching out to community organizations for more input.
“I think we should give a lot of weight to the families of color who have positive or negative feelings,” board director Enrique Leon said.
“We often talk a lot about our concrete numbers and lose sight of the fact that students and family feelings matter … The uniform and the presence of police and the way that makes students feel matters,” board vice president Andrea Cobb said.
In Tacoma Public Schools, security includes:
25 campus security officers (CSO): CSOs are assigned to middle and elementary schools, employed by the school district, unarmed and do not wear police uniforms.
7 school patrol officers (SPOs): SPOs patrol the district and respond where they are needed, employed by the district, unarmed and wear police-style uniforms.
5 school resource officers (SROs): SROs are assigned to high schools, are employed by the Tacoma Police Department, are armed and wear police uniforms.
There have been no SRO complaints or investigations filed with Tacoma police or the school district, according to district staff.
In the past four years, there have been a total of 71 arrests by SROs reflecting a variety of incidents, ranging from felonies to misdemeanors.
2017: 30 arrests
2018: 25 arrests
2019: 15 arrests
2020: 1 arrest
“We do have a disproportionality of students, specifically males of color, compared to other groups,” said Deputy Superintendent Joshua Garcia. He added the numbers cannot be broken down any further because the information could identify students.
The discussion of SROs comes on the heels of a decision by the Tacoma Education Association to send a letter asking for the removal of uniformed police officers from campuses starting this fall, spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement and protests across the world over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police. The death of Manuel Ellis in Tacoma while in police custody has highlighted concerns within the city.
“We have students who do not feel comfortable eating lunch in a cafeteria with a uniformed officer present, due to their experience with law enforcement. We have had students arrested at school when an SRO responds to a conflict that administrators or other trained professionals could have diffused,” TEA president Angel Morton wrote in the June 10 letter to the board.
IUOE Local 302, the union representing security officers and bus drivers for Tacoma Public Schools, wrote a letter in support of school resource officers on campus this week, stating SROs can act as role models to some students and that their presence is positive.
“During the COVID crisis, school shootings have not been front and center in the media, but as schools begin to re-open, the likelihood of a school shooting is unfortunately a very real possibility,” the letter states.
Santorno, who is Black, said at Thursday’s meeting that she’s angry and frustrated about the discrimination that continues for Black and brown students. Santorno said her experience with Tacoma police has been positive but understands that having police in schools can cause harm that doesn’t always come to the surface.
“We’ve heard from students and staff that have said, ‘We don’t feel safe with the presence of police officers in our schools,’” Santorno said at the meeting. “But what is also important to note is that we’ve heard from students and staff that say, ‘I don’t feel safe if we don’t have police officers in the schools.’ So this is not an easy question that can be solved quickly. I think we need to do a deeper dive into the complexities of this issue.”
The agreement between Tacoma Public Schools and Tacoma Police Department is set to expire in 2021. The district will be reevaluating the agreement anyway to comply with a law passed by the state Legislature that requires specific training of SROs and also requires school districts to have a complaint process prior to the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.
“The timing of this conversation is really relevant because we need to be making some changes to make sure we’re in compliance with this bill,” said district attorney Renee Trueblood at the meeting.
