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A few months ago, four top federal education officials got an internal memo from a prominent civil rights group, The Education Trust, offering a roadmap for shrinking the role of police in schools.
The document lays out a vision for a shift in civil rights enforcement, complete with a candid accounting of potential pitfalls. Most notably, it calls on the Biden administration to warn that the presence of police in certain schools, and police involvement in routine discipline, could violate students’ civil rights.
“The Biden administration must counter this dangerous narrative that more police, weapons, and surveillance in schools will help keep schools safe if it wishes to make true improvements to school climate nationwide,” it said.
While having a greater police presence in schools may seem to make sense on the surface, we need to consider what the police mean to certain demographics of students. As the article states, some schools shouldn't have significant police presence, if at all, one reason being that they may be racially biased toward students of certain racial and ethnic demographics. The police likely pose an equal, or even greater threat to those students' safety and feeling of security in their schools.