To the Editor of Lake County News Dispatch:
RE: “Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor Faces Criticism Over Lack of School Resource Officers in Waukegan High Schools” from September 8, 2024.
https://www.lakecountynewsdispatch.com/2024/09/08/mayor-ann-taylor-faces-criticism-over-lack-of-school-resource-officers-in-waukegan-high-schools/
I found your reporting on the lack of School Resource Officers (SROs) in Waukegan Public Schools to be focused on the wrong issue. It should be questioning whether keeping SROs in schools is the right choice as there is a national movement to limit or eliminate their presence in public schools. We must look no further than the Chicago Public Schools to see the effect of eliminating SROs. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research has published a report on the effect of removing SROs starting in the 2020-2021
academic years. The schools that kept SROs had an increase in high-level discipline infractions while those who did not have SROs showed no change from previous years. Additionally, student and teacher surveys did not show any change in perception of safety (UConsortium on School Research, 2024). More concerningly, the schools that kept officers are more likely to be predominately black, eligible for free or reduced-price lunches or in special education programs (UConsortium on School Research, 2024). The ACLU
finds that students of color are disciplined at a rate 5 times that of their white peers and they are more likely to be criminalized for minor, nonviolent infractions (ACLU Hawai’i, 2015). I understand the concern for safety of students, but what or who are the officers keeping safe in this scenario? It’s certainly not the most vulnerable students.
Waukegan should take after cities like Madison, Wisconsin who replaced their SROs with restorative justice coordinators or Oakland California who disbanded it’s school police force in June 2021. Edmonds, Washington has eliminated SROs and gone back to an arrangement where a school liaison officer is assigned to each school as a part of their patrol and is responsible for responding to 911 calls. The budget resources for those officers can go back to social workers or other mental health staff to address student’s needs (Schwartz et al, 2021). I think we need to rethink the need for these officers and the budget we are dedicating to them. Are we investing in safety or simply feeding these kids into the criminal justice system?
Julia Malloy
Libertyville, IL October 1, 2024