Amid violence, Boston Schools and Police look to formalize response agreement

Boston Public Schools and the Police Department are formalizing an agreement that would clarify when officers should be called to respond to violence and other safety incidents occurring on school property.

Officials said the memorandum of understanding would not put police officers back in schools, but it would clear up some of the confusion that followed the Massachusetts Police Reform Act of 2020, and ensure clarity as to each department’s obligations under that law.

The agreement has been in the works for the past two years, according to Superintendent of Schools Mary Skipper, and comes amid a recent spate of violence in the district and poll results released last month that indicated two-thirds of BPS parents had concerns about their children’s safety.

“We’re living in a time where incidents of violence in schools are becoming more and more common, and we see it in cities across the country,” Skipper said at a Friday City Council subcommittee meeting on school safety.

“So I do hear parents’ concerns when they express the frightening reality of having to send their children off to school, both in the journey to and from school, and to entrust us with their care when they’re in school. We take that responsibility extremely seriously.”

City Councilor Michael Flaherty said the lack of a formalized agreement has created a “stress point” over the past several years. Parents have called his office to relay instances where school leaders did not call police in emergency situations that occurred in the district.

Instead, Flaherty said these school officials were making a judgment call as to what constituted a police response, and were also making medical decisions without roping in the parents of the impacted students.

“Parents, particularly of the victims, were finding relief by having to go down to the police station themselves, or to go to the hospital themselves, or worse, leaving the school district,” Flaherty said.

Skipper said there has been a lack of clarity on both the police and school department side, as to when police would be able to go to the schools, and what would happen once officers got there.

“It’s just important to have that guideline, that rulebook, and to have it codified so that both for Commissioner Cox and his police force, that they’re able to understand what’s expected,” Skipper said. “And then for us with 119 schools, for leaders, so that you know what to be able to expect.”

Flaherty and Erin Murphy, who co-chaired Friday’s hearing, were among the four city councilors who called for police officers and metal detectors in school this past January, citing an incident at the Young Achievers Science and Math School that left a teacher and student hospitalized from a beating by other students.

A report from the Council on Great City Schools quickly followed, with recommendations for a school department contract with BPD, and an “internal, sworn police department” within the district.

Most recently, MassINC released poll results that showed unease among more than 800 surveyed parents, three-quarters of whom supported the use of metal detectors and a return of a police presence within the schools.

Police were taken out of the Boston schools in the summer of 2021 and replaced with “safety specialists” who lack the authority to arrest or handcuff students. The MOU would not seek to place police officers back in schools, BPS officials said.

While safety specialists do not have the authority to make arrests, they are able to break up fights, school officials said. There is, however, a shortage of these safety officers, with only 67 of the targeted 78 in place to monitor incidents across 119 schools. Their focus, for the main part, is on middle and high schools.

City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson said she was supportive of the memorandum of understanding, as long as it doesn’t put police back in schools. She said that she would prefer to keep her comments to city budget talks at the ongoing ways and means meetings she chairs.

At a Council meeting last week, Fernandes Anderson provided an update about potential plans to cut the police budget, to instead “divert funds from officers who feel they are ill-served to respond to mental-health calls.”

City Councilor Julia Mejia cited research that suggested the presence of police officers in schools increases school-based arrests, and particularly targets Black and brown people.

Police Commissioner Michael Cox said he was not familiar with the study, and cited the department’s aim to practice community policing. The MOU is not aimed at trying to criminalize students, he said.

“It’s just the opposite,” Cox said. “We’re trying to go into schools and mentor.”