Police officers will no longer be stationed at LAUSD campuses

In a move aimed at improving campus climate, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education voted Tuesday, Feb. 16, to keep officers out of secondary school campuses, ban them from using pepper spray on students and to eliminate 133 positions, including 70 sworn officer positions, from the district’s school police department.

And by stripping $25 million from the Los Angeles School Police Department — or about a third of its budget — board members voted to redirect those dollars toward a $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan, which they also approved Tuesday. The plan will focus on providing resources to 53 schools with high concentrations of Black students and low academic performance.

Schools will be able to use their funds to hire “school climate coaches,” members of the community whose presence on campus will replace those of school police. Their jobs will include de-escalating tense situations, promoting student engagement and helping to elevate student voices.

Schools will also be given funds to hire other staff such as psychiatric social workers, counselors and restorative justice advisors; support professional development; and develop curriculum that is culturally relevant to students.

“I am proud of the Board decision to make critical investments in the academic needs of Black students,” George McKenna, the only Black member of the school board, said in a statement after the vote.

“School safety remains my top priority and I look forward to ongoing dialogue with my colleagues and the Superintendent on how we continue to protect and support our students,” added McKenna, a former high school principal who voiced concerns about school safety if officers aren’t present on campus.

LASPD Chief Leslie Ramirez said moving forward, 211 officers would no longer be assigned to particular schools but would be deployed in a field services bureau model, with the goal being that anytime anyone calls school police for assistance, an officer will be able to respond within three to five minutes.

Asked by one board member if the three- to five-minute response time is feasible, Ramirez acknowledged it may be more wishful thinking.

“But we’ll definitely strive for that. It will be challenging with the number of officers, the geographical size of our district and the number of schools,” she said. “But time will tell whether the new configurations will work. … Hopefully if we need to tweak that or look at that differently once students return to in-person instruction, then we’ll do so at that time.”

Initially, district staff had recommended a process by which schools could opt-in and request to keep a school police officer on campus, but after hearing from a number of students and community activists who demanded that option be removed, the board chose not to give schools that option.

A survey commissioned by the district conducted last fall found that a majority of students, parents and district employees across demographic subgroups support the presence of school police on campuses. At the same time, the survey noted that just 35% of Black students felt safe with officers on campus.

“Our Black students have shared with us that, for quite some time, their school experiences have not been conducive to us meeting their full academic promise — that they feel unsafe and targeted and harassed, and that police being on their campus is inherently harmful,” board President Kelly Gonez said. “Their voices and experiences matter to me.”

“The testimony and collective experiences shared with us by a large number of our Black students does not need to be corroborated or resonate with their non-Black peers for it to be valid and for it to justify a call to action,” she continued.

The board’s actions this week comprise the culmination of conversations dating back to last June when board members voted 4-3 to reduce the LASPD budget in the wake of calls by students and community activists to defund law enforcement as the Black Lives Matter movement swept through the country. At the time, it also ordered that officers be taken off campus and out of uniform until the district had a chance to review the agency as a whole.

William Etue, vice president of the Los Angeles School Police Officers Association, said last September, while observing a rally in which participants called for the defunding of police, that school officers have had positive interactions with students, including offering guidance to keep them out of the criminal justice system.

“This whole idea that we’re just there to criminalize students couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said at the time.

Although the LAUSD school board chose not to abolish its police department entirely, advocates for social and racial justice are claiming a win after this week’s vote and vowed to continue to push for a full defunding of the school police department.

“This victory ensures that police will no longer be on our campuses to harass Black youth,” said Kahlila Williams, a student leader with the group Students Deserve. “We will continue to demand a full Defunding of the LA School Police Department and put an end to anti-Black policies that target Black and Brown students.”