Schools Consider Booting Cops

The Board of Education aims to have an answer by August on whether school resource officers will continue to walk the hallways of New Haven schools.

The question is in response to recent youth-led protests against police brutality. The Citywide Youth Coalition has settled on eight demands, one of which is to remove school resource officers from New Haven Public Schools and invest instead in school counselors.

Board student representative and protest leader Lihame Arouna spearheaded the discussion at Monday evening’s board meeting.

“We are too used to policing black and brown children. I think that norm is very dangerous,” Arouna said. ​“When we talk about SROs being in schools that need more help, what other ways can we get that help to them?”

Arouna said that the school system has nine SROs. They are members of the New Haven Police Department and serve in the schools without contributions from the district’s budget. They are distinct from school security officers, Arouna explained.

Board President Yesenia Rivera followed up on Arouna’s proposal later in the meeting and asked the other board members what their next step should be.

“This has been on my mind,” Rivera said.

She said that the SRO question was not on the agenda, so members of the community did not have a chance to weigh in yet. She asked board members whether they would rather form a task force or send it straight to the board’s policy-focused Governance Committee.

Board member Darnell Goldson argued that the board should vote to remove the officers immediately from the schools, since Arouna brought the proposal to the board and 5,000 protesters supported the demand on Friday.

Other board members wanted more New Haven-specific information and input.

Edward Joyner said that he remembers when the SRO program began, in response to the murder of a teacher. He argued that the majority of parents would want SROs in their schools and said that many of the officers are athletic coaches with close ties to the community.

“I would like to add, if there’s sufficient evidence in this community that the SROs are detrimental to student safety, I would be the first person to say to remove them,” Joyner said.

Newly appointed superintendent Iline Tracey agreed that the officers she has worked with are important precisely because of their positive relationships with students. She said that they have helped her family engagement office find the students that teachers have not heard back from during the pandemic.

Tracey said that the SROs are stationed only at the district’s largest schools, where the normal security officers are unable to handle big fights on their own. She emphasized that their role is not to punish students.

“I don’t see them as there to arrest students. I do on the other hand see, from a race consciousness perspective, what they may mean and have meant to students,” Tracey said.

Board members Tamiko Jackson-McArthur and Matthew Wilcox indicated that they are both in favor of a committee process and would like to move away from the SRO program.

“I’m against resources officers in the schools. While they may have good relationships, they bring about trauma for students,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“We have to be very careful in understanding what these children have seen.”

Eventually, all the board members settled on forming a work group of community stakeholders that Arouna would help choose. The Board’s Governance Committee, led by Jackson-McArthur, would be responsible for making sure the work group produced an answer by August.

“Ms. Arouna, you blow me away with your reasoning and your thoughts. I almost burst into tears,” Jackson-McArthur said.

Tracey pointed out that Arouna, a product of New Haven Public Schools, was not afraid to help lead a protest of thousands.

“I am so proud of you. You are not only our future leader — you are our present leader,” Tracey said.