D.C. residents call for more student involvement in school policing oversight

Each morning students flood into the front doors of their school before first period and are first met by metal detectors.

Then armed police officers.

In a city that is severely overpoliced, the way students and student resource officers (S.R.O.s) interact is severely underreported.

D.C. City Council held a public hearing Oct. 21 for a piece of legislation that “will improve transparency with respect to law enforcement activity occurring on school grounds,” according to the School Police Incident Oversight and Accountability Amendment Act of 2021.

Councilmember Christina Henderson and the other sponsors of the bill met virtually with members of the government and public to discuss and answer question about the bill that would require the Metropolitan Police Department (M.P.D.) to bi-annually report school-related incidents and that data as it relates to race, age, gender and disabilities.

“This past year we have heard from students that either they don't feel safe having police on campus or that the presence of the officers actually don't make a positive impact,” said Amanda Farnan, communications director for Councilmember Christina Henderson. “This is kind of a first step of many in creating for more transparency in police in schools.”

While black students in D.C. account for 71% of the student population, they make up 91% of the arrests at schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

These discrepancies continue for Latinx students and students with disabilities.

D.C.P.S. and M.P.D. reported 338 school-related arrests in 2019 alone, but there is no public reporting on the nature of the arrest, the number of police referrals or the reason for referrals. The data is being collected but not reported, said Sarah Jane Foreman, the associate director in the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel.

While this piece of legislation can be the first step towards creating a healthier relationship between students and S.R.O.s in schools, Miya Walker from the Black Swan Academy noticed the lack of student involvement in reporting these incidents within the bill.

“Especially for black students and brown students, it can be traumatizing just to have [S.R.O.’s] physical presence. Youth of color are overpoliced in their communities and are met with often deeply traumatic experiences of police violence.” Walker said. “Asking young people to leave their trauma at the doorsteps of their school every day and interact with police or S.R.O.s as if it's not the same officers that are harming their community outside of school walls is absurd.”

The bill fails to create formal pathways for students to report their side of events and what should happen when M.P.D. do not comply with the legislation.

“We cannot solely rely on M.D.P. for such reporting,” Walker said.

Students in the district have for years reported to city officials and schools about their discomfort with police presence in schools, and some public witnesses at the hearing felt that the legislation did not go far enough.

The promise of transparency about these incidents excludes the promise of accountability, Danielle Robinette said in her public testimony Oct. 21.

“We often hear that M.P.D. is here to protect us,” said Kristi Matthews, director of D.C. Girls Coalition. “The reality is that black and brown young people are being taught that M.P.D. is here to control them.”

The role of police officers in schools has been brought into the national conversation, especially with the increase in mass shootings in school and increased violence on campuses.

Increased security in schools has made students more on edge around resource officers, which has prompted districts including D.C.P.S. to consider removing the officers from schools altogether.

“We will see kind of a decrease in the officers who are shared amongst the cohorts of schools,” Farnan said. The district “started taking steps to… where there's alternative forms of disciplinary action and policing on school campuses rather than arrest and through just the police.”

The complete removal of police from school campuses is not a unanimous idea among educators and policy makers.

Assistant principal of Benjamin Banneker High School Benjamin Williams who is repeatedly outspoken about disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and has implemented restorative justice practices in D.C.P.S. schools does not see the removal of police from schools as a solution.

“Less police doesn't equal a better community,” Williams said. “What we have to do is prepare police to better interact with [students] and traumatic experiences.”

Williams said just walking into schools in the morning where there are armed officers and metal detectors can be triggering experiences for young black men.

These security officers should be “brought into the conversations within schools and [be] part of the practice can actually help create a much more positive experience for a lot of our students,” he said.

The hearing is one of many this legislative period that is focusing on the safety of students and schools.

“It's important to not lose sight of everything else that goes on inside school buildings,” Farnan said. “If we have school resource officers making arrests or breaking up fights we want to know when and why and how those things happen.”

While COVID-19-related issues and safety concerns are at the top of many legistlators’ agendas, D.C. City Council wants to also maintain focus on the issues that pre-date the pandemic and are still impacting students daily.

“We're just trying to make sure that schools are as safe as they can be,” Farnan said. “Because we know the data has shown that in-person learning is much better for developing young adults than on the screen.”