Cincinnati school board commits to partnership with police, SROs in 6-1 vote
Cincinnati Public Schools board of education passed a resolution committing to continue its school resource officer program 6-1 during a Monday evening board meeting. A small group of students protested the resolution at the district office prior to the meeting.
"It was time to make a decision about it," board member Carolyn Jones said during the meeting. She acknowledged the months of persistence from student activists, whether or not she agrees with them. "They need to know that we do appreciate that."
"You have not been ignored," board member Kareem Moffett said of the students in Young Activists Coalition. "Just because it's not the result that you want doesn't mean that we're not listening."
Board member Mike Moroski was the lone vote against the resolution. The resolution has no impact on the district's five-year contract with the police department, which was signed in November 2019.
The Young Activists Coalition, a local youth-led social justice organization largely made up of Walnut Hills High School students, have rallied against Cincinnati police presence in schools for the last two years, at least. The demand to get "CPD out of CPS" is part of their "Fix Our Schools" campaign, launched in September 2020.
More: ACLU calls out Cincinnati schools, police for ‘overpolicing,’ lack of accountability
Other students across Ohio and nationally ran campaigns to end school-police partnerships in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis and the "defund the police" movement that followed. In Columbus, it worked. Columbus City Schools did not renegotiate with police to continue its school resource officer program in June 2021, letting the previous contract expire.
Upon learning of the Cincinnati school board's resolution, the Young Activists Coalition posted to Facebook on Wednesday to garner support for their protest.
"The CPS Board of Education will be voting on a resolution to continue its SRO program with the Cincinnati Police Department, perpetuating the daily childhood criminalization that it allows in its schools every day, allowed by a Memorandum of Understanding where cops have no accountability," the post reads. "Show the school board that the community won’t take this violation of our students’ safety lying down."
The resolution was presented at Monday's board meeting by board members Eve Bolton and Mary Wineberg. It acknowledges health and safety concerns for all students in the community and states "much has changed over these five decades" since the school resource program started, and while police services have evolved, "the need for professional police resource officers availability for schools within the City of Cincinnati remains."
The resolution states the board and district commit to:
Put a stronger emphasis on implementing and monitoring CPS' existing restorative justice program.
Build more social and emotional lessons into its curriculum.
Leverage district and private sector mental health professionals at every school.
Engage in periodic reviews of the memorandum of understanding with city police and participate in joint training with and from school resource officers.
The Young Activists Coalition, in partnership with Ohio's American Civil Liberties Union, gathered data from the district and Cincinnati police that showed "wildly racially disproportionate" instances of discipline and arrests in Cincinnati Public Schools, Walnut Hills High School senior Erin Derico said Monday. By not acting on that data over the last two years, Derico said the board is saying they "don't care."
"They don't care about the safety of students. They don't care about public health," Derico said during Monday's protest. "They don't care about student success."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: CPS vote shows commitment to keep school resource officers
