South Bend to keep school resource officers. Here's how board members voted in split decision.

SOUTH BEND — Police officers will stay in South Bend schools through at least the end of next school year under a contract approved by the South Bend school board Monday night.

After months of debate about how best to ensure students' safety and whether police should remain in the buildings, board members voted 4-3 Monday night to continue a longstanding relationship with city and county police departments. which together, provide five school resource officers, or SROs, in district buildings.

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Some board members welcomed new contracts brought for consideration, calling them “an improvement”, while others brought concerns about the process undertaken to bring forward the agreements Monday night.

Board members Jeanette McCullough, Ruth Warren, Leslie Wesley and John Anella voted in favor of the contracts, while members Stephanie Ball, Stuart Greene and Oletha Jones voted against them.

"This is a complex issue and should not be framed as being for or against police," Warren said before her vote Monday. "We may finalize the MOU tonight, but we should not finalize the community conversation on the topic."

School and city leaders made changes to drafts of the agreements after meeting with community members last month. Some, however, still looked for clarity in the contracts and advocated for alternatives to police in schools.

Darryl Heller, director of IU South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center, urged administrators to consider strategies for safety employed in South Bend schools not staffed by SROs and to discuss investments in mental health services and social workers.

"Blindly sticking to the SRO program means taking the easy way out," Heller said. "It's a way of maintaining the status quo rather than thinking and acting creatively about the needs of our young people."

What prompted a review of SROs?

The new agreement between the school district, the city and the South Bend police department serves to update a nearly decade-old agreement signed by the district and police department during the 2012-13 school year.

An identical contract renewing services with the St. Joseph County Police Department was also approved as a part of Monday night’s vote.

Representatives from the city, police department and school corporation have been working to revise the contract since the summer when community activists rallied to have officers removed from the schools.

South Bend police currently place four officers in the district. Two are stationed in high schools and two others are in middle schools. A fifth school resource officer at Clay High School is provided by the St. Joseph County Police Department.

Administrators have expressed support for the program and even attempted this semester to partner with a private company to temporarily place off-duty police officers in separate security roles to help fill staff shortages.

In June, the school district conducted a survey seeking student, employee and community feedback on the SRO program.

The results of that survey, shared publicly for the first time Monday, showed 77.7% of those who responded had very positive or somewhat positive impressions of school resource officers.

Nearly 2,400 people — including more than 1,000 parents, nearly 900 teachers and over 500 students — responded to the survey.

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Still, some in the community have raised concern that not all students may feel the same level of safety in an officer’s presence and Greene made a point Monday night of highlighting the small percentage of the district’s total population represented by the survey.

"I wonder what the available pool of respondents in the school corporation is. I would guess it's about 10 times larger than what you've got," Greene said to administrators Monday. "How did you go from a very general survey with very vague responses to what SROs do and how they do it to this very specific document about what SROs should do?"

What's in the new contract?

School, city and law enforcement representatives put on a community meeting on Nov. 16 to review language of a proposed agreement.

While views during that meeting were split on whether officers belonged in schools, attendees expressed a clear desire to see more specific accountability measures and opportunities for community input written into the contract.

The final draft brought to board members Monday reflected several changes, including the addition of a purpose statement to the first page of the contract, a few minor language adjustments and greater detail about cost-sharing between the school corporation and police department.

For it’s part, the district is budgeting $375,000 for five officers shared between the city and county, South Bend schools attorney Brian Kubicki said Monday night. The police departments will be responsible for benefits, which Kubicki said could be roughly equivalent to the district’s investment at $300,000 to $375,000.

The new draft also extends the term of the program from one school year to two, ending in July 2023, and replaces a clause allowing the agreement to automatically renew annually.

Instead, a committee of city, school district and community representatives, including at least one parent, will review the contract annually with a formal readoption required at the end of the contract’s two-year term.

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If the agreement is not formally readopted, officers can remain in schools for 180 days while school, city and police representatives work to negotiate a new contract.

The new draft also clarifies that officers placed in the district are subject to all police department policies, including use of force, and school accountability processes.

What does the community think?

While two community members expressed their support Monday night for the contracts, others who spoke before and during the board meeting said they still have questions.

Lynn Coleman, a retired police officer and former mayoral candidate, spoke favorably of the officers' presence in schools saying they have the ability to serve as positive role models to students.

"I would like to think that the school corporation would get the policies worked out and not get rid of the program," Coleman said. "Is everybody that works in the SRO program going to be good representatives? Maybe not. I think that we deal with those people individually and not punish the program."

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The South Bend chapter of Black Lives Matter, which rallied for the removal of SROs in the summer, released a statement shortly before the meeting urging the board to vote against the contract and instead “develop evidence-based alternatives.”

Black Lives Matter outlined a list of concerns, saying the contract failed to articulate oversight and evaluation of officer conduct and to present alternatives to Tasers and handcuffs used in schools.

The organization says the contract also ignores a petition against SROs signed by more than 1,200 residents.

Trina Robinson, of the South Bend branch of the NAACP, asked during the meeting how administrators intended to ensure program objectives were met and requested a clearer definition of what constitutes criminal activities in school buildings.

“Are these objectives going to be universal or does the building principal make the determination on how these goals and objectives are going to be fulfilled?” Robinson said. “We have too many buildings that are doing their own thing. If we’re going to do anything, let’s for once be consistent with this.”

Multiple board members shared hopes to take a look at the program over time and continue discussion of long-term goals for what it means to secure schools in South Bend. Greene opined whether SROs would be needed in the district in five to 10 years.

"That's part of the openness to having the review committee," Kubicki said. "That would be a worthwhile way to look and say 'Is this the best way to provide a safe learning environment for our students?' and if there's another way to do it, how do we go about doing it and making sure that we're doing it in a way that ... we're ready to go with whatever's next."

Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @carleylanich.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend to keep school resource officers for at least another year