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The Chicago Board of Education seems prepared to yank away more choices parents have about their children’s schools.
The board, made up nearly entirely of appointees by Mayor Brandon Johnson, has told principals it is considering eliminating all armed Chicago police officers within schools. For many years, Local School Councils have had the ability to decide on that safety measure. The board apparently thinks that level of local control is inappropriate and that it knows better than parents and staff at specific schools on what will make students feel safe and — more importantly — actually be safe.
This follows news less than a month ago of the board’s proposed five-year plan, which includes proposals to do away with selective-enrollment schools. Those schools, some of which are among the nation’s best, give parents possibilities for their children outside their neighborhood, where the options often are unacceptable to them. The Chicago Teachers Union, whose support was critical to Johnson’s election, long has opposed the proliferation of charter schools and is a harsh critic of the selective-enrollment system.
That plan has caused anguish among many parents with kids in Chicago Public Schools. This page condemned the proposal, saying it would cause flight from CPS — and in many cases the city itself — if implemented.
Now Johnson’s school board is back at it, albeit with an issue in which the stakes are lower than the future of selective enrollment in Chicago. The tentative decision will only cause consternation among parents who want police in their schools and continue to shake the confidence of unaffected parents in the decision-making of Johnson and his board.
The arguments for removing all police from schools, such as we can discern them, are that they don’t necessarily make students feel safer and that they tend to be in schools serving minority neighborhoods.
We agree that police officers in schools aren’t a surefire means of promoting safety. Certainly, there’s reason to think carefully and weigh pros and cons before deciding to go that route.
But who should be making that call? The mayor and his board? Or the Local School Councils, made up of actual stakeholders in the individual schools — parents, teachers and administrators? That’s a no-brainer.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
This is a decision best left to those on the ground who observe how their schools function every day. Whether as off-duty security guards or in uniform, Chicago police have been in public schools for roughly 50 years. LSCs long have determined whether they want that level of security or not.
Principals with police officers in their schools are generally supportive of retaining them, saying the officers protect students and staff from outside threats and develop positive relationships with the students, according to WBEZ-FM 91.5 reporting. Obviously, if that changes in the case of a specific school, it has recourse. The LSC can decide it no longer wants police officers. Problem solved.
Johnson has enough real issues on his plate without rattling more cages by providing solutions in search of problems. For someone who repeatedly has preached the virtues of collaboration, the mayor consistently has done precisely the opposite on a host of issues. He has shown an alarming tendency to ignore reasonable criticisms of proposed policies and opt for centralized, top-down initiatives. Predictably, his “collaborative” methods produce outcomes in line with the desires of his most progressive supporters.
Yes, keeping police officers in schools costs money. More than $10 million is budgeted for police officers in schools this year. But that is a tiny fraction of a budget that this year totals $9.4 billion. Clearly, this really isn’t a dollars and cents question.
Mayor, move on, please. Let parents and school staff continue to manage this key safety question, as they have for years.
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