Chicago City Wire

On Thursday, the Chicago Board of Education is expected to follow Mayor Brandon Johnson’s recommendation and approve a resolution to remove the police from all public schools starting next school year.

Approval of the resolution would strip the power of local school councils (LCSs) to choose to station officers in their schools – an option given to the LCSs by the Board in 2021.

“As part of their plan, where schools had the SRO (School Resource Officer) program, committees were asked to decide whether the presence of SROs are appropriate for their school and present it before their LSC for a formal vote,” Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Press Secretary Evan Moore told Chicago City Wire.

This school year 39 CPS high schools have resource officers in their schools.

Former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas warned that Johnson’s move to remove police from all Chicago public schools will put students at risk at a time when shootings in and around the schools are on the rise.

“The intent of placing Chicago Police officers in high schools is to defend and deter active shooters,” Vallas wrote in a commentary published on the Illinois Policy Institute’s website. “I saw this firsthand serving as a superintendent in Bridgeport, Conn., when one of my teachers lost her child during the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting tragedy. Sandy Hook now has a police officer in its schools.”

Vallas added that during the past 15 years, there has been a significant increase in school shootings— 82 in 2023, up from 18 in 2008.

In late January, one student was shot dead and two others wounded on the North Side.

Under the resolution, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez will be required to develop a student safety policy that represents a “holistic approach to school safety” at district schools. It should include the implementation of restorative justice practices, which will emphasis resolving conflicts rather than punishment.

Community leader Tio Hardiman, Executive Director of Violence Interrupters, likewise denounced the move to remove the officers from the schools.

“It’s time for a cultural shift right now,” Hardiman told The Center Square. “Violence is a normal way of thinking. There needs to be a cultural shift where all the academic people organize together to design a curriculum we can push to change the way we think about one another.”

“We’re dealing with a gun violence epidemic,” he continued. “When you have kids being shot right outside in front of the school and murdered like that it puts me in the mindset of how the mafia used to hit people in the old-school mafia days back in the 1930s when they ride up and kill people. I believe that decision to take the police out of the schools was not a real good decision.”