The Chicago Sun-Times reports that for at least the next year, the district will operate with a revised contract worth $12.1 million instead of $33 million. It includes for the first time a detailed job description for school police and softens the contract language to remove heavily scrutinized, military-style wording that previously described officers’ school jobs as “tours of duty.”
The contract comes with clearer guidelines for police. Officers cannot intervene in school discipline, can no longer enter student information into the police department's gang database, should serve as a “role model in the students’ environment” and will undergo further training on dealing with children of various backgrounds.
The city also vowed to put officers through enhanced training and establish more selective requirements for officers to work in schools.
Many Black students and activists have argued that the money spent on policing, even reduced by more than half, would be better used for counselors, social workers and other resources.
The board’s refusal to remove uniformed police officers from all schools grants the wishes of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and district leadership.
After votes in recent weeks by dozens of local school councils, 17 schools have chosen to remove their officers and 55 have decided to keep theirs.
The Sun-Times has reported that Chicago students who attend a high school with a police officer stationed inside are four times more likely to have the police called on them than kids at high schools that don’t have in-house cops.
And at high schools with police officers on site, police intervene more frequently at schools with majority-Black student populations than those where Black students are a minority.
