In Chicago schools that have laid off police, the number of the most serious disciplinary violations has decreased

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At Chicago high schools that have defunded police in recent years, the number of the most serious disciplinary violations by students has declined slightly, according to a new study released Wednesday.

The study by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research comes as Chicago Public Schools prepares to implement a new safety policy for the coming school year that will unilaterally remove School Resource Officers (SROs) from all school premises.

The study’s authors examined the district’s more than 80 CPS-operated high schools, focusing on those that removed their officers after the summer of 2020, when the Chicago Board of Education tasked local school boards with deciding whether they wanted SROs on campus.

According to the study, 39 high schools had Chicago Police Department officers on campus last school year, while 44 other schools had none at all. Since 2020, 14 schools have voted to fire them. The Board of Education plans to fire the remaining officers starting this fall.

The study’s authors examined various data points, such as discipline and children’s and teachers’ attitudes toward their schools before and after those campuses no longer had police officers.

“On average, there weren’t that many changes or differences between schools that eliminated SROs and schools that didn’t,” said Amy Arneson, senior research associate at the consortium. “So the significant changes we found were improvements.”

The authors found that schools that eliminated SROs saw a small decrease in serious disciplinary violations compared to the 2018-19 school year, when they still had officers. These incidents include actions by students that are “very seriously” or “most seriously” disruptive or illegal, such as threats or actual violence and anything involving alcohol, drugs and weapons. The number of serious violations generally increased across CPS between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 school years, the study found.

While schools without police officers now have fewer serious disciplinary violations than before the pandemic, the number of these more serious incidents increased between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years – but not as much as schools that still have police officers, the study found.

That decline could be due to the district pushing schools to adopt alternative discipline measures and work on positive school culture, said Jadine Chou, CPS’s director of safety and order. She acknowledged that it’s hard to say for sure because the study didn’t examine why those changes occurred.

When schools began laying off police officers, the district provided them with funds to use for things like restitution and hiring security guards. A separate study from the University of Chicago last year found that schools that implemented restitution practices had fewer student arrests.

At the same time, the study points out that schools that had abolished their SROs already had a relatively low number of disciplinary violations, while schools that retained their SROs had more such incidents.

However, there were no significant changes when considering all types of disciplinary actions or suspensions at schools that no longer had campus police, the study found. Less serious disciplinary offenses can range from running in the hallway to displaying gang affiliation to getting into a fight where no injuries occur.

There were also no significant differences in police notifications, which are calls to the police when a student does something that warrants police intervention under the student code. These notifications are not usually the same as 911 calls, Arneson said.

While students at all schools reported feeling less safe after the pandemic, there were no significant changes at schools that eliminated SROs, according to the study. There were also no significant differences in how safe teachers felt, nor in how much students trust their teachers.

The implementation of the new plan will not be a “light switch”

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education directed CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to develop a new school safety policy that would ban SROs from school campuses, effectively stripping LSCs of decision-making authority. State lawmakers proposed a bill that would allow LSCs to contract with Chicago police to send police officers to their schools, but that bill was shelved.

The new school safety policy, which the board is expected to vote on in July, calls for teachers and staff to receive more training on restorative practices, alternatives to discipline, and conflict resolution. This policy also emphasizes providing more mental health resources for students.

Chou, CPS’s chief of security, said the study suggests that “a lot of other things” besides police presence determine what makes a school seem safe, and CPS needs to work to understand those factors as it implements its new security plan.

At some schools, that might simply mean improving traffic around the school. At others, it might mean working with Chicago police to help with student arrivals and dismissals because of fears of violence in a particular neighborhood, Chou said.

“This is not a light switch that you just turn on and everything will fall into place,” Chou said. “We recognize that we need a lot of community engagement to understand what those needs are, and that’s one of the most important aspects of safety throughout the school, is the engagement aspect.”

The new policy would require each school to develop its own safety plan that follows some broader guidelines, such as removing police officers and providing training in alternative discipline methods.

Dwayne Truss, a former Chicago Board of Education member who pushed for giving LSCs decision-making authority over their campus police, said there hasn’t been enough engagement with school communities and the board should have waited to make changes to safety policies until this study was done.

“I just want to be very, very clear: I’m not for or against SROs; I’m just against usurping the rights of local school boards,” Truss said. “And that’s data that you share with people and discuss with them to help them understand what the best way forward is, what some of the best practices are.”

The district itself collected about 9,000 responses to its proposed new safety policy, which it had created in collaboration with community organizations.

There were also some differences between schools that chose to keep their SROs and those that did not. In the 2018-2019 school year, before the board decided to allow local school boards to eliminate SROs, a similar proportion of racially diverse students attended a school with at least one officer, ranging from 87% to 93%.

In the 2022-23 school year, two years after schools began eliminating SROs, nearly two-thirds of black high school students attended a school with at least one SRO, compared with just 29% of white and Hispanic students and 22% of Asian American students. Students with disabilities, students from low-income families, and students whose first language was English were also more likely to be enrolled in a school with an SRO.

According to the study, high schools that reported more disciplinary violations were more likely to choose to keep their SROs. Smaller schools and those that enrolled fewer students from low-income families also tended to keep their SROs.

Arneson said the study released Wednesday is the first in a series that will examine the district’s approach to school safety. This initial research examines the impact of eliminating SROs but does not explain the reasons for the results, she said. Those questions will hopefully be answered in future studies on school safety that the team plans to publish in the future.

Arneson was not surprised by the results. She said they followed trends from some other national studies. There are still many questions to be answered, she said.

“Starting next year, there will be no SROs in the entire CPS,” she wondered, “what differences will we see in the schools that have not decided to eliminate them from the start?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at [email protected].