Demand an end to policing in Spokane schools.
It is time to build a new, anti-racist safety model at Spokane Public Schools. Mental health counselors, social workers, nurses, security staff, and mentors are proven to be effective at facilitating health and school safety and should be the ones supporting students and their families.
The CRO program does not make schools safer. In fact, multiple studies that have shown that having CROs in schools has negative impacts on students of color, such as lower test scores, declines in attendance, and lower graduation and college attendance rates.
Please sign your name to this letter demanding an end to CRO’s in Spokane schools.
Dear Spokane Public Schools School Board and Superintendent Redinger,
We are parents, students, educators, and community members who demand a safe, equitable future for ALL Spokane Public Schools (SPS) students. This fundamentally requires the end of the SPS campus resource officer (CRO) program and the reinvestment of its budget toward personnel who are proven to promote safety.
Last year, over half of all arrests made by SPS CROs were of students of color, even though students of color made up less than one-third of the student population.
The budget for the CRO program in 2019-2020 was $2.2 million. We know of no school district in Washington that spends more on having its own officers. Our children are not criminals worthy of the state’s largest CRO budget.
Last year, a white CRO forcefully pressed his knee and shin onto the back of the neck of an unarmed Black child in an SPS high school, while the child lay flat with his face pressed into the hard floor. He and students around him yelled out that he could not breathe, but the CRO continued to hold him in that position for several minutes. It came to light later that the CRO had many misconduct findings in his past, including excessive use of force.
We are fortunate that this young man is alive today, graduated, and with a future ahead of him. He and his fellow students and staff are not safer, however, because of the CRO program.
It is time to start over and build a new, anti-racist Spokane Public Schools safety model. It is inspiring to think of the mental health counselors, social workers, nurses, security staff, and mentors who could support students and families to facilitate health and school safety. We demand that Spokane Public Schools disband the CRO program and bring the community to the table to create a new model for safer schools and excellence for everyone.
