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Health & Fitness

Ten Reasons Not to Put Armed Police in Iowa City Schools

Should the school board divert money from core educational functions to pay for full-time armed police?

Earlier this week, the Iowa City City Council voted to go forward with a grant application that would put two full-time armed police officers in Iowa City’s secondary schools.  The school board will vote on the idea at its meeting this Tuesday, May 21.  Here are ten good reasons why the board should vote the proposal down.

1.  More Guns Doesn’t Equal More Safety.  Many of us recoiled when the president of the NRA responded to the Sandy Hook school shootings by proposing to put armed volunteers in every school in America.  But this grant proposal is based on the same logic: that the presence of armed officers will make the schools safer.  In fact, wherever people carry guns, the risk of accidental shootings is real.  Earlier this week, for example, in Aurora, Colorado, a public school’s armed guard accidentally shot a high school student.  Police officers, like all human beings, are fallible, and accidents happen.  The fact that these officers will be intervening in student conflicts adds another element of risk.

2.  Don’t Criminalize School Discipline.  Throughout the United States, kids are being funneled into the criminal justice system for what used to be school disciplinary matters.  As a result, they increasingly end up with criminal records and penalties that impede, rather than advance, their educations—to the point where some have complained of a “school-to-prison pipeline.”  We should resist the trend toward increasingly authoritarian, law-enforcement approaches to school discipline.

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Ironically, the grant proposal came to light just after the ballot proposal for a new jail was voted down.  One of the complaints people had about the jail proposal was that the police department has too much contact and conflict with minority residents.  Stationing police officers in the public schools seems likely to exacerbate that problem.

3.  Don’t Divert Funds from Education.  More than half of the money for the armed officers would come from school district funds, not from the federal grant.  That money could otherwise go to pay for teachers or counselors, to reduce class size, or to fund other needs that are much more central to the district’s educational mission.

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4.  Don’t Disregard Community Input.  Superintendent Murley supports the proposal and says that the high school principals are “supportive of the officers.”  But there’s no indication that anyone surveyed the teachers, the parents, or (heaven forbid!) the kids on the issue.  Now the process is being rushed to meet a deadline just days away.  The school board shouldn’t short-circuit public comment just to meet a grant deadline.  If the support of high officials truly reflected public opinion, the jail would have passed in a landslide. 

5.  Don’t Subordinate School Administrators to the Police.  Right now, school principals decide when a problem is sufficiently serious to involve the police.  Under the grant, though, the officers themselves would make those decisions.  The officers could overrule a principal who wants to treat a problem as a school disciplinary matter, as this federal training guide makes clear (see page 51).  The guide even praises an officer who threatened to arrest a school principal for trying to prevent the arrest of a student!  Our school administrators are in the best position to decide how to handle discipline; the school board shouldn’t transfer that authority to the police.

6.  The Program Has No Compelling Educational Purpose.  The police chief has made clear that the arming of the officers is “not negotiable.”  But whether they are armed or unarmed, what is the educational purpose of putting police in schools?  Proponents talk about the importance of “building relationships” between kids and the police, but is that what schools are for?  No one is suggesting that we hire college professors, or business owners, or skilled tradespeople, or scientists to “build relationships” with the students.  How is it uniquely valuable for our kids to build relationships with police officers?

7.  Kids Aren’t Tools for Improving the Police Department’s Image.  In response to criticisms about how it interacts with residents, the police department has understandably sought ways to convey a more positive impression.  The department apparently sees school students—who are, after all, a captive audience—as an opportunity to further that goal.  But the students aren’t means to the police department’s ends.  It would be one thing for the students to learn about the role of police in society (including critical views); it’s a very different thing to enlist the kids in a police department public relations campaign.

8.  Grant Money Shouldn’t Drive School Policy Decisions.  This proposal wasn’t prompted by any dissatisfaction with the schools, but by the availability of a federal grant for police departments.  As dissenting Council member Jim Throgmorton said, “I don’t think we should put armed officers in the school simply because federal money is available.”  What’s good for the police department isn’t necessarily what’s good for the public schools.

9.  Don’t Teach Our Kids to Live in Fear.  The schools here are already on permanent lockdown, and the board has approved funding for additional locks and for security cameras.  Now we’re going to have armed guards patrolling the hallways?  What are we teaching our kids about the world we live in?

10.  Why the Last-Minute Rush?  The deadline for the grant application is May 22, yet only in the past week or so—just after the campaign for the jail ended, incidentally—has this grant been publicly discussed.  If the police department wanted to apply for the grant this year, why didn’t it raise the issue far enough in advance of the deadline to allow the proposal to receive thorough consideration and public input?  That’s reason enough not to go forward with the application this year.

Ultimately, this proposal will test whether our local government answers to the community or to its own bureaucracy.  The City Council failed the test.  I hope the school board does better.  You can email your opinion to the board members at board@iccsd.k12.ia.us.

Chris Liebig blogs about local and national school issues at A Blog About School.  You can also follow him on Twitter.

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