Outside L.A. Unified headquarters, hundreds of students, activists and community members rallied Tuesday to demand that the school board eliminate the school police department. On the ground, they waved signs and danced to music about police brutality. Above, a sky-writing plane spelled “Defund LASPD.”
Inside the boardroom, almost all the 25 available, socially-distanced seats were occupied by off-duty school police or their supporters who had managed to get into the room before a long line of anti-school police demonstrators, who began gathering at least an hour before the meeting‘s 9 a.m. start time. The only board member there in person was Monica Garcia, who authored a resolution to defund school police by 90% within four years. Other board members joined via video call to consider three competing resolutions related to school police.
For the first 90 minutes of the board meeting, public speakers called in to overwhelmingly support Garcia’s resolution. Fifty-six callers had their say, but more than 100 others could not get in during the allotted time. As the meeting moved to speakers waiting on the premises, strong support for Garcia’s resolution continued.
“School police does not make us any more comfortable,” said Amara Abdullah, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Youth Vanguard and a rising freshman at Hamilton High. “You can’t expect us to do as well in school as white students if we feel criminalized every time we walk into campus.”
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Mya Edwards, a recent Venice High School graduate, echoed Amara.
“Black students feel criminalized, have been pepper sprayed, arrested. What else do you need?” Mya said. “Do you want an accidental death like George Floyd’s? Do you want to see that on campus?”
Garcia’s plan has backing from activist groups, students and community members who’ve long called for defunding the school police. The California Charter Schools Assn. and the leadership of the two largest L.A. Unified unions, representing teachers and classified workers, including bus drivers and classroom aides, also back Garcia’s resolution.
“It’s not the intended consequence, but our children, many students are saying the armed officer on campus creates for them a barrier to learning,” Garcia said before the meeting. “So the solution to eradicate racism and classism is helping all communities be well with reading and writing at the core. And our responsibility is to invest every single dollar we got towards that goal.”
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Some callers, including a school police representative and at least two parents, advocated to keep the department and said school police officers made them and their children feel safer on the way to school, and when they were victimized at school.
“We should be changing together, not be against each other. She’s imploding the school district from within, and you know what, I’ll make my voice heard. And we’re … not going to put up with that kind of stuff,” L.A. School Police Sgt. Nestor Gonzalez said in response to Garcia before the meeting. “I’m about to lose my livelihood, my insurance, my way of living here in Los Angeles, all my life, because you’re trying to get rid of us instead of working together and coming up with a great solution.”
Under Garcia’s resolution, the $70-million school police budget would decrease by 90% by 2023-24. The funding would be redistributed via a formula that funds schools considered to have the highest needs. Two other proposals, one from board member Jackie Goldberg and one from board member George McKenna, call for a panel to study policing; Goldberg’s includes additional changes, such as a hiring freeze and a preliminary ban on the use of pepper spray.
“As education workers whose jobs are to ensure clean, safe and supportive learning environments for students in the Los Angeles Unified School, SEIU Local 99 members support board member Monica Garcia’s resolution,” SEIU Local 99 President Max Arias said in a statement Tuesday morning.
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The teachers union House of Representatives, the union’s official governing body, is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to adopt a policy that supports eliminating the police department. The union’s Board of Directors leadership already voted to support this policy.
The L.A. School Police Department, founded in 1984, employs 366 sworn officers and 95 non-sworn officers. It is one of the largest school police departments in the country — behind that of Miami-Dade Schools Police, which employs 455 sworn and 75 non-sworn officers, according to an L.A. Unified analysis.
In other large school districts nationwide, such as New York and Chicago, local police departments place officers in schools. Leadership in both school districts have faced pressure to eliminate their municipal police presence on campuses.
