Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) expressed disappointment at the Chicago Board of Education after they reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining police in schools for the upcoming school year, a program that has caused grave harm to thousands of Black and Brown students. The board’s vote directing Chicago Public Schools officials to develop a comprehensive community engagement process could potentially result in the phasing out of these school resource officers in the future. That doesn’t go far enough. The board’s vote continues to direct millions of dollars in critical financial resources to the SRO program for this school year.

In the school year 2019-20, more than 19,000 Black students and 17,000 Latinx students attended high schools without police presence in their schools, demonstrating that CPS has strategies to promote school safety without the use of SROs. VOYCE reiterates its call for the Board to end the SRO program immediately and we are not stepping back. An investigation of the Chicago Police Department by the U.S. Department of Justice found “routinely abusive behavior within CPD, especially toward Black and Latino residents of Chicago’s most challenged neighborhoods. “This is a bad move by the Board of Education,” said Marques Watts, junior at Mather High School. “As young people, we have been telling CPS exactly what we need, and CPS is continuing to play games with our future. This is not right. What we need is for CPS to invest in us, not to continue to criminalize us.”