Lauren Himle
When Rayna Acha hears a cop car rush through her neighborhood, her stomach drops.
"I see a lot of police where I live, and it's scary. I get scared for my neighbors because they're Black," she says. This constant anxiety around the police doesn't end when she goes to school. She's a senior at South High.
Minneapolis Public Schools has had a formal contract with the MPD since 1980. In 2017, MPS renewed a contract with the Minneapolis Police Department that employs 16 police officers in schools, who are called Student Resource Officers (SROs). MPS currently budgets over $1 million for the program.
Last Friday, Josh Pauly, who works for the Minneapolis Board of Education, introduced a resolution to end the forty-year relationship between Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Police Department. This resolution, backed with support from Board of Education Chair Kim Ellison and Board of Education Director Siad Ali, was written in the shadow of former MPD officer Derek Chauvin's murder of George Floyd. The Board will vote today, and is expected to pass the resolution.
“It’s just gotten to the point where I don’t think in good conscience I can give another dime to the Minneapolis Police Department. It’s an agency that’s not correcting its mistakes,” Board Chair Kim Ellison told MPR.
But the cry to get cops out of Minneapolis Public Schools isn't recent, it's been a priority issue for several student activist organizations and those who work in education reform for years.
In 2019, Ellison put forth a resolution condemning how the Minneapolis Police Department has shown "persistent unacceptable behavior," thus hindering the success of the Student Resource Officer program in MPS. But Acha says previous actions taken by the Board weren't enough.
Acha is a student organizer with Young People's Action Coalition (YPAC), an independent, entirely youth-run organization addressing social justice issues at a systemic level. They work predominantly in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Northfield, Minnesota.
"A few months ago, [YPAC was] really losing hope, and felt like we weren't getting anywhere with police presence in schools. [The board] has heard us and seen us, and gotten calls from us. It's upsetting that people have to see someone be murdered in the street to take serious action. That makes it feel like student voices weren't enough," she said.
Kenneth Eban, who works for Our Turn, an organization that works with public school students to promote equity in schools nationally, echoed Acha's sentiment. "It is deeply frustrating that the MPS board needed to see a Minneapolis police officer brutally murder George Floyd in order to finally make the change that students have been demanding for years," he said in a statement.
Our Turn had been organizing around removing police from schools since 2016, when police murdered Philando Castile, said Eban. Some of these actions included panels, community discussions, and research meetings with Minneapolis district staff, principals, and school resource officers. "Students have directly advocated to end the contract with MPD with school board members through emails, meetings, delivering hundreds of petition signatures, and providing testimony at school board meetings," he said.
Last week, student organizers from Our Turn Twin Cities wrote a letter to the Board demanding that MPS end their relationship with the MPD. "Black and brown students do not feel safe," the letter read. "Recent police actions that lead to George Floyd’s death have made this trauma even worse for young people, especially given a long history of students of color being unfairly targeted by school discipline policies," the students wrote.
Minneapolis has some of the largest racial disparities in education in the country, especially when it comes to discipline, which this New York Times article explored in 2018. In Minneapolis, Black students are suspended eight times as often as white students. Nationally, it is three times as often.
An MPS document from 2017 states that "SROs foster positive relationships between youth and the police; strengthen police-community connections; and support safe learning environments by protecting students and staff." However, Acha only learned the South SRO's name this year when she started organizing around the issue, and she rarely sees him outside his office. "It feels like a waste of money," she said.
"Fights happen in school. Things escalate," Acha said. But students are saying that the million dollars budgeted for the Minneapolis Police Department can be better used elsewhere–in ways that prevent violence from escalating in schools in the first place, and support students holistically when their actions threaten a safe learning environment. Spending more money on mental health resources and social workers in schools is one way she sees money being reallocated, Acha said.
"Right now, there are a lot of harmful disciplinary tactics and lack of understanding," Acha said. She pointed to suspensions as an example: "Kicking people out of school for a few days doesn't solve anything. People have been labeled as 'bad kids' since second or third grade. They haven't been given the chance to break away from that narrative that they're bad."
Pauly's resolution doesn't specify how funds will be redirected if the Board votes to cease their relationship with the MPD. "The school district should work closely with students, community partners, and their staff to build that new vision and identify how to best utilize those resources," said Eban.
MPS won't be short of student voices when working to decide what comes next for school safety. Pauly says he saw around 250 emails from students and parents just in the first 24 hours after announcing the resolution. He estimated that this is 5 to 10 times as many students who have reached out to him during his entire tenure on the school board, and on all other topics combined. "The student perspective is powerful," Pauly said.
Many of those emails, along with those sent to other Board members, were sent by students, parents, and alumni of MPS who were called to action by Acha, her peers in YPAC, and other students groups who are eager to take their cause to the finish line.
Update: On the evening of June 2, the Minneapolis school board voted unanimously to terminate its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department. A new plan for school safety must be presented for a board meeting on August 18, 2020.
