At its latest meeting, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education voted on a new agreement that could change the role of School Resource Officers in schools. The new agreement aims to focus on mental health, student agency and provide provisions for special needs students.

The CHCCS staff has been divided on the presence of law enforcement at schools. While School Resource Officers, or SROs, build relationships with students while providing security, they also can create traumatic experiences for students of color by over-policing, according to district staff.

The Board of Education is trying to bridge that divide with its School Safety Task Force, which held listening circles and student focus groups about safety in schools. The task force was developed last year but faced roadblocks due to the pandemic.

At its recent meeting, the school board heard from Rodney Trice, the new chief of equity and engagement for CHCCS. He shared updates about the task force and possible ways to adjust its existing agreement with local law enforcement agencies.

“Modifications such as spelling out the levels of student misconduct, in which SROs can be involved, perhaps publishing data around SRO involvement with students, clarifying our use of force language in our SRO MOU might also be something that we can incorporate,” Trice said.

Smith Middle School SRO Kurt Gurley speaks at the press conference in September 2019. Recently, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools approved an interim plan to bring School Resource Officers back to campuses for the 2021-22 academic year.

The current MOU, or Memorandum of Understanding, is an agreement between the school district and local law enforcement from 2019. The board has operated without an agreement for the past year, which meant there were no SROs in schools the last time students were on campus.

Other proposed amendments from Trice included making the process for selecting SROs to be more inclusive and hiring behavioral health specialists in all secondary schools.

Trice said he believes adopting an interim agreement is important because safety and security discussions must be student-focused.

“Providing the administration more time to set up a process that is more inclusive and would give the board more robust options to consider,” Trice said. “Not only about the SRO program, but enhancements to school safety in general.”

As the board discussed the new agreement, some members, like Deon Temne, expressed frustration in re-establishing the SRO program.

“I send my children to school to get educated,” Temne said. “I don’t send my children to school to develop a relationship with law enforcement.”

Temne said he is not comfortable with law enforcement in schools because forging relationships with the police should happen elsewhere in the public. He said increasing police presence in schools will disproportionately criminalize students of color.

Another board member, Ashton Powell, echoed those concerns about the ways SROs engage with students on campus.

“Chapel Hill Police Department, Carrboro Police Department: let’s help you modernize,” Powell said. “You need to involve some more restorative practices so we can trust that you are doing the correct things in your department. That you are engaging in the same kinds of practices that we are to try say these are the appropriate interactions we need to be having with children.”

Powell said the agreement between the board and law enforcement needs to be a two-way street.

The board ultimately approved an interim agreement with law enforcement with a 5-1 vote. Temne was the only dissenter.

The interim agreement will place SROs in CHCCS secondary schools but utilizes guidance from the School Safety Task Force to make the process more inclusive and student-focused.

A public hearing on the progress of the School Safety Task Force and its recommendations for the board will be held in March 2022.

 

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