Despite protests, Antioch schools to hire police for six campuses
Antioch CA Aug 8 2020
After hearing two nights of passionate pleas and protests, the Antioch Unified School District board decided in a split decision to hire police officers for six campuses.
Trustees on Thursday voted 3-2 to match the city’s share of $378,000 over the next three years to help supplement a federal grant for the resource officers. School board member Ellie Householder and Crystal Sawyer-White dissented. Coming at a time of nationwide protests against police brutality and calls to defund law enforcement, the proposal drew strong opposition, mostly from the community’s youth but also from some parents, staff members and others.
It also drew dozens of protesters to closed district offices Wednesday and Thursday nights, forcing the board to call off Wednesday’s meeting and resume it the next day. Three of the trustees and staff members who decided to attend Wednesday’s meeting in person had to squeeze past a group of youths at the entrances during the sometimes-raucous demonstration. When the noise outside the locked boardroom got too loud, the school board adjourned.
On Thursday, though, at least two of the trustees instead met at an undisclosed board member’s home while two other trustees joined remotely, leaving the opponents to make their pleas outside a locked building.
“I’m not surprised about this, I already had a feeling that the SROs (school resource officers) would go,” one of the organizers, Shagoofa Khan, said after the vote. “I looked up to these people (trustees), I had much high respect for them. But when it came to actually fighting for the community’s needs, they turned a blind eye, and they’re not listening.”
Last week, after hearing more than 100 public comments — most of them against having police on campus — the City Council also voted 3-2 to proceed with a plan to use a $750,000 COPS Hiring Program grant from the U.S. Justice Department to help pay for resource officers.
Many of the same opponents showed up to protest at the district office and sent in comments, which school staff read aloud during the meetings; no new comments were allowed on Thursday. Many urged the district to hire more counselors and school psychologists and to invest in better security instead of police.
Jenna Wesenhagen, though, who works at Antioch High School, wrote that she supported the return of officers after an absence exceeding a decade. “I’m here to shout out from the rooftops I am in full support of having SROs on the campuses,” she wrote.
Destiny Parker-Roles also commented in favor of the SROs, writing, “Those who do have children in AUSD schools are urging you to vote yes, tonight.”
Protesters disrupt the meeting of the Antioch Unified School District School Board with their chants of “say no to cops, yes to counselors” on Aug. 5. The trustees were about to vote on whether to pay for six school resource officers for Antioch schools, where they have been absent for a decade.
Amber McCallah, 16, a Deer Valley High School student, spoke against the proposal.
“The only reason police should ever be at a school is at the time of an actual emergency,” she said. “… Why is it that Antioch schools can afford to pay thousands of dollars for police but can’t afford to give students the proper tools they need for education?”
“The last thing we need on AUSD campuses are school resource officers,” Rachel Deit wrote. “… This is not how we should be utilizing our money.”
“It’s a complete denial of the Black Lives Matter movement and to the voices of thousands of students around this country to fund school resource officers,” wrote Cameron Schmidt Temple. “If we can fund police, but not librarians, bilingual aides, college and career techs, and many other resources our students need, we see where our school board members’ priorities lie.”
Sandy Rogers, president of the Deer Valley Parent Teacher Student Organization, said she was all for putting officers on the campuses of the district’s four middle and two high schools.
“We should be working together to be improving our schools and our city,” she said.
Another resident had a different take.
“We are in the midst of a civil rights wave where people of color are saying police do not make them feel safe but instead they are targeted by police, that they want counselors, therapists and social workers,” Karen B. said. “Bringing police to the schools full-time is like dropping a bomb because you have a rat in your house. There will likely be unintended harm that is unavoidable. Please vote no.”
Following public comments, Trustee Mary Rocha motioned to approve placing six resource officers on campuses, saying it’s what parents were yelling for at a meeting earlier this year. Trustee Sawyer-White wanted more discussion, though.
“As the only African-American on the school board, this is unbelievable we wouldn’t want to discuss this,” she said. “One, we’re in a pandemic, why the urgency? Will this be put on hold, Chief (Tammany) Brooks?”
Brooks said the deadline to accept the federal grant was Aug. 9. He noted that although the district will begin school with distance learning, the officers could still be helpful with students learning remotely if a crime is committed at any of their homes, for example.
“When a school resource officer comes onto campus … the vast majority of what they will be doing is building relationships and a rapport with the students,” Brooks said. “They are there to build trust, earn the respect of our youth, be there with compassion, with empathy, be able to solve conflicts and offer conflict resolution skills.”
Trustee Gary Hack said he kept a tally of the votes and that they were split. “I assume that accepting SROs on campus is not addressing all of it, but it is an answer,” he said.
Trustee Householder dissented, saying there was no data to support the argument that officers would make schools safer.
“I think the thing that’s weighing on my heart is what happened, yesterday and what’s happening, I assume, at the district office, and that’s youth standing up and asking us to vote ‘no’ on SROs,” she said. “I think that having the youth come out with that much force and passion, it goes to show how deeply concerning having police on our campuses is.”
Householder added that she agrees there are serious safety concerns at school sites but that most of the incidents have happened at after-school events.
“We need cops at after-school events but not going from math to English,” she said.
Aurora Solario — whose nephew, Jonathon Parker, was fatally shot at Deer Valley High School in January after a basketball game — later said that while school officials never sought the family’s opinion, they would have said they wanted more security at after-school events. No police were at the school when the fight erupted and the shooting occurred, she said.
“My nephew was jumped that night before he was murdered; had there been cops there, there could have been a different outcome.”
