FREMONT — After an outcry from parents over the decision to remove police officers from schools, the Fremont school board reversed itself this week, choosing to reinstate the long-running School Resource Officer program, upsetting many students and alumni who pushed for its termination last year.
Around 1 a.m. Thursday during a board meeting that began Wednesday evening, the Fremont Unified School District board voted 4-1 to bring the program back, after a previous board in November voted to end the program.
Board president Larry Sweeney, and board members Desrie Campbell, Vivek Prasad, and Yajing Zhang voted to reinstate the program, while board member Dianne Jones voted against bringing it back.
Parents supporting bringing cops back to schools said they think their kids are more safe with police officers on campus, and believe the officers’ presence deters violence and crime.
Some parents questioned the motives of dozens of alumni and some current students who support ending the program, calling them special interest groups, and wrapped up in a political movement to “defund the police.”
“Why do some of the so called alumni have any say in my child’s safety that is currently attending Fremont schools?,” Rachel Wang, a parent said at the meeting. “You are out of the Fremont schools right now and you don’t get to be the stakeholders in making decisions on our children’s safety anymore.”
In November, the board vote was 3-2, with Jones, and former board members Ann Crosbie and Michele Berke voting to remove police from campuses citing concerns of racial bias in arrests and lack of data about how police interact with students, which were highlighted in a report prepared by a 25-member task force the board created to evaluate the program. Campbell and Sweeney both voted against ending it at the time.
New board members Prasad and Zhang — who both said during their campaigns they support the SRO program — were seated in December, replacing Crosbie and Berke.
The previous board also voted to accept several recommendations from the task force to improve mental health support for students and expand restorative practices, lay out a framework for an “inclusive, community‐driven process” by the end of 2020 and to work up a new school safety plan, though it’s unclear whether those changes will be made and when.
Several students and alumni expressed frustration and claimed the current board is not making a “good faith” effort to allow those changes to be made and tested.
“Because students are not physically on campus during this time, we have a really excellent opportunity to create a reimagined safety plan and it seems we have not yet invested the time in doing that despite our commitment to do so,” Priya Talreja, an alumnus and member of the task force, said during the meeting.
All of the board members said that they thought some of the task force recommendations to change how the district interacts with law enforcement were worthy of looking into, and suggested possibly modifying the program to be more transparent and accountable.
The program, which has been running for roughly two decades, places one Fremont Police Department officer at each of the district’s six high school campuses, and is overseen by a sergeant.
In all, it costs about $2.5 million annually, according to the police department, and the school district would pick up about $838,000 of that amount during a normal school year. Since officers are not patrolling schools during the pandemic, the district previously negotiated with the city to not pay for its share of the program currently.
The task force report said the program in its current form doesn’t have any measurable goals or outcomes, and allows for too much deference to law enforcement in discipline matters that should be handled by district officials.
Between 2015 and 2018, Black students accounted for more than 21 percent of the arrests in FUSD, even though they only made up 2 percent of the district’s students, and Latinx/Hispanic students accounted for 27.4 percent of arrests, while comprising about 14.4 percent of students, the task force said.
“My opinion hasn’t changed because the data that I’m looking at hasn’t changed,” Jones said at the meeting.
“We need to look at evidence. And just because we’ve had an SRO program for a long time does not mean that’s what the evidence and data shows that we should continue with,” she said. Instead, she said the data shown by the report proves “disproportionate” impact to students of color, and creates a liability for the district.
“Do we want to be a city that stands for progressive change, or one that is still stuck in the past with outdated, radicalized policies that hurt students well being and chance of success?,” Kelsey Ichikawa, an alumna said.
Sweeney, said he’s heard of many interactions over the years in which an officer’s discretion helped a student.
“When you have a police officer on campus, and let’s a say a child has illegal drugs on their person, and how many times have I heard…that the police officer told that student, ‘I’m going to take away those drugs, and I’m going to give you a second chance, and if I ever catch you with these again then you’re going to get the full extent of the criminal justice system.’ How many kids never made that mistake again?,” he said.
“Safety and security in today’s society is paramount,” Prasad said in explaining his vote to reverse the prior board’s decision.
“I’m not calling this as overturning a decision that was made, I’m calling this as forward progress that will allow us to look at this program while it’s not costing us any dollars to see how we can reimagine it,” he said.
The board vote this week called for the reinstatement of the program, but didn’t offer any details about possible costs, which weighed heavily on the discussion this week, as the school district board was told by the Alameda County Office of Education that it should cut $17 million from its budget by Feb. 21.
The board said the city and school district should meet to discuss next steps, and to begin drafting a new agreement on how the program will function, possibly with some reforms.
