On Monday, Taft High School Principal Mark Grishaber sent an email to Fox News stating his view that the removal of police officers stationed within Chicago Public Schools should be a matter for Local School Councils, not something laid down by fiat from the ideologues at the Chicago Board of Education.
Grishaber was armed with some persuasive data. At Taft, he told Fox, his surveys show that somewhere between 80% and 90% of parents, faculty and students at Taft support the presence of a school resource officer from the Chicago Police Department.
This is unsurprising, especially since Daveon Gibson, 16, of Humboldt Park, and two other Senn High School students, were shot last week a few blocks east of their North Side school, shortly after Senn had let out for the day. Gibson died from gunshot wounds to his chest at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, police said at the time.
Why was Grishaber going to the media? He said he’d been told that the Chicago Board of Education had “already made its decision” to remove what Grishaber clearly sees as a crucial resource when it comes to keeping his school safe. Demonstrably, he’d decided to fight that determination in advance of a formal vote.
Good for Grishaber. In recent days, we’ve heard from others outraged at this apparent fait accompli and its inherent denial of protection to those who best understand the nuances of their local situation.
We think the Chicago Board of Education may have a fight on its hands here in coming days. So it should.
As we’ve said on this page previously, the efficacy of school resource officers depends on the level of trust the school community has in their assigned officer and how they perceive that officer’s commitment and role when it comes to student well-being. But it’s also about the ever-changing local situation outside the doors of the school and the obligation all dedicated educators feel to keep their students safe. Surely, these schools and their local councils know better what, and who, is needed to keep their communities safe than a Board of Education making one decision for scores of Chicago schools.
So why is the board doing this? Mostly because Mayor Brandon Johnson and his paymasters at the Chicago Teachers Union want the officers out for ideological reasons, dating back to the era of the George Floyd protests. During his campaign, Johnson said “armed officers have no place in schools in communities already struggling with over-incarceration, criminalization, profiling and mistrust.”
Some of that is fair enough. We don’t like criminalizing kids, and we don’t doubt some officers have been a problem. But then so have private security guards. And, as we said before, if for any reason officers stationed within a school are perceived as an issue, there’s a remedy. The Local School Council simply can vote no on cops in their school. Problem solved.
Johnson has to face up to the reality that while schools in more affluent parts of the city often have been willing to let their SRO go, those who work and learn in more challenged neighborhoods are now the ones more likely to want to keep them. And they are fighting back against City Hall.
Courageously.
It’s a classic example of socialist theory running up against the messiness of everyday reality. The mayor, CTU and the Board of Education are willing to pay a price for ideological conformity. School principals just want to know their kids are safe. Today and tomorrow.
Speaking of everyday reality, police Superintendent Larry Snelling spoke to this issue last week at an event sponsored by the Economic Club of Chicago. He was careful not to take sides, but he told a personal story of “Officer Thomas,” the school resource officer at Englewood High School when Snelling attended. Snelling, the product of a single-family home, called Officer Thomas a mentor and father figure, “not only for me but for other kids who were like me at that school.”
The story should be instructive for the ideologues who clearly have a fixed vision of what police officers are like. Cops in schools not only can serve as protectors and, yes, disciplinarians. They also can be inspirational.
We think any school that does not want a school resource officer should not be forced to have one. But we remain firmly on the side of those that do.
