By West Resendes, ACLU Skadden Fellow

Across the country, communities are pushing their schools to divest funding from police and reinvest those funds in student mental health care and other supportive services. But in making their case to their respective school boards, these parents, students, and advocates have run into one significant barrier — outdated data on policing in schools.
 
Every other year, the Department of Education collects and eventually releases to the public data that shows the number of student referrals and arrests made by police (including school resource officers (SROs)) in public schools, and which students are most impacted. The data includes students’ ages, gender, race, and whether they have a disability. Time and time again, this data has shown students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately referred to and arrested by police in schools.
 
The data also includes staffing data detailing how many counselors, social workers, school psychologists, and nurses are in schools compared to law enforcement officers or SRO presence. This data is crucial for understanding how police in schools have fueled the school-to-prison pipeline, and the dire discrepancies in funding for mental health personnel in schools compared to funding for policing our students.
 
The Department of Education has been collecting arrest and referral data for the last 10 years through the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) — a collection they have administered since 1968. The data from the 2015-2016 school year, released in April 2018, is the last data set that was released to the public.
 
Now, the Department of Education is sitting on the most recent data from 2017-2018 and has neglected to release it publicly.
 
This is why we’ve filed a Freedom of Information Act request to address the Department of Education’s inaction and call on them to release this data set. This data is needed across states and localities to inform policy reform amidst a growing movement to divest police from our schools. We know that the number of police officers in schools is steadily rising, but we don’t know if the numbers of school-based mental health staff have been keeping pace. Holding this data hostage prevents us from making the most informed decisions we can for our schools and how we can allocate funds.

The Impact of Policing on Our Disabled Students, Students of Color, and Disabled Students of Color

If historical trends in the data hold true, law enforcement in schools will continue to disproportionately target students of color, students with disabilities, and students of color with disabilities.

Black and Indigenous students, students of color (BIPOC), and students with disabilities often have to attend schools with fewer resources and support and school staff that are often not adequately trained and staffed to accommodate children with disabilities. When there are no other support staff to address behavioral problems, some teachers request help from law enforcement. This is where things often go awry. Police in schools do what they are trained to do — detain, handcuff, and arrest. Past data analyzed by the ACLU shows that schools with police reported 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police.
 
Just as with the concentration of policing in low income communities of color, policing in schools is also racialized. Our report, “Cops and No Counselors” analyzed CDRC data from 2015 to 2016 and found students of color are more likely to go to a school with a police officer, more likely to be referred to law enforcement, and more likely to be arrested at school. Nationally, Black students are more than twice as likely as their white classmates to be referred to law enforcement. Black students are three times as likely to be arrested as their white classmates, and in some states, Black girls are over eight times as likely to be arrested as white girls. During the 2015-16 school year, 1.6 million students attended a school with a sworn law enforcement officer and no counselor.

What makes a child most likely to be targeted by a police officer while in school? Simply having a disability. Overall, students with disabilities were nearly three times more likely to be arrested and referred than students without disabilities (and this disparity increases up to tenfold in some states), and the risk is multiplied in schools with police.

If a child has a disability, and they are also a student of color, the odds are even worse. For instance, in Rhode Island, Native American students are referred to law enforcement at a rate five times the national average. But Native American boys with disabilities are arrested at a rate almost 7.5 times the national average. Black and Latino boys with disabilities represent only 3 percent of students nationally, but account for 12 percent of school arrests. Black boys are also often labeled as “emotionally disturbed” or simply “bad” when non-compliant behavior occurs — whether or not they have an emotional or behavioral disability — and those behaviors disproportionately lead to a law enforcement response rather than a supportive response through appropriate accommodations.
 
Schools have consistently chosen policing over implementation and expansion of mental health resources that support our students. During the 2015-16 school year, 1.6 million students attended a school with a sworn law enforcement officer and no counselor. We know from the 2013-14 school year data that Black students were 3 times more likely to attend a school with more security personnel than mental health personnel. What will the story of the 2017-18 school year data tell us?

Next Steps: Demanding More Transparency

The Department of Education is not solely to blame for us not seeing this data now — many states and large school districts also lack transparency in publishing this data, in violation of both the CRDC and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As my colleague Harold Jordan has discussed, states and local education agencies are required under ESSA to publish annual “report cards” on measures of school quality, climate, and safety, including information on school-related arrests and referrals to law enforcement. An internal review shows that the vast majority of states do not have current policing data available on their websites — often only the 2015-16 data their districts reported to the CRDC — and that’s if they reported the data at all.
 
“Every district should have already posted that data in their school and district report cards for the 2017-18 school year,” Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project cautions. “Very few did so. We are concerned we will see with the release of the ’17-‘18 data that a lot of districts have once again failed to report their data, which means they violated civil rights law. And one reason is that there is no accountability when districts fail to report the required data. We anticipate that about half of the largest districts will report zero arrests.”
 
This is a funhouse mirror of reality where some districts and states feel that the Civil Rights Data Collection and the ESSA reporting requirements do not apply to them. Districts and states must do better to comply with federal law and maintain transparency for their communities.

In the meantime, the Department of Education has not yet released this data while communities and policymakers are making crucial decisions about the role of law enforcement in our schools. Having this data is more pertinent than ever. We need to be able to document what our Black, Brown, Indigenous, and disabled communities already know: that policing in schools is harmful for our students.

The Department of Education is officially on notice. States and school districts are too. Communities need this data immediately to help inform important policy decisions that will best serve our students. We need the data to be accurate and provided now to show our policymakers why we must divest from police, and invest in helping our students succeed.

By ACLU

In the last month, protests have erupted across the country calling for justice for Black lives, a wholesale restructuring of policing, and a greater racial reckoning across all facets of American society.

“All of these things are interconnected,” Brittany Packnett Cunningham told At Liberty this week. “If we’re gonna talk about police violence, we’re gonna talk about health care … we’re coming for the whole thing.”

Packnett Cunningham is an activist, educator, and writer who has been on the front lines of many of these conversations, most prominently since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Change is in the air — but we’ve been here before. Eric Garner was killed by police in New York City in July 2014, followed weeks later by Michael Brown in Ferguson, igniting outrage and protest. Activists then hoped for change, too, as they have for many generations.

We’ve seen countless movements surge in popularity, cause a stir, and then seemingly peter out weeks or months later. This time, however, feels different. But how do we actually ensure that it is different?

“I feel ready, and I think a lot of other people are finally ready in a moment that they have been being pulled to for a number of years,” said Packnett Cunningham. Listen as we discuss how to sustain movements, and compel real change.

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Activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham on Building a Lasting Movement

In the last month, protests have erupted across the country calling for justice for Black lives, a wholesale restructuring of policing, and a greater …

Listen to this episode

By Gillian Ganesan, ACLU National Campaign Strategist

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, we are seeing a massive popular political realignment around the role and scope of policing in the United States, led by Black organizers and Black-led movement groups. More than ever before, this movement is calling for divestment from police departments and reinvestment into the life-affirming services that help communities thrive. Further still, these protests are not confined to cities and towns across America — they have crossed our borders and are taking place globally.
 
These calls are being heard, and the power of the people has already led to momentum for meaningful local change, where the vast majority of policing policy decisions take place. As Black people continue to be murdered by law enforcement in communities across the country, local change is not just necessary, but vital.
 
George Floyd’s tragic murder has galvanized progress in the city he called home, Minneapolis. Officials heard and have begun to act on calls from grassroots organizations to divest from police and reinvest in communities that have been over-policed, criminalized, and deprived of the basic ability to go about their daily lives unharassed; deprived of their ability to thrive.
 
The Minneapolis City Council has begun the process of going even further than divestment — they are not only diving into police funding and malfeasance, they are actively looking into disbanding the police department in favor of a new set of services and first responders, moves informed by community-led public safety. In Minneapolis, there is a veto-proof majority of the city council in favor. This bold action is promising, and it is not isolated. 
 
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has pledged to cut between $100 and $150 million from the city’s policing budget, and declared that those funds can and should be reinvested into Black communities across the sprawling city. This is one of the first localities where a concrete number has been articulated and lifted up. This goes beyond rhetoric and reaction, and is key to beginning programmatic change; much more will be needed for actual change.
 
Advocates are all too familiar with the empty promises and attending inaction of the past, making this an important step toward divestment and reinvestment. Still, activists have been critical of Garcetti’s pledge, and rightly so — the proposed budget cut only amounts to 6 percent of the nearly $2 billion discretionary budget.
 
Meanwhile on the East Coast, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to propose budget cuts as well. Yet unlike the progress seen in Los Angeles, specific numbers have not yet been made public. De Blasio’s initial reluctance gave way after weeks of persistent pressure from protesters and Black-led organizations demanding significant cuts to the budget. A proposal has since been floated by the city’s comptroller and by activists for a budget cut of $1.1 billion, but de Blasio has not commented.
 
Other municipalities nationwide are also acting: Hartford, Connecticut; Baltimore; Washington D.C.; Chicago; St. Louis; Durham, North Carolina; Philadelphia; Dallas; Austin, Texas; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; and Portland, Oregon have all rolled out proposals to cut police budgets and reinvest those funds into the community.
 
These plans vary in scope and specificity, but make no mistake: This is a movement. This is a national recognition of the scourge of police violence, the money that funds it, and the obligation of cities to do better by their residents by reinvesting those funds. Cities can choose to promote health and opportunity, not the canard of “public safety” that too often takes the form of criminalizing the daily lives of Black and Brown people. Cities can choose to not fund a corrupt system that enables brutality and death, protects no one, and perpetuates the traumas of racial injustice and underdevelopment.
 
Elected officials can pledge right now to start on the path toward meaningful change. Now is the time for those who were elected to be our nation’s leaders to show political courage and a commitment to championing the way forward. All elected officials, especially mayors and county executives, can take the first step right now by committing:

1. Not to accept any political contributions or donations from organizations or unions directly representing police officers if the organization or union opposes reducing the size, power, or budgets of police forces;
2. To decrease current policing budgets, and reinvest funds from policing into community services and programs, guided by community input
3. To limit or eliminate the role of police in situations where social interventions are safer and more effective.

These commitments are just a start. We still have far to go — we must push ALL municipal governments, even those who have begun to make progress, and demand that they do better. Divestment and reinvestment is long-term work, centered in rooting out the violence at the core of oppression and replacing it with support that is as deserved as it is needed. This work will help realize the equity so often preached to Black and Brown communities, and so infrequently delivered.
 
It’s not enough for local governments to make small cuts, to invest in yet another inadequate training program, or to paint the streets with slogans. Cities must reckon with the political power of law enforcement organizations; the amount of money that has been stripped away from necessary and life-affirming public services in favor of militarized weaponry and surveillance technology; and the racist, invasive, and abusive police practices that enable violence by law enforcement.
 
Black communities, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities, and so many other impacted groups have experienced the daily harm and long-term damage of underfunded and overtaxed public services. Educational infrastructure has crumbled. Public health services have been stripped away. Housing and family care resources have dwindled. Disability services have vanished. Libraries have closed down. And all the while, police budgets have grown massively.
 
Police departments across the country use the vast resources they have to terrorize the Black and Brown communities they were sworn to serve, often doling out physical and mental harm, fear, and death. They fatten their coffers even as municipalities make budget cuts that further inequality. Meanwhile, their unions throw their financial weight behind elected officials to ensure that any questioning of their agenda is silenced, and stays silent. This is not new. But now, this systemic oppression is being met by a swelling tide of resistance.
 
For years, Black activists and organizations like the Movement for Black Lives have been calling for the reckoning we now see in the streets, and we have a responsibility as a nation to meet their call. Elected officials and organizations who work in the policing space cannot change their past inaction or tepid reform efforts. But we can dig in and put in the work now to fight; to ensure we never see the death of another Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, or George Floyd. To center the work of the communities who asked over and over again for their governments to invest in their communities and the services they need. To stand with them and fight for their rights — for their very lives.