Divesting from School Resource Officers & Investing in Students - An Issue Brief

Abstract

Following the death of George Floyd, this brief was originally authored and publicly released on June 8, 2020, by University of Minnesota Department of Curriculum & Instruction members, Denise Hanh Huynh, Sean Cameron Golden, and Nicholas Ezekuel Kleese. We outline a body of research that supports this decision, as well as offer practice and research-based actions that school districts can take to invest in students and communities. Specifically, we urge schools to divest from School Resource Officer contracts and reinvest those funds in 1) developing and teaching ethnic studies and heritage language curriculum, 2) expanding arts and creative out-of-school-time programming, 3) hiring and retaining critically conscious Black, Indigenous, and PoC school counselors, 4) hiring and retaining critically conscious Black, Indigenous, and PoC educators, and 5) applying trauma-sensitive, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive teaching practices. We share this brief as a way forward. We ask teachers and students to imagine better ways to educate—possibilities that cultivate equity, justice, freedom, safety, and peace, possibilities that recognize the ways in which our liberation is bound together.