When
you bring an officer onto campus, you undermine [the teachings of
inclusion and full adult control]. Rather than sending the message to
kids that adults expect your best and are fully in control of the
school environment, the patrolling presence of police sends the message
that we expect your worse and are not in control. Rather than sending
the message that you will do the right thing because strong, successful
people do so naturally, we are sending the message that you will do the
right because we will punish you otherwise. We once used the phrase family to describe the school environment we sought to create. External controlling agents are no part of any family
I know. Instead of kids hearing a message of inclusion and warmth, one
that softens that self-defeating mantle of hard so many reach for, we
are sending a hardening message that this is a place for thugs, a
ghetto place where the kids are so bad actual armed police officers are
needed to ensure control.

Every word of that has been
born out and proved accurate this year. Every word has been driven home
not only by the presence of the police, but through the actions of an
unsettled first-year administrator, who has consistently and
obstinately brought a police presence into areas of school function in
which they can serve no beneficial purpose. This isn't even about the
absurd rate of suspension, the removal of dignity in discipline
situations, or just the daily unpleasantness that has arisen on campus.
This is about how the police have been used to undermine and chip away
at the very core of what it was that made our school a successful and
special place.

This year, officers have been brought into
discipline scenarios time and time again in defiance of our norms,
understandings, and wishes, but apparently in compliance with the
wishes of district leadership. The inclusion of police represents a
continued gross escalation and over-reaction. We're not talking about a
kid selling drugs or using a weapon in an assault. Those are crimes.
Our kids are being put into the system, cited and arrested over actions
that, while unacceptable, are nevertheless not criminal. A playground
fight is not a crime. Yelling things at someone is not a crime. Being a
jerk to a 6th grader is not a crime. Having a Sharpie in your posession is not a crime.

Students at my school have received citations and court dates for all these actions.

It's
awful. We do not need more black and brown kids in the criminal justice
system. We do not need kids with booby-trapped cumulative files, rigged
for explosion the first time they step out of line, because suddenly
it's a pattern and a repeat offense. We do not need to set so many kids
up for failure in navigating legal whitewater (as if it's so out of the
realm of possibility that we're handing out court dates to families who
lack the money, social capital, immigration status, or plain
with-it-ness to get themselves through something like that in an
acceptable way). We do not need to function this way to have an
orderly, safe campus.

This is what we do now. Kid gets sent to
the office, there's almost no chance they escape interaction with a
police officer, no matter how piddling the offense. Citations are
written at such a mind-boggling rate that teachers have been told
officers are too encumbered with paperwork to remove trespassers from
campus. I hate it. I see the reliance on, and the acceptance of, a
police role in routine matters of discipline and I want to vomit. But
this is what we do now.

This is never what we have done.