Amid a national outcry over funding for law enforcement, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education voted in June to reduce the school police budget by 35%.
That part was hard enough — the 4-3 vote to cut $25 million out of the $77 million budget came after a long night of heated debate. But the next part could be even more challenging: What, exactly, will the district decide to either reduce or eliminate from school police operations?
Earlier this month, the board members expected to discuss the cuts, but the presentation happened so late in the evening, they delayed the discussion to today’s Committee of the Whole meeting (which you can watch here starting at 1 p.m.).
The task force was supposed to present initial recommendations & findings from its review of school police to the #LAUSD board in August, but yesterday's meeting was the 1st public update.
— Carla Javier (@carlamjavier) September 16, 2020
It was incomplete: it had cuts, but no suggestions of where the $ would be reinvested.
The draft plans shared with the board show what some of the potential cuts could be. They could include big ticket reductions like removing officers from campus assignments and instead having them respond on patrol (a cut of about $5.9 million) and eliminating night and weekend patrols (a cut of about $6.3 million).
Notably, the document also lists maintaining the district’s Mental Health Evaluation Team — which is comprised of both LA School Police Department officers as well as School Mental Health psychiatric social workers — at six units instead of expanding it to eight units (about $410,000), and cutting youth programs like wrestling and anger management (about $1.5 million).
“We're not asking you to make cuts from [youth programs],” said Kahlila Williams, a senior at Girls’ Academic Leadership Academy and a member of the organizing group Students Deserve.
"What you're trying not to do is make cuts in places that you feel law enforcement is necessary,” she said.
Over the summer, Students Deserve held rallies, packed public comment periods, and called on the board to remove officers from campuses and to reinvest the funds in counselors.
“I honestly felt like a lot of what we said was ignored,” Williams said.
Students Deserve also called out Superintendent Austin Beutner’s school safety task force for not having any student members.
“We want them to know that you can't make a decision on students and not have students’ voices prioritized,” Williams said.
Representatives from the task force said they plan to send out surveys and hold focus groups to get community input in the future.
In the meantime, Los Angeles School Police Association Vice President William Etue said with the cuts looming, some officers have chosen to leave the school police department. The former chief of police resigned less than 24 hours after the board vote in June, citing the reductions, and an interim chief was named.
“Looking at the numbers themselves, the district is going to see a serious reduction in service provided,” Etue said. “We all know that when incidents occur seconds mean a lot to the livelihood and safety of folks, so it's just unfortunate that we can't shore up in some areas to make sure that our core services, our campus based services, are supported.”
The board is also expected to discuss how to reallocate the funds once the cuts are made.
Some possibilities included in the draft plans on the board’s website include more psychiatric social workers, counselors, and safety aides, more leadership opportunities for Black students, and more engagement with Black families when making district decisions.
If you have experiences with school police that you would like to share with us as we continue reporting on this issue, you can email reporter Carla Javier.
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