Major vote looming as Fresno Unified renews debate over armed police in city schools
A year after Fresno Unified conducted a months-long community debate over armed police officers in city schools, trustees are set to renew the debate Wednesday in a vote to return police to middle school campuses.
The board will consider a contract addendum that would provide five full-time officers, referred to as Student Resource Officers (or SROs), and one sergeant to the middle school campuses at a cost of just over $1 million. The proposed contract states that the goal is to add SROs to middle school campuses on an ongoing basis until all 17 campuses have at least one by the start of the 2023-24 school year.
District spokesperson Nikki Henry wrote in an email to the Education Lab that the move, if approved, would be an upgrade from the previous Student Neighborhood Resource Officers (or SNROs) the middle schools had previously that were part-time.
Discussions of school safety have become especially tense in the past month, following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, that left 19 children and two adults dead.
But the current debate over the presence of uniformed officers on Fresno Unified campuses has roots in discussions that started in the summer of 2020.
Here’s how we got to Wednesday’s vote.
Summer 2020: FUSD’s contract for officers on middle school campuses expires
On June 30, 2020, Fresno Unified’s prior agreement with the Fresno Police Department to staff officers at middle school campuses expired, Henry confirmed.
That summer, community members took to the streets of Fresno to protest police violence after a now-ex-Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd. The debate reached Fresno schools around the same time, with dozens of parents and community members questioning the use of armed police officers on school campuses.
In August 2020, Fresno Unified started another year of remote learning without students in classrooms. The year also began without a new contract in place to provide officers to its middle school campuses.
Fall 2020: FUSD tables a vote to renew the contracts for middle school campuses
At a board meeting on Oct. 7, 2020, trustees tabled a vote to renew contracts with Fresno police officers.
At the meeting, Trustee Veva Islas said the board did not intend to vote on this matter again until after a community engagement process.
Fresno Barrios Unidos, a youth-driven community advocacy organization, was one of the groups that led the charge that summer to challenge the presence of cops on FUSD campuses, citing data that Black students were disproportionately represented among student arrests.
The group urged FUSD to reinvest funding in social-emotional and mental health services.
Spring 2021: FUSD approaches Fresno PD about a new contract amid department shortages
In spring 2021, FUSD leaders approached the department about putting officers back on middle school campuses, according to police spokesperson Lt. Bill Dooley.
However, the department had already reallocated their resources after the contract lapsed and was struggling with staff shortages at the time, which Dooley attributed to the pandemic and the renewed movement to defund police departments in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
Dooley said the department was “very supportive” of returning police to the middle schools.
“We advised them that it would take time because we were building up our staffing again,” he said.
Meanwhile, FUSD carried out its plans for community engagement. The district’s Office of Access, Equity, and Inclusion surveyed parents, staff, and campus police officers and found that a majority of respondents opposed removing police from campuses while two-thirds reported positive experiences with police.
Fresno Barrios Unidos rejected the survey results, calling them “pro-police.”
Summer 2021: FUSD renews contracts for high school campuses following community input
On June 16, 2021, FUSD approved contracts to keep police officers on the district’s high school campuses. The contract came with a few new stipulations, including providing more robust data on the outcomes of interactions between officers and students.
Later that summer, the Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama announced an “all hands on deck” approach to combat rising gun and street violence that year — which constrained them from providing Central Unified schools with an officer for their new Justin Garza High School campus.
FUSD started the 2021-22 school year without a new contract in place for officers at middle schools as students returned to classrooms after more than a year of learning from home.
Recent tragedies spark renewed debate
Fresno Unified ended the 2021-22 school year with a string of safety incidents and concerns from parents and staff, renewing the debates that have been going on for years in the district.
At Pyle Elementary, a parent barged into a third-grade classroom on May 17 and threatened the teacher, who was taking attendance at the time. A teacher called the police, who escorted the parent from campus.
The mass shooting in Uvalde in mid-May further heightened anxieties, with some parents and students at FUSD’s June 1 board meeting calling on the district to beef up security measures and return armed officers to middle school campuses in response.
At Figarden Elementary School, an adult on campus saw a man cutting a hole in the school’s fence to try to enter the campus on May 27. The man reportedly left when he noticed staff and students “on the scene.”
At Hoover High School, teacher Sara Reyes penned an open letter to Superintendent Bob Nelson saying she didn’t feel safe in her classroom, which the Fresno Teachers Association shared on Facebook on June 1. She cited a recent experience with a student who she discovered had a history of threatening violence against students.
At Tioga Middle School, police found parts of a gun and two knives in a student’s backpack after an adult on campus called the police on June 10.
In advance of this Wednesday’s board meeting, FUSD released board communications detailing survey input from middle school principals on the question of providing SROs on their campuses.
The principals said that there’s a need for SROs in FUSD’s middle schools.
“Without their former Student Neighborhood Resource Officer (SNRO), sites had challenges quickly and effectively de-escalating uncivil parents, conducting 5150 assessments, and enforcing penal code issues,” the board communication said.
What’s at stake in Fresno Unified vote this Wednesday?
Trustee Terry Slatic has been critical of the lapse in police on middle school campuses, calling the 2020 decision politically motivated.
“It was a political opportunity because of the defund the police (movement),” he told the Ed Lab, adding that it was fortunate the district’s high school contract didn’t expire at the time, saying “they would have gotten rid of that too.”
Fresno Barrios Unidos Communications Director Alex Ramos O’Casey said the organization is maintaining its stance on removing police from FUSD campuses. She said she hopes Fresno Unified can develop new solutions to break the recurring cycle of violence on campuses, dating back to the Columbine massacre.
“Unfortunately, a lot of our current FUSD board members ... do want to take this kind of reactionary stance in the face of a lot of this recent gun violence,” said Ramos O’Casey. “The reaction, unfortunately, is the same one it’s always been, which is to add more police.”
Campus police critics have questioned the police response in Uvalde and at other deadly school shootings over the past several years. In a 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., an armed campus officer at the scene at the school didn’t go inside when he initially heard gunfire. Authorities have said that officers in Uvalde also waited over an hour to enter the school while the gunman was inside.
Islas told the Ed Lab she has some concerns about the cost of returning SROs ultimately to all 17 middle school campuses — and what other investments will come at an expense. She said she’s also considering other safety measures, like added fencing to campuses, as well as investing in officers.
“If we put all of our apples in the basket of just having a police officer on our campus, it limits how much we would be able to invest in some of those infrastructure things,” she said. “Those are the things that I’m weighing.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
