This article is from The 74, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering education in America.
Two months after the Minneapolis Public Schools district cut ties with the city’s police department, education officials are interviewing finalists for its revamped school safety beat — and more than half have backgrounds in law enforcement, according to documents obtained by The 74.
The move has already angered racial justice activists who cheered the district’s swift decision to terminate its police contract after George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis officer. Floyd’s May death led educators across the country to remove police from their campuses, but the Minneapolis district’s plan to replace officers with 11 “public safety support specialists” — touted as a “bridge between in-school intervention and law enforcement” — has activists worried about undoing progress made in the wake of recent protests.
“I’m afraid that they’re going to set a dangerous trend nationally, and that all these districts that have been ending contracts are going to look to Minneapolis and say, ‘Oh, we’ll just create our own internal security force,’ that will continue to perpetuate policing and criminalization,” said Maria Fernandez, senior campaign strategist at the Advancement Project, a national racial justice organization.
Among the district’s 24 finalists, at least 14 have experience as police officers, corrections officials or private security guards, according to the candidates’ résumés, which a source provided to The 74 on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to share the documents.
Six finalists have some policing experience and at least one currently works as an officer — in suburban Minneapolis. Six have served as security guards. Another eight have experience in corrections, including five who worked in the juvenile justice system and a former sheriff’s department officer who listed jailhouse weapon “shakedowns” as experience.
At the same time, more than half of the finalists currently work for the district in capacities that include special education and student discipline. The 74 is withholding the applicants’ names to protect their privacy during the interview process.
Education activist Kenneth Eban, who has worked for years to remove officers from Minneapolis schools, said he was alarmed by the share of finalists with law enforcement backgrounds.
“This is just another way of being able to police and surveil students, especially students of color,” he said. The “oversurveillance of students of color” and an adversarial campus climate would still be a problem in the district if none of the support specialists had policing backgrounds, he said, but the finalists suggest that school leaders aren’t fully committed to less punitive approaches to campus safety. “When I think about a corrections officer, I think about the terrible conditions that people who are in prison experience and how corrections officers uphold that system and that environment.”
Karen DeVet, the district’s chief operations officer, said it was important for the district to have an emergency response and security plan in place before the upcoming school year begins Sept. 8. Despite the national uprising following Floyd’s death, she said the district is “not going to compromise on protecting our students and our staff.” However, she sought to allay fears that the district simply plans to replace school-based police with more of the same.
“These are not licensed law enforcement officials who carry guns and a toolbelt,” but instead will be specialists trained to defuse conflicts before they become violent, she said. While they serve an immediate need, they’re part of a larger district effort to improve school climate. “To address those root causes of why our students and our families don’t always feel welcome, heard or seen in our schools is going to take time,” DeVet said.
The specialist position began generating controversy last month after the district released a job posting seeking applicants with degrees and experience in criminal justice capable of breaking up fights, providing security at district events and fostering “trusting, nurturing and learning environments.” The posting listed a salary range of $65,695 to $85,790. Following the community uproar, the district backtracked and said the law enforcement prerequisite was an error — and that candidates’ ability to build relationships with students was paramount.
In a Facebook post, the district said an “accelerated schedule” to ensure that the specialists are hired and receive special training before the start of the new school year “did not allow for creation of a perfect job description.”
“We did consider restarting” the hiring process, DeVet said, but after looking at applications, the district “felt like we had a really strong pool,” including educators with master’s degrees and others from the law enforcement realm with crisis experience.
The 11 specialist roles are the first part of the district’s new campus safety strategy; the issue was discussed at an Aug. 18 school board meeting focused on improving school climate. Officials plan to station the specialists at the district’s seven comprehensive high schools while the other four will support emergency response across the city. After receiving more than 100 applications and conducting interviews with more than 50 candidates, district officials, prioritizing internal candidates, settled on a top tier of two dozen finalists they said were racially diverse.
One applicant leads a youth mentorship program. Another is a military veteran who currently works at a high school where he helps teachers interact with families who have limited English speaking skills. In a cover letter, one applicant noted a career “dedicated to fostering strong social and emotional skills” among students as a key attribute and said that positive relationships are key to generating “a truly safe, inclusive and supportive school environment.”
Many of the internal candidates already work as deans assisting administrators with student discipline and campus security. Yet Marika Pfefferkorn, executive director of the Midwest Center for School Transformation and an advocate against police in Minneapolis schools, said the deans would be given more responsibilities as support specialists, including the authority to call police for backup. She accused the district of creating the positions without offering to receive community input and missing an opportunity to reimagine its approach to school safety.
“If you don’t actually change the culture of the system, you just replace who’s doing it,” she said.
The teachers union has made a similar argument. Greta Callahan, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers president, has likened the specialists to “rent-a-cops.”
When the union called for police-free campuses, “we did not mean, ‘Hire a bunch of private security officers and put them in our buildings,’” Callahan told City Pages, a local news outlet. “Let me ask you a question. If I order a sandwich, and I say, ‘Hold the mayo,’ does that mean put a bunch of Miracle Whip all over it?’ They’re missing the point.”
One applicant, who is currently the head of security at a suburban school district, is a military police veteran who served combat missions in Iraq. Another works for a private security firm at an Amazon distribution center. A third finalist currently is employed as a corrections officer at a suburban jail where responsibilities include mediating disputes, enforcing rules and checking cells “for contraband and signs of security breaches,” according to the candidate’s résumé, which also notes training on “the impacts of trauma and institutional racism.”
Rashad Turner, executive director of the Minnesota Parent Union, said he was happy that so many of the applicants already work in education, but he also sees value in candidates with law enforcement experience coming to work for the district.
“Having that familiarity with the law enforcement system, but leaving it to serve students, I’d say that could be a good thing,” said Turner, who went to college for criminal justice before losing faith in policing as a career. “To have that understanding of the injustices in the law enforcement system, I could see that being valuable” in a role centered on student discipline. He said the district’s plan to begin the upcoming academic year remotely because of the pandemic could allow additional time for the specialists to receive training that ensures that they’re “serving students’ best interests” rather than working as a “souped-up hall monitor that is targeting the students.”
Eban, the community activist, took a more aggressive stance. He said the district should restart the hiring process altogether because the job posting that sought applicants with criminal justice experience could have prompted some qualified applicants to opt out of the process.
“I don’t understand — now knowing that we’re also going into distance learning to start the year — why this process cannot be restarted to get a better pool of applicants, to get a better pool of finalists that could help support students in our communities in a different way,” Eban said.
What is the answer then? Schools need some kind of security. What kind of training do you want them to have?
It appears that what activists want wasn’t what the author was getting at. Its that districts are replacing what the had, with what they had and not doing the work to determine what they actually needed. Its really a classic case of Admin’s inability to rethink something and a gross failure of leadership common to both Public and Private institutions.
But what is that? Who is going to stop the fights? Who is going act when a kid brings a gun to school?
My concern stems from the disaster in St. Paul a few years ago when the district stopped suspending and disciplining behavior. It was a year of chaos. It was open season for bullying and sexual harassment. Girls were groped by boys in the halls every day, without consequence. Class was worthless as teachers were disempowered to deal with the problem kids and got called c**t and w***e for trying, without consequence.
Eventually people had enough, threw out the school board, which fired the superintendent, and reinstated accountability for bad behavior.
I worry this is going to be more of the same. High-minded ideas that ignore the realities of what is actually going on in schools.
And in the case of the suspensions, that was also put into effect by “activists” and it was a complete disaster.
My concern is that the school administrators do know what they need, and that, as before, the activists don’t have the faintest idea of the realities of the schools. You reject the ideas of the people who work in schools every day in favor of people who don’t.
I think the answer is to consider the content of each individual person’s character rather than making blanket assumptions based on which demographic group they belong to.
It seems to me, based on this article, that is what the school district is doing, but not their critics.
Counseling. De-escalation. Relationship building. Diversion training. Not just break up fights, intervene early to prevent them.
While I appreciate an actual answer, this is the same kind of nonsense that was used to end suspensions in St. Paul.
The problem is that much of a child’s development does not occur in school. You can’t have all the programs you want (even though there is no money for them) but children bring behavior learned at home and elsewhere to school. There is so much that is beyond the control of the schools.
And if there are fights, who will break them up? A teacher at St. Paul Central was left permanently disabled breaking up a fight. And the mother of the child who brutally assaulted him blamed the teacher and the school, even after the arrest. How do schools overcome horrible parenting like that?
My kids are out of school now, but my concern is that just dropping security will put kids and teachers in danger.
I’m sorry that you think my ideas are nonsense. Yes, children do bring behaviors learned at home. They also bring emotional issues. It saddens me to hear, after a school tragedy, “grief counselors are being brought in.” If counselors were regularly onsite, perhaps fewer tragedies would happen. There’s an article on Huffington Post worth checking out:
How Social Workers Like Me Can — And Do — Deescalate Dangerous Situations Every Day
I’m all for more counselors, de-escalation, etc. I believe those things do help. They just don’t solve everything, and there are going to be times when security is needed.
Again, my concern is that we saw this kind of thinking when suspensions were stopped. And the result of that was a complete breakdown – chaos in classes, violence and theft going unpunished, girls being groped in the hallways without consequence. And so teachers and parents rose up and stopped it, by replacing the school board and superintendent.
Maybe you don’t understand the realities of city schools. Or maybe you are fine with teachers and students getting hurt and girls getting sexually assaulted every day. In any event, those are the realities if control isn’t maintained. Control was lost a fee years ago, and I worry the thinking here will result in more of the same.
The next flight from public schools will be based on lack of safety and security for students.
It is the individual’s Culture but also the institution. Just being outside of the MPD and the police Union would enable even former MPD officers to break out of the old mold.
This article Good not focus on the non violence and conflict resolution training that I have heard that the new school officers are getting.
I have known many former coos and veterans who are not only wonderful people but know the effects of violence and always resort to nonviolence first.
An individual quoted in the article states “If you don’t actually change the culture of the system, you just replace who’s doing it.”
My view is “If you don’t change the culture of those creating misbehaving students, you will never solve the problem”.
I have two friends who teach in high school at two inner city St Paul schools. They tell the same stories. Kids are not allowed to be expelled anymore. They used to have a school specifically for those kids. Sorry to say, but these kids have some real problems and don’t belong in a regular classroom.
My friends have been spit on, called every name you can imagine, and one was punched in the face. Let me say this again. These kids can not be expelled anymore. So they are taken out for a couple of days and back in the come. They can’t wait to be able to retire.
I would be terrified to send my child to an inner city public school. They need police before somebody gets killed.
And for all of you far left peeps, you’re nuts if you think defunding police, and removing them from schools is going to turn out well.
The shooting in Kenosha last night, case in point. Obviously the cops were trying to get the black guy to stop. He ignored them and kept walking, then tried to get in his car. Beholden is the word that fits that story. And the kids in school will know they can get get away with murder. Literally.
The Kenosha case is a horrible example. The only criminal behavior was by that soon to be ex-cop, who will be going to prison for his actions. That cowardly scumbag who shot a man in the back obviously was raised without any values. Criminals like him need to be off the street.
St. Paul does expel kids again now, but that was true for a time.
“The shooting in Kenosha last night, case in point. Obviously the cops were trying to get the black guy to stop. He ignored them and kept walking, then tried to get in his car.”
The “black guy” has a name. He is Jacob Blake. He was shot in the back seven times in front of his children, the oldest of whom was eight. The police already had a hold of his shirt when the shot.
Mr. Blake will likely be paralyzed from the waist down for life, all for the crime of daring to ignore the command of a white police officer. There is no telling what the impact of this event will be on the “black guy’s” children.
The problem is Mr. Blake was resisting arrest and made a very bad choice. He entered his vehicle and the police had no idea why and were forced to assume the worst. From their perspective he could have had a weapon in the car. If that had been the case then things could have turned out considerably worse. Based on Mr. Blake’s actions he constituted a threat to the officers and the public. From what I saw on the video, the officer’s reaction was not unreasonable.
They were “forced to assume the worst?” By whom? Is it possible that they were “forced” by his skin color to assume it?
It’s “not unreasonable” to shoot someone in the back seven times? We must have a different conception of reasonable. I thought doing it once was a mark of dishonor and cowardice. What do you call doing it seven times?
From the video I saw, the officer who decided it was time to shoot had a grip on his shirt. It seems to me that the “not unreasonable” thing to do would be to give him a good hard yank if the officer were worried about what he might do in the car. I think it would be “not unreasonable” for a trained officer to do that before emptying his clip in the man’s back.
The Kenosha Police also seemed to think it was “not unreasonable” for a 17-year old with a rifle to be wandering around, “helping.” The person who was killed by the delightful young lad and the people who were injured were just paying the price for being “not unreasonable.”
No, they were not forced to assume the worst and shoot him in the back. That’s incompetent policing a cowardly loser with a badge. And taxpayers will spend millions of dollars because this clown was a cop.