For Carisa Parker, the School Resource Officer (SRO) at her children’s school is her only sense of safety. As a mother of four children, including two high school students currently attending her alma mater, Morgan Park High School, she’s in support of keeping police in schools if it means maintaining a safe and healthy school environment.
“One of the things I appreciate about Morgan Park is that when I drop my kids off in the morning, I feel safe knowing that there are people there who love and care about them,” said Parker. “If a situation occurs, there is someone there with a direct line to the police.”
Parker is also chair of the Local School Council (LSC) at Morgan Park High School, which voted unanimously on July 23 to keep their SROs. Her concerns for removing police from schools echoed concerns from parents district wide who feared for the safety of their children if they had to return to a school with no police presence.
The vote to keep SROs in Morgan Park High School also re-establishes a personal sense of safety Parker has developed with police officers since her kids have been in elementary school.
“When my daughter was in 8th grade, she got into a fight with another girl,” shared Parker. “The principal, who was African American, called the police on my daughter and I was extremely taken aback by that because I had been a long-standing parent who was active at the school.”
Participating in school activities as a CPS parent has been a priority for Parker, like many parents who wish to have a good relationship with the school in which their kids spend a majority of their day in.
“I felt that [the principal] could have called me before she called the police,” said Parker. “But once the police came, it felt like they were trying to actually resolve the issue, whereas the administrators were only trying to punish.”
Since then, Parker has only had positive experiences with police officers in school settings. Her oldest son became a Chicago police officer in 2019.
The SRO program has been under scrutiny for several years by youth activists who have been protesting and demanding #CopsOutCPS. They’d rather see the money from that program used to provide more resources for their communities instead. On Wed. Aug. 6, CPS announced that schools will not be charged for SROs as districts transition into full remote learning for the fall.
Since June 9, 17 LSCs have voted to remove their SROs for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year, while 55 voted to retain them, including Morgan Park High School. Although Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Janice Jackson and the CPS Board of Education all agreed to let each LSC decide to retain or remove SROs, the board is set to vote on whether to renew an expiring and newly reformed $15-million contract with CPD for its SRO program on Wednesday, Aug. 26.