“Schools Are Not Safer with Police”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Public Comments on the Removal of School Resource Officers

Abstract

Public comments offered by citizens at local school board meetings play an important role in shaping the educational policy process. However, educational researchers have underexamined them in debates about educational policy change. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, this study examines the public comments offered at a school board meeting where a proposal to terminate a contract with the police department and remove school resource officers from schools was being considered. In particular, this study is interested in the arguments that stakeholders use to express their support for or opposition to the board’s proposal. My findings highlight the logics that stakeholders employ to let their perspectives be heard including conflicting notions of safety, the possibilities for alternatives, and individual encounters with “good” police. As more districts across the United States consider removing police, this study contributes new insights into the influence of public opinion on policy decisions, as well as into community attitudes toward police in schools.

The Third Administrator? Perceptions of School Resource Officers in Predominantly White Elementary Schools

“…SROs tend to exaggerate their positive impacts relative to other stakeholders while deemphasizing their impacts in areas like school discipline. As noted in prior work on SRO adoption and removal (Jenkins, 2022; Koon, 2020; Turner & Beneke, 2020), proponents of law enforcement in schools, including SROs, are often given a platform in conversations about SROs, and our research suggests the views of these advocates should be viewed skeptically.…”

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child? A Critical Discourse Analysis of State Corporal Punishment Policies and Practices

“…Our study adds to several recent studies using CDA to explore how discipline policies are framed and the logics embedded within them (e.g., Jenkins, 2023; Nikolaidis, 2023; Turner & Beneke, 2020). Like these studies, the results of our work highlight how the logics of school discipline policies reveal discourses that are intensely racialized, wedded to systemic injustice, and legitimized through arguments that uphold white supremacy.…”

“…CDA has been used in several education studies to shed light on how language reflects, maintains, and disseminates racialized beliefs and ideologies, particularly in school discipline (Jenkins, 2023; Kolluri & Young, 2021; Nikolaidis, 2023; Turner & Beneke, 2020). Ideology and power are central to CDA, and, in the context of our study, we pay particular attention to how the legal rationales described in the previous section relate to CP policies and their use (i.e., “open” schools and in loco parentis ).…”

Towards Anti-Carceral Leadership: Remaking Public Schools to Refuse Black Students’ Surveillance, Containment, and Control

“…School-based police or SROs maintain a similar function in today's American schools, especially in buildings or districts with large concentrations of Black youth. Recent debates about the discontinued use of SROs, including divesting from law enforcement in schools and reallocating resources to other areas, have transpired at school board meetings (Jenkins, 2023a). This debate demonstrate an emerging shift in policy rhetoric on police in schools.…”

“…Numerous social media videos show SROs abusing authority (see Alliance for Educational Justice website at Achievement Project website for a full report). These videos occupy the public’s attention while many other hidden incidences of antiblack school violence at the hands of teachers, school administrators, counselors, and peers persist (Annamma, 2017; Jenkins, 2023). Much of this abuse is encoded in school discipline policy, for example, in part, because developers of such policy are ill-equipped to notice how antiblackness may determine the policy rules, rewards, and punishments that actually help sustain a school’s carceral function.…”