Victory: Cops Out of Hayward Schools
How Hayward Schools Cut Ties With Cops & What Comes Next
Hey Community,
It’s official – the Board of Trustees of the Hayward Unified School District voted UNANIMOUSLY to end its contract with the Police Department’s SRO Program!
Recap - How We Got Here
Last summer, in response to national and local protests against the police, HayCoCoa formed from a group of individuals who knew getting organized was key to achieving any real changes in Hayward. On June 13, 2020, our original 7 Demands were announced for the first time at the People’s March, a protest in Downtown Hayward organized by youth activists and CSUEB students. One of those demands was to end the SRO Program at HUSD, the contract of which was set to be renewed later that month.
Three days later, on June 16, 2020, HUSD announced it would not renew the SRO Program until further conversations with the community. “The powerful protests that have erupted around the world have forced a national conversation about racial injustice and policing practices,” the District said in their official statement on June 16. “We owe it to our youth and their calls for systemic change to pause and have an honest conversation about the presence of law enforcement in our schools.”
Over the next several months, HayCoCoa continued to organize. We kept ourselves updated on the District’s plan for conversations and we mobilized the community to call in to School Board and City Council meetings. The candidates we supported even hosted their own town halls to hear what the community had to say about cops in schools. One of those candidates, Sara Prada, went on to win her election to the HUSD Board and officially voted as a Trustee in the decision to end the SRO program.
The Night of The Decision
On January 27, 2021, The HUSD Board was presented with three choices:
Option A would resume the SRO Program without changes
Option B, to our surprise, was an expansion of the SRO Program, the opposite of what we wanted
Option C was the goal: End the SRO Program, divest from cops out of our school system, and re-invest that money into real wellbeing and safety solutions.
After hearing the report from staff, which included the results of a “focus group” of 42 pre-selected students about the need for campus security, the board Trustees asked all the right follow-up questions.
Trustee Prada highlighted that the SRO program was spending our limited education dollars on policing rather than serving our students. Prada also questioned whether that money should go toward a system that can be traumatizing for students of color and for students experiencing mental health crises. As the Black mother of biracial children, she recounted the heartbreaking instances of her young kids’ anxiety in the presence of armed, uniformed police.
Trustee Rawdon questioned why public schools were paying for cops that spent time servicing private and charter schools in the area, like Moreau Catholic High School which doesn’t chip into the costs. Rawdon also pointed out some major flaws in the focus group report. The report suggested that students wanted security presence, but transcripts from the study and conversations with student participants showed that students weren’t clear about the distinction between SROs (sworn, on-duty law enforcement from the Police Department) with CSO (Campus Security Officers who are full-time, unarmed school staff accountable only to the School District).
Trustee Oquenda came with a line of questions directed at faulty assumptions made in the report. While the report promoted the focus group’s belief that SROs broke up school fights, staff’s answers to Oquenda made it clear that in practice SROs rarely ever do that. Oquenda also exposed that little evidence, if any, was being collected about the effectiveness of the program. Even worse, the district was not tracking data about our students’ negative encounters with law enforcement, something everyone in the room seemed to understand would disproportionately impact Black and POC students.
Several HayCoCoa members called in for public comment in support of Option C. Isaac, our Secretary, spoke out against the resorting to police force for dealing with societal problems and highlighted Oakland School’s transformation away from relying on cops and toward restorative approaches. Jesse, who participated in the advisory groups as part of the months-long conversations, re-emphasized the Trustees’ points about the conflation between SROs and CSOs, and warned against the expansion of the program under Option B. Selina, an HUSD parent, told her upsetting personal experience with the harmful bias and racial profiling that happens when mental health services are outsourced to the criminal justice system.
Late into the night, we were at the edge of our seats when Trustee Prada motioned to move forward with Option C, seconded by Trustee Rawdon, and voted unanimously by all four Trustees.
What Comes Next
The Board’s decision to end the SRO program is itself a moment to celebrate, but the work is far from done. As the Board plans for the upcoming school year and fiscal year 2022, they are now tasked with reallocating hundreds of thousands of dollars toward a new system for safety and wellbeing at HUSD. HayCoCoa will continue to organize to ensure the new system prioritizes compassion and restorative approaches for our schools, not punitive law enforcement. In other words: Care, not cops.
The City of Hayward, which technically owns the SRO program, will also need to reconcile with the end of the SRO’s mission and decide how to reallocate the $1.7 million dollars it costs taxpayers. HayCoCoa will continue to organize for reinvestment in social services and their separation from the Police Department.
Follow Us!
To stay up to date with upcoming actions, follow HayCoCoa on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you are interested in organizing with us, please sign up to join one of our Priority Committees.
In Community,
The Hayward Community Coalition