Chicago Public School Board hears proposal for safety plan without school resource officers

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Thursday the Chicago Public School Board heard a proposal for whole-school safety without the presence of school resource officers from Chief of Safety and Security Jadine Chou.

Chou said in addition to physical protections, there is a need to emphasize prevention.

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"We are also working on, how are we building relationships with our students so we can be proactive, so if something is going on we will know that and we will address it at its root," Chou said.

The Whole School Safety Steering Committee presented their proposal to the board. The committee suggested a tiered transition over five years, and that each school would determine their own plan sooner if desired.

"The future of safety at CPS is about physical, emotional and relational safety, and the intersections of the three," said CPS Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland.

While the steering committee had been working on this proposal for months, calls to get armed police officers out of schools got loud in the aftermath of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020.

Former CPS student, parent and resident Lynn Morton was on the steering committee.

"Guns don't bring relationships," she said. "I don't care who is carrying them, it could be the police or community members, they don't build that togetherness, they build those relationships and safety happens when you are in relationships," she said.

The board had previously voted to sunset school resource officers. Chou acknowledged concerns about the change but added there are plans to assist those 39 schools with SROs in the fall.

"We are going to have arrival and dismissal support, and another example is we are going to have ongoing meetings. These are things we expect will continue as we work through this transition," she said.

It's anticipated there will be 30 days for public comment on the whole-school safety proposal, and the committee will present a final proposal at the school board meeting in July.