Phoenix Might Pay More for Police in Schools than Teachers, Sign to Stop It

We are urging you to take a position against SB1099, a terrible anti-youth legislative proposal that is currently being considered by the Arizona State Legislature. Bill SB1099, the School Safety Program Bill, directs the Arizona Department of Education to prioritize grants for school resource officers (SROs) and juvenile probation officers in schools within communities with “high crime rates.” This will result in more police officers being placed in black/brown schools, which will increase the arrests of Black and Latino students on campus—feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

The past two weeks of Trump’s presidency has shown us that many of the communities represented by our school youth population are at risk of being further discriminated, criminalized and even deported. It is your political and moral responsibility as a school board to ensure that the students you service are safe instead of making school environments more hostile by heightened police presence.

Currently we have a crisis in education. In 2016, our state systematically chose to cut education by $21 million while allocating $17 million for a project to increase beds at Eloy private detention center. A safe school is a school that has enough teachers, enough books, school programs like art, music, and other character building activities that will create whole and healthy adults which in turn creates safe communities. A safe school cannot be defined by over-policing.

Phoenix Union High School District does not need police officers. Advocating for more SRO's on campuses is the wrong answer to solving disciplinary issues with young people that need intervention based on love and guidance. We must go beyond solutions that are about police. Studies have shown that even accounting for all other variables, that the mere placement of an SRO on campus increases the arrests made on that campus five times more probable.

Sign this petition, and say YES to safe schools that promote creativity and so NO to incarceration.