× Expand Ryan Johnson

Police officers, retired police, and former members of the military working in schools—euphemistically termed “school resource officers”—don’t make black students feel safer. In fact, research shows that their presence in schools actually criminalizes students of color. But that’s just what the final report of President Donald Trump’s Federal Commission on School Safety, released in December, recommends. The panel also suggests that discipline guidelines put in place under the Obama Administration to counter the disproportionate disciplining of students of color, be rescinded.

There is little evidence that more law enforcement in schools prevents school shootings. And the research is clear that it directly feeds the school-to-prison pipeline.

We have visual evidence of what “law enforcement” in schools currently means for black students from widely shared videos of students being slammed against desks and walls in incidents at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, Brusly Middle School in Louisiana, and Alcovy High School in Georgia. According to the federal government’s own Department of Education, although black students make up only 16 percent of student enrollment, represent 27 percent of those referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students subjected to a school-related arrest.

According to a 2018 Pew Research report, 86 percent of teens believe that preventing people with mental illness from purchasing guns and improving mental health screenings would be effective at preventing school shootings, compared to only 39 percent of teens who say that allowing teachers to carry guns would be effective. The Pew study also found black teens are far more likely than white and Latinx teens to say allowing teachers to carry guns in schools wouldn’t be an effective measure. What would be effective, according to black teens, is banning assault-style weapons.

The school safety panel recommendations follow the Donald Trump political playbook: Blame people of color for white people’s problems, while justifying the passive racism of the status quo.

But on the matter of school mental health, the President’s panel offers a list of boilerplate suggestions for educators; specifically increasing awareness of mental health issues among students, providing information for financing mental health treatment, and including faith-based and other non-governmental organizations as part of a comprehensive team within districts to support students and the community. None of these ideas are new.

But Trump’s school safety panel recommendations aren’t really about making schools safer. In fact, they follow the Donald Trump political playbook: Blame people of color for white people’s problems, while simultaneously justifying the passive racism of the status quo.

According to a database of shootings between 1982 and 2018 created by Mother Jones, roughly 65 percent of mass school shootings at schools were at that hands of white males. Not a single school shooting was carried out by a black person.

Violence against black people is a part of this nation’s DNA, and education is no exception. In antebellum America, it was illegal for black person to learn how to read and write.

Almost a century later, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that black students would benefit from being integrated into white classrooms. But there was no accompanying obligation to hire black teachers or administrators, pushing most of them out of a job.

Today, predominantly black school districts in lower income areas are both less well-funded, and disproportionately labeled as “failing.” The courts have already set the precedent that state governments have no obligation to ensure that students in these districts know how to read. This puts them at a further disadvantage when competing with students from better funded districts, and on national and international stages.

The school-to-prison pipeline perpetuates a history of profiting from, rather than educating, black people.

And in most of these “failing” districts, black children are overly disciplined. A 2015 study “found that schools with relatively larger minority and poor populations are more likely to implement criminal justice-oriented disciplinary policies—such as suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests,” according to Vox. Such policies are the conveyor belt of the school-to-prison pipeline, which directly benefits the prison industry. On any given day, more than 50,000 youth are in juvenile detention facilities in this country, and black youth are overrepresented. The school-to-prison pipeline perpetuates a history of profiting from, rather than educating, black people.

This history explains why black parents believe their students receive a substandard education in public schools. It is why the number of black parents who homeschool their children tripled between 1999 to 2007. It is also why black parents believe guns in the hands of white teachers and “school resource officers” will endanger, not protect, their children.

The recommendations from Trump’s school safety panel benefit school privatizers, and institutions like prisons, at the expense of people of color. It’s the American way.