I’m appalled Alameda County supervisors are considering making the Sheriff’s Office the lead agency to operate Reach Ashland Youth Center. You should be, too.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors needs to heed public calls to limit — not expand — the sheriff’s involvement in the youth center. The Sheriff’s Office’s already runs some programs at the youth center. Many youth and community members, however, are justifiably upset at what they perceive as mission creep by the proposal to make it the community’s new youth care provider.

If the sheriff is serious about serving youth and contributing to crime prevention, then he should support funding for services to help expand resources that make our communities safe, healthy and strong.

I am wary of putting our next generation in the hands of a Sheriff’s Office that has a history of disproportionately criminalizing and incarcerating immigrants and people of color. Sheriff Greg Ahern supported the nomination of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General and runs a department that actively contradicts Alameda County’s sanctuary values by sharing information with Immigration Customs and Enforcement.

As author Michelle Alexander writes, “this school-to-prison pipeline is the current version of Jim Crow.”

The youth center has provided arts, athletic and education programs, a health clinic, and an early childhood education to mostly African American, Asian and Latin youth since 2013. Ashland is an unincorporated area near Hayward and San Leandro, where the sheriff’s department serves as both the police force and the jailer. During my 40 years in education, speaking to students throughout the county, it was apparent there is hardly a family of color who doesn’t have a loved one affected by arrest, incarceration, probation and, in too many cases, death or abuse by law enforcement. When people of color are approached by police, fear is a predominant reaction and paranoia is not without cause.

Supervisor Nate Miley’s proposal to oust the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency from oversight of the youth center is a grave injustice. Under the agency’s management, the youth center fostered a welcome sense of community and provided a safe place for kids who otherwise would be on the street after school. Reach provides a bright spot in a community that needs more health-based resources, not more police surveillance and oversight.

Alameda County communities deserve a budget that prioritizes investment in long-term public safety measures that can improve the health and well-being of all people. The opportunity of the county’s steadily declining jail population could allow more investment in community-run programs like the Reach Ashland Youth Center.

Miley’s proposal has been removed from the board’s agenda and there is no new date for discussion. Tell your supervisor that our policymakers should prioritize health and education over criminalization and incarceration and reject Miley’s proposal.

Our children deserve contact with community mentors, artists, musicians, health-care providers and trained teachers. We pay and train police and sheriff officers to keep our streets safe; we don’t pay them to be our educators or health counselors.

Sheila Jordan was the Alameda County superintendent of schools for 16 years.