Salinas City Elementary School District joins others in rejecting cops on campus.

In many ways, the Feb. 11 Salinas City Elementary School District board meeting felt like déjà vu. A crowd of 50-plus packed into the district office, with several dozen attendees wearing shirts that read #schoolsnotprisons. The vast majority were there for one vote: whether or not the board would approve placing Salinas police on school campuses as school resources officers.

In December 2018, a group of parents approached the board requesting they look into getting school resource officers on their campuses, with an eye toward the Salinas Police Department’s existing $3.4 million grant for SROs. Salinas PD had been looking for a place to use that funding, but stopped courting districts in mid-2017 after the boards of Alisal Union and Salinas Union soundly rejected SROs. (Board members from Santa Rita Union School District approached SPD after those two rejections and do have officers on campus.)

“We didn’t put this on the agenda. [Parents] brought it to us,” SCESD board president Amy Ish said.

Still, there was impassioned pushback from opponents. Members of organizations including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), NAACP, Building Healthy Communities and MILPA spoke out. Joining them were current parents and formers students of SCESD. Speakers’ concerns included officers having access to student records (a privilege board members don’t have), long-term funding (SCSED is facing a $5.8 million deficit), and a lack of data as to the effectiveness of SROs in making schools safer.

Speaking as a parent against SROs, teacher Oscar Ramos said misconceptions and a lack of information strained community-to-police relations. “We need buy in, we don’t have that right now,” said Ramos, who suggested alternative programs for school safety.

After 90 minutes of public comment, the board voted 4-0 to reject SROs on their campuses. (Art Galimba abstained, citing a lack of data.) SCESD is now the third school district that has rejected Salinas PD’s offer to fund SROs on their campuses.