School district votes to remove school resource officer from WHS

On Monday, Aug. 22, the Northshore School District voted unanimously to remove the school resource officer (SRO) from Woodinville High School for the 2022-23 school year.

The move comes after the City of Woodinville voted to continue the SRO program on Aug. 9.

The city and district are in an interlocal agreement to sponsor the SRO. Both must approve the contract, which provides an armed police officer to the school, for it to continue into the new school year.

“We’ve spent the last two week studying every piece of data that could be collected from all of our schools’ programs,” School Board President Jacqueline McGourty said in the Aug. 22 meeting. “Not to mince words–this has been a really hard one. I think all of us here have struggled with conflicting feelings about the program as well as the input that we’ve gotten.”

Eight people spoke during the public comments section of the board meeting, all in opposition to stationing an SRO at the high school. Several speakers were parents who spoke on behalf of students who said having an armed officer on campus made them feel less safe.

Amelie Fry, a WHS senior and member of a task force created by the district to determine the efficacy of SROs, was one of the speakers.

“At school, I have witnessed the intimidation and damage that the SRO program has caused firsthand,” Fry said. “The impact of this program is reflected in the numbers as well as in the experiences of students.”

Fry as well as Terique Scott, a legislative associate with the League of Education Voters, cited discriminology.org, a tool which examines racial disparities in student discipline at schools.

According to data in the Discriminology database, Black students at WHS are seven times more likely than White students to receive out-of-school suspensions. For Black boys, the disparities are even more stark. They are 14 times more likely than White boys to be given out-of-school suspensions.

Roxana Gomez, Youth Policy Manager for the ACLU of Washington, spoke as well. She said that, rather than police officers, the district should increase funding for counselors, social workers and psychologists in schools.

“Plainly put, the presence of police in schools has been shown to have a long-lasting negative impact on students,” Gomez said. “It can lead to increased rates of student arrests and exclusionary punishments, such as suspensions and expulsions, particularly on Black and Brown children and children with disabilities, which ends up perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline.”

Before the board’s decision, two of the four Northshore high schools had SROs. Now, only Bothell High School will have an SRO. Rather than police officers, Inglemoor and North Creek high schools have campus supervisors stationed at the schools–unarmed civilians trained to handle disciplinary situations with limited involvement by law enforcement. Interim Superintendent Michael Tolley said he wants to station campus supervisors at WHS now that the SRO is being removed.

School Board Vice President David Cogan praised the Navigator program recently implemented by the City of Bothell, which designates mental health professionals accompanied by a law enforcement officer to respond to individuals having mental or behavioral health crises, with the goal of decreasing use-of-force incidents. He suggested Northshore schools could follow a similar model. 

“[Public servants] are putting their jobs and their lives on the line to support the community. So I very much respect that. But I do acknowledge that things are best when they’re really optimized,” Cogan said, “having people with the right skillset to help with those citizens in a more effective way than burdening a trained police officer, who has a different skillset.”

Tolley said that the SRO task force will reconvene again this school year to determine what role police officers and other resources will play on campuses in the future.

“For me this really comes down to, ‘What is the need in our schools, and what is the best resource to accommodate that need?’” Cogan said.

In a statement to the Weekly, Mayor Mike Millman expressed disapproval with the school board’s decision. He said that, despite serious issues with SROs in other jurisdiction in the U.S., he believes the SRO at Woodinville High School was very popular and well-regarded.

“I am disappointed that there wasn’t an effort to improve the job parameters instead of taking away the School Resource Officer,” he wrote. “To my knowledge there was no outreach to Woodinville parents and perhaps even to the Principal At Woodinville High School that could have informed the District as to how well regarded the SRO has been.”