X.-1 20-1335 Adoption by the Board of Education of Resolution No. 1920-0260 - George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department
As an OUSD K-12 alum, I urge you to pass the George Floyd Resolution to eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department. All these funds should be used for restorative justice and support services that our youth need! Your community stands with you to support this resolution. Take this step to truly protect the health, well-being, and safety of Oakland's youth. Meet this moment with the action it deserves!
I am overwhelmingly opposed to having police force on school grounds. It results in the traumatic exposure of our youth during formative stages their lives to punitive, systemic measures doled out without an ounce of compassion or interest in rehabilitation. It does not increase safety, and drains funding from the social services that can have actual, qualitative impact on their lives.
The public outrage against police violence is clear. Policing causes more fear and long-term harm than students should EVER have to endure. SHOW that you VALUE Black students by cutting ties with the school police department.
I support this proposal to eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department. Children should not be policed and criminalized. Children need to be cared for. Support services would actually address childrens’ needs in contrast to police who only serve to criminalize our youth. Police do not belong in schools!!! Please support this proposal.
I would like to call on the school board to recognize that in addition to the concerns that other community members have about the the violent nature of the police themselves, I believe the police force is an incredible waste of money that we should be using to invest in being able to pay educators adequately for doing the hard work that they do. I appreciate the work the board is doing to look at the problem holistically, but cutting the police here really is the low hanging fruit — it’s the most basic first step we can take to realizing that vision. I was a previous volunteer at Sankofa Academy in the OUSD where teachers openly and candidly told me how disappointed they were with both the underresourcing of the school itself, and how stretched thin they were in terms of emotional energy. We need to pay these teachers more, and what more long hanging fruit do we have here than the $6.5M we can easily cut from the police contract?
I am a teacher at Life Academy and a pediatrician at UCSF and BCHO. I strongly support this resolution. We need to reduce trauma exposures and toxic stress for young people so that they are able to focus on learning. We should absolutely remove police from Oakland public schools and instead spend that money on providing therapy and socio-emotional support instead.
Dear Board Members - as a supporter of BOP and in alignment with removal of the OUSD police department from our schools. I also want to comment on the absolute disrespect I observed by Ms. Hinton while members of her community were offering overwhelming support for BOP and the George Floyd Resolution. Her actions to disregard and ignore community comment - and then ultimately to sign off of the call altogether at 7:50 PM - should be nothing short of embarrassing to the Board and result in her termination from her position.
I support the resolution to take police out of OUSD schools. Students need teachers, social workers, coaches, mentors, and psychologists in their schools. They do not need to be policed.
I strongly support the George Floyd Resolution to remove police from public schools. The money would be better suited used towards counseling, libraries, lunch and educational programs.
As an Oakland resident, an OUSD teacher and as a parent OUSD students, I strongly support the George Floyd resolution to eliminate the OSPD.
Cops in schools don’t make our kids safer. They traumatize and hurt Black and Brown kids. They waste precious resources that could be used to provide medical/mental health care and social support to children and families. Please do the right thing for our kids, and dissolve the OSPD.
As an Oakland resident and as a parent, I strongly support the George Floyd resolution to eliminate the OSPD.
Cops in schools don’t make our kids safer. They traumatize and hurt Black and Brown kids. They waste precious resources that could be used to provide medical/mental health care and social support to children and families. Please do the right thing for our kids, and dissolve the OSPD.
I stand with the Black Organizing Project's George Floyd Resolution to eliminate the OSPD from Oakland schools. It is time to stop criminalizing our students and strengthening the prison-to-school pipeline. This movement is strong and we will be watching closely to hold you accountable on the reinvestment of resources into services that genuinely support the mental and behavioral health of our students.
As a teacher with 17 years of experience working largely in communities of color, with 6 years teaching in Oakland, now at Urban Promise Academy, a public middle school in Fruitvale, I am all too aware of how policing as we know it in schools it is inappropriate, ineffective, and poisonous to interactions. I support seizing this time to show courage, and take this step in dismantling institutional racism and the carceral state.
I am a physician and public health worker; my wife is a pediatrician working with some of Oakland's most vulnerable children. We both feel strongly that the police, in their current format, do not support the needs of children in terms of their development, security, safety, or mental wellbeing. Keeping kids safe in our schools is obviously a priority, but the history of school police in Oakland does not support a claim that their primary function is to keep kids safe; rather, they have had negative impacts on our youth, particularly youth of color, often facilitating the school-to-prison pipeline. Prioritizing the wellbeing of our kids requires fundamentally rethinking how safety and security are achieved, moving away from police and incarceration, and focusing on community accountability and restorative justice.
I just graduated from Oakland Tech and I fully support the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Public Schools Police Department. I believe there should be reallocation of funds to truly valuable school programs. I urge you to reallocate these funds to provide essential student services including counseling, mental health services, increased teacher salaries, libraries, lunch programs, after school programs, educational materials and technology, and other programs that do not criminalize my peers. Schools should build community and serve as a safe space; This is impossible with any form of police in our schools.
I write to you as a parent of two OUSD children and as a community member who cares
about the well-being of ALL the children in Oakland.
It is unacceptable that the police remain in Oakland schools. It is unacceptable that money
that could support students' growth and development is directed toward a force that can only do more harm.
OUSD students and teachers are confronted with budget cuts year after year. Schools do not equitably
educate our children because of this, and bringing the police into schools only further compromises
what ought to be a place children can flourish. We also know that police treat brown and black children
differently than white children. We do not need more evidence to prove this.
We do not need to sacrifice more Black lives to contemplate the 'right' thing to do.
Now it is your turn to represent the well-being of your constituents. DEFUND OUSD police presence.
Make our schools and city a healthier and more equitable place starting here.
Get the cops out. They don't make anyone safer or even feel safer. Redirect that money somewhere useful- counseling, restorative justice programs, special ed staffing, art and music programs. Really, just about anything. Cops are a danger to human beings, especially people of color.
I strongly support BOP's George Floyd resolution. Students of color, Black students in particular, deserve to be safe and we know that OUSD police do not make students safer. Instead, they promote violence and thinly veiled white supremacy. Protecting our kids means eliminating OUSD police from schools. Abolish the school-to-prison pipeline.
I strongly urge OUSD to pass this resolution for the sake of the students and the community.
As an OUSD K-12 alum, I urge you to pass the George Floyd Resolution to eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department. All these funds should be used for restorative justice and support services that our youth need! Your community stands with you to support this resolution. Take this step to truly protect the health, well-being, and safety of Oakland's youth. Meet this moment with the action it deserves!
I am overwhelmingly opposed to having police force on school grounds. It results in the traumatic exposure of our youth during formative stages their lives to punitive, systemic measures doled out without an ounce of compassion or interest in rehabilitation. It does not increase safety, and drains funding from the social services that can have actual, qualitative impact on their lives.
The public outrage against police violence is clear. Policing causes more fear and long-term harm than students should EVER have to endure. SHOW that you VALUE Black students by cutting ties with the school police department.
I support this proposal to eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department. Children should not be policed and criminalized. Children need to be cared for. Support services would actually address childrens’ needs in contrast to police who only serve to criminalize our youth. Police do not belong in schools!!! Please support this proposal.
I would like to call on the school board to recognize that in addition to the concerns that other community members have about the the violent nature of the police themselves, I believe the police force is an incredible waste of money that we should be using to invest in being able to pay educators adequately for doing the hard work that they do. I appreciate the work the board is doing to look at the problem holistically, but cutting the police here really is the low hanging fruit — it’s the most basic first step we can take to realizing that vision. I was a previous volunteer at Sankofa Academy in the OUSD where teachers openly and candidly told me how disappointed they were with both the underresourcing of the school itself, and how stretched thin they were in terms of emotional energy. We need to pay these teachers more, and what more long hanging fruit do we have here than the $6.5M we can easily cut from the police contract?
I am a teacher at Life Academy and a pediatrician at UCSF and BCHO. I strongly support this resolution. We need to reduce trauma exposures and toxic stress for young people so that they are able to focus on learning. We should absolutely remove police from Oakland public schools and instead spend that money on providing therapy and socio-emotional support instead.
Dear Board Members - as a supporter of BOP and in alignment with removal of the OUSD police department from our schools. I also want to comment on the absolute disrespect I observed by Ms. Hinton while members of her community were offering overwhelming support for BOP and the George Floyd Resolution. Her actions to disregard and ignore community comment - and then ultimately to sign off of the call altogether at 7:50 PM - should be nothing short of embarrassing to the Board and result in her termination from her position.
I support the resolution to take police out of OUSD schools. Students need teachers, social workers, coaches, mentors, and psychologists in their schools. They do not need to be policed.
The school to prison pipeline must be broken. Support youth with programs and services that enliven and encourage.
I strongly support the George Floyd Resolution to remove police from public schools. The money would be better suited used towards counseling, libraries, lunch and educational programs.
As an Oakland resident, an OUSD teacher and as a parent OUSD students, I strongly support the George Floyd resolution to eliminate the OSPD.
Cops in schools don’t make our kids safer. They traumatize and hurt Black and Brown kids. They waste precious resources that could be used to provide medical/mental health care and social support to children and families. Please do the right thing for our kids, and dissolve the OSPD.
As an Oakland resident and as a parent, I strongly support the George Floyd resolution to eliminate the OSPD.
Cops in schools don’t make our kids safer. They traumatize and hurt Black and Brown kids. They waste precious resources that could be used to provide medical/mental health care and social support to children and families. Please do the right thing for our kids, and dissolve the OSPD.
I stand with the Black Organizing Project's George Floyd Resolution to eliminate the OSPD from Oakland schools. It is time to stop criminalizing our students and strengthening the prison-to-school pipeline. This movement is strong and we will be watching closely to hold you accountable on the reinvestment of resources into services that genuinely support the mental and behavioral health of our students.
As a teacher with 17 years of experience working largely in communities of color, with 6 years teaching in Oakland, now at Urban Promise Academy, a public middle school in Fruitvale, I am all too aware of how policing as we know it in schools it is inappropriate, ineffective, and poisonous to interactions. I support seizing this time to show courage, and take this step in dismantling institutional racism and the carceral state.
I am a physician and public health worker; my wife is a pediatrician working with some of Oakland's most vulnerable children. We both feel strongly that the police, in their current format, do not support the needs of children in terms of their development, security, safety, or mental wellbeing. Keeping kids safe in our schools is obviously a priority, but the history of school police in Oakland does not support a claim that their primary function is to keep kids safe; rather, they have had negative impacts on our youth, particularly youth of color, often facilitating the school-to-prison pipeline. Prioritizing the wellbeing of our kids requires fundamentally rethinking how safety and security are achieved, moving away from police and incarceration, and focusing on community accountability and restorative justice.
I just graduated from Oakland Tech and I fully support the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Public Schools Police Department. I believe there should be reallocation of funds to truly valuable school programs. I urge you to reallocate these funds to provide essential student services including counseling, mental health services, increased teacher salaries, libraries, lunch programs, after school programs, educational materials and technology, and other programs that do not criminalize my peers. Schools should build community and serve as a safe space; This is impossible with any form of police in our schools.
I write to you as a parent of two OUSD children and as a community member who cares
about the well-being of ALL the children in Oakland.
It is unacceptable that the police remain in Oakland schools. It is unacceptable that money
that could support students' growth and development is directed toward a force that can only do more harm.
OUSD students and teachers are confronted with budget cuts year after year. Schools do not equitably
educate our children because of this, and bringing the police into schools only further compromises
what ought to be a place children can flourish. We also know that police treat brown and black children
differently than white children. We do not need more evidence to prove this.
We do not need to sacrifice more Black lives to contemplate the 'right' thing to do.
Now it is your turn to represent the well-being of your constituents. DEFUND OUSD police presence.
Make our schools and city a healthier and more equitable place starting here.
Get the cops out. They don't make anyone safer or even feel safer. Redirect that money somewhere useful- counseling, restorative justice programs, special ed staffing, art and music programs. Really, just about anything. Cops are a danger to human beings, especially people of color.
I strongly support BOP's George Floyd resolution. Students of color, Black students in particular, deserve to be safe and we know that OUSD police do not make students safer. Instead, they promote violence and thinly veiled white supremacy. Protecting our kids means eliminating OUSD police from schools. Abolish the school-to-prison pipeline.