Christina to replace police officers with constables in middle schools

Why Should Delaware Care? 
A national debate has been ongoing for years about whether school resource officers increase safety in schools or if they simply direct kids into the criminal justice system. Earlier this month, the Christina Board of Education joined the conversation when it voted to phase out school resource officers in middle schools.

The Christina School District will phase out its use of school resource officers at middle schools, and replace them with constables. 

Following a heated debate at a meeting earlier this month, the Christina school board voted to retain school resource officers (SROs) at middle schools for just six months, giving the district the time to hire constables as replacements. The officers will remain at the district’s three high schools for the full school year. 

The decision was the result of two votes by the school board. The first would have renewed the school resource officers’ contracts with the Christina School District. Five members on the seven-person board voted against it, including Amy Trauth, Celita Cherry, Stephanie Ingram, Doug Manley and Lauren Swain.

A subsequent vote to replace SROs with constables, which are direct employees of a school district, passed. The measure was meant to be a compromise, balancing some board members’ concerns with having armed officers in schools and the need for school safety. 

But not every board member was satisfied.

“Since the police officers are required to be armed as part of their contract, I cannot support these contracts,” Manley, the only board member to vote against the compromise, said during the board meeting.

School resource officers are sworn police officers who work in schools but remain within the law enforcement chain of command. While supporters say they can effectively respond to dangerous situations, critics have increasingly argued they cause students to be arrested for actions that in the past would not involve law enforcement. 

News reports from across the country in recent years have highlighted the critiques of SROs. One report from Iowa said Black students and students with disabilities are more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement than other students. In Texas, reporters have found thousands of use-of-force incidents in recent years.

It is not immediately clear if those trends hold true in Delaware. 

Spotlight Delaware requested data from the Delaware State Police regarding incidents such as arrests or detainment of students in the Christina, Brandywine, Red Clay Consolidated, and Colonial school buildings that did not fall under Wilmington Police jurisdiction, but was told the information would require a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request. 

By contrast, the Wilmington Police Department did provide data. A department spokesperson said its officers made one arrest during the past year at the Maurice Pritchett Academy and one arrest at the Bayard School. Both schools serve Christina students in first through eighth grade. 

There were seven arrests made at the Howard High School of Technology and 15 made at Brandywine’s P.S. duPont Middle School, the spokesman David Karas said. 

“The vast majority of these charges were not physical arrests, but rather an SRO issuing a summons or a juvenile civil citation,” Karas said in a statement. 

Karas also said that an officer would take other charges that would not involve “a formal criminal charge” during incidents that warrant immediate intervention, such as fights. 

An ongoing conversation

The Christina school board’s August meeting did not mark the first disagreement between board members about whether to renew SRO contracts.

During a May board meeting, Christina Superintendent Deirdra Aikens and Harold “Butch” Ingram, the assistant to the superintendent, presented three options for school safety. 

The first would be to make no changes. The second would be to keep SROs only in the high schools and replace them with constables in the middle schools. The third option would be to replace all SROs with constables. 

Though the board voted three months later to move ahead with the second option, some members say they have not received comments of concern from community members regarding the presence of SROs in schools. 

Board President Monica Moriak said the board did not have conversations with the Christina community regarding their thoughts on SROs in schools. She also noted that the last school year was “a very traumatic year, especially for Pritchett”

Last October, a shooting took place near the Maurice Pritchett Academy, which is part of the Christina School District. Both victims attended Newark High School, as reported by the Newark Post. 

Moriak said she wants the board to hold follow-up listening sessions with community members, but does not know what those will look like yet. 

Manley also said he has not had community members approach him with concerns relating to SROs’ presence in schools. 

Instead, Manley said most of his conversations are about “educating them that constables and police officers are different.”

Balancing safety and accountability

For some board members, the conversation about school safety cannot end with whether or not a school has SROs. 

Board Vice President Y.F. Lou said the root causes of incidents, such as why students may be fighting or why there are “violent encounters,” must also be addressed. 

“That’s always where my guiding principle is: can we prevent this, and what can we do to prevent this, and what resources do we have to make sure that you know that preventative intervention is in place,” he said.

For other board members, the crux of the concern regarding SROs is whether they can be held responsible for any incidents that may occur, especially because they are armed. 

During the August meeting, Manley said he was against hiring “contracted police officers” because SROs “are not employees of our district; they are employees of their police troop.” 

As contracted police officers, SROs fall under the Delaware Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, also known by its acronym LEOBOR. 

Manley told Spotlight Delaware there is “zero transparency and accountability” for SROs because of LEOBOR. 

Manley also referenced the recent shooting of 19-year-old Kadir Skinner in Wilmington, which he said police did “for no reason.” 

The City of Wilmington police department has asserted that Skinner had pointed a gun toward a crowd of people prior to the foot chase, during which an officer shot the teen in the back.