Black students still make up more than their fair share of disciplinary interactions with campus police, new data from Fresno Unified show.
Trustees voted in June to restore contracts with the Fresno Police Department, providing middle school campuses with Student Resource Officers, or SROs. The contracts for the district’s middle schools had lapsed during a tense, pandemic-era debate over the role of law enforcement in schools and amid renewed efforts by some to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
Fresno police faced new stipulations in these most recent contracts with Fresno Unified, however, including being tasked with more thoroughly tracking their interactions with students. Out of that came a new district data tool where officers log both positive and discipline-related interactions with students, as well as instances when students report safety concerns to them.
