“Defund the police” is the cry being loudly proclaimed in the public square today. The phrase describes the plea by social justice advocates for municipalities and school boards to change their policing practices, and to redirect resources traditionally allocated to police departments to other, less militaristic conflict-resolution options.
As school districts defund their police departments, they are engaging in a restorative social justice practice, and I submit that all school districts should engage in this practice. In this writing, I discuss Critical Race Theory and frameworks for school districts to practice social justice.
With the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, residents of many communities around the United States have called upon their local municipal officials to reimagine policing and make budgetary adjustments consistent with those re-imaginings. Policy makers have been urged to reduce police budgets, and to use the funds captured from such reductions to create forms of conflict-resolution that are beyond traditional policing, and programs to benefit those communities that have been traditionally over-policed. Former President Barack Obama addressed this in 2021 saying, “The Reimagining Policing Pledge is a call for mayors and local officials to review and reform use of force policies, redefine public safety, and combat systemic racism within law enforcement.” (Commit to action: Addressing police use of force policies 2021).
Proponents of defunding police departments argue that police and weapons often exacerbate non-violent situations into violent confrontations, particularly in Black and brown communities. “For many marginalized communities, 911 is not a viable option because the police often make crises worse.” (McHarris and McHarris, 2020). These advocates “do not seek to do away with law enforcement altogether. Rather, they want to see the rotten trees of policing chopped down and fresh roots replanted anew.” (Ray, 2020). Among other things, they propose to remove lethal weapons from non-violent confrontations, and to create programs that will benefit the communities that have been most impacted by over-policing.
In response, mayors, city councils and school boards have begun to redirect funds usually allocated for police departments to other programs designed to reduce conflict. In addition, these policy makers are also creating programs to uplift communities that have been the targets of most excessive policing – Black and brown communities. School districts in Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Seattle and other cities have implemented new policing policies, and some have suspended or totally dismantled their police departments and redirected resources from their police departments to programs to advance opportunities for Black and brown students. (Bazzaz & Furfaro, 2020).
The Los Angeles Board of Education recently did exactly this. On February 16, 2021, it cut $25 million from its police budget, and it designated that money to fund a $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan that allocates funds for changes in curriculum and instruction – including utilizing textbooks written by Black authors, creating a school climate and wellness program designed to reduce the over-identification of Black students in suspensions and discipline, calls for psychiatric social workers, counselors, school climate coaches, and restorative justice advisors — and funds grants for schools to supplement their curriculum to make it more inclusive to Black students. (L.A. school board cuts its police force and diverts funds for black student achievement 2021).
My recent studies have included a robust discussion about Critical Race Theory, and how this theory has impacted current trends in education. As defined, Critical Race Theory is the view that “race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color.” What’s more, “critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.” (Critical race theory 2021).
I submit that the call to defund the police is squarely rooted in Critical Race Theory. Such calls are grounded in the idea that police departments are the primacy enforcers of efforts in American society to maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans. It is not an accident that those who advocate in favor of defunding the police site statistics showing the great disparity between the number and severity of police actions against African Americans and their presence in the general population. “In 2016, black Americans comprised 27% of all individuals arrested in the United States—double their share of the total population.” (Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System 2018). These calls to defund police departments primarily seek to correct these great inequalities by having municipalities and school districts reduce their police department budgets. But they also call for municipalities and school districts to repair damages that their police departments have propagated in communities of color – that is, to take actions and create programs that are specifically designed to benefit the communities that have been terrorized by police.
I submit that this practice – reducing police department budgets and redirecting the funds from these reductions to programs created to address needs of Black students (defunding school police) – is a tacit acknowledgement by the districts of the truth of Critical Race Theory. Each school district that redirected its school police department budget toward programs to benefit Black students did so as part of an effort to eliminate the inherently racist bias that has contributed to both the academic and disciplinary inequities that exist in those districts. Black students are still at the bottom of practically every objective measure of achievement. “Many children throughout the United States continue to under-perform on standardized assessments, and the effort to close the so-called achievement gap remains a national challenge. This is particularly true for many Black students, who with few exceptions, continue to perform at lower levels on most measures of academic achievement and attainment.” (Noguera, P., Bishop, J. Howard, T & Johnson, S., 2019). Further, Black students are still the most heavily disciplined group of students in practically any school district with any significant number of Black students. (Noguera, P., Bishop, J. Howard, T & Johnson, S., 2019). So when districts specifically resolve to redirect funds from policing to create new efforts to uplift the quality of education for Black students, they acknowledge the truth that Critical Race Theory cites.
No studies yet exist that compare the differences that manifest when school districts defund their police departments in deference to programs to assist Black students. This is likely so because either so few districts have defunded their departments, or because this practice is so very new. So I submit this writing as the first entry in the educational writing canon that argues that “defunding school police departments” in favor of programs to uplift academic achievement by Black students not only proves the truth of Critical Race Theory, but that it is a restorative justice practice.
Again, I learned of various frameworks used to analyze social justice. Among the tools of analysis was Picower’s Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Education. Her six elements include “self-love and knowledge, . . . respect for the history and characteristics of people different from themselves, . . . a critical examination of how identities impact people’s lived and material conditions, . . . learning about how people have fought against oppression through social movements, . . . students engagement in activities that increase the awareness of others in their community about the social issues they are studying, . . . and students having the opportunity to experience what it means to struggle for justice by engaging in social action themselves.” (Picower & Kohli, 2017).
While considering these elements in the context of teaching social justice within the classroom, I submit that these same elements are at play when school districts defund their police. In order for school districts to determine that their police departments have acted in racist ways, and that they must change their police budgets in deference to programs to uplift the quality of education for Black students, they engaged in at least a cursory examination (likely not a thorough examination) of how Black peoples lived and how material conditions have been impacted by their police departments. School district leaders likely also sought to learn about and implement changes in policing based on their learning about how Black people have suffered oppression at the hands of their police departments. In cases where the advocates for defunding the police have been students, school districts saw students engage in the struggle for social justice. These actions are all embodiments of Picowar’s frameworks – not in the context of the classroom, but in the context of an entire school district!
With specific regard to Picower’s sixth element, she urged that students learn about social justice when students can unite to solve larger problems of justice. This cannot be better exemplified than by the experience of Kamarie Brown and Emmanuel Karunwi. Brown, the LAUSD’s School Board’s Student Member, celebrated the action of the Board to divert funds from the police department toward the Black Student Achievement Plan by saying “I feel accomplished, I’m excited….I feel like people in charge are paying attention to what the people who are experiencing this have to say.”(Cowan, 2021). Karunwi, a student leader with the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition declared “this plan enacts a long-standing community demand for Counselors not Cops, and is a first step towards replacing school police with more effective strategies for student safety. This victory is a crucial step towards mitigating the years of disinvestment and ending the criminalization and over-policing of Black students and students of color in LAUSD.” (L.A. school board cuts its police force and diverts funds for black student achievement 2021). These examples demonstrate how the defund the police effort in Los Angeles was the framework to address issues manifested by Critical Race Theory in that city.
This leaves us to consider whether defunding the police is a restorative justice practice. It has been stated that “restorative justice is a theory of justice that focuses on mediation and agreement rather than punishment – a system where offenders must accept responsibility for harm and make restitution with victims.” (WeAreTeachers Staff on January 15, 2019). Restorative justice practice has proven to be successful in the classroom and even in specific schools. Within three years after the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) began using the program at a failing middle school, that school saw a decrease in suspensions by 87 percent, with a corresponding decrease in violence. By 2011, OUSD overhauled its disciplinary system and made restorative justice the new model for handling problems. “Restorative justice is a major cultural shift from a punitive model to a restorative model,” notes David Yurem, OUSD’s first program manager of restorative justice. (Restorative justice is a major cultural shift from a punitive model to a: Course Hero 2020).
I submit that as school districts have defunded their police departments and used the funds available from such defunding to create programs to uplift the academic standing of Black students, they are engaging in restorative justice practices. To be sure – restorative justice is most often thought of as a strategy to resolve one-on-one conflict, and it is usually practiced in the context of an individual student who has violated some rule or law or even offended someone on the school campus. Occasionally, the idea has even been used for the benefit of entire schools, as has been the case in Oakland. But it has not been thought of as a practice that can be applied to even larger societal institutions – like cities or school districts.
When a school district defunds its police department in deference to efforts to address needs for its Black students, it seeks to restore justice to those communities that have been most impacted by over-policing, and these are usually Black and brown communities. The forces that animate these municipalities and school districts to defund their police departments in deference to these new programs is a recognition of their historic racism – particularly as practiced against African-American communities, and the creation of these new Black-centric programs – like the Black Student Achievement Plan in Los Angeles – in an attempt to restore those communities and make them whole. Racist police practices have been one of the curses of our country throughout our history. Perhaps the killing of George Floyd, having raised and energized the “defund the police” movement, has finally galvanized our country to enact the restorative and rejuvenating social justice practices advocated for by the phrase. I submit that all school districts should defund their police departments, thus prompting those students whose communities have been the subjects of over-policing to high academic success so that they may be prepared to be tomorrow’s leaders in a rapidly diminishing and yet diversifying world. We all will be better for it.
