Two months ago, the Santa Barbara Unified School District board of trustees unanimously voted to remove an armed school resource deputy from San Marcos High School.
Now, the board is looking to “reimagine” the role of law enforcement on campuses, but the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has a different idea for how to keep schools safe.
The trustees last week talked about the school resources deputy program and ways make to students feel safer.
The board members took no vote, but it’s becoming clear that they want to make a change, and do something consistent across all three public high schools in the district.
“The common goal here is for student safety,” said board member Wendy Sims-Moten. “We need to collaborate with our first responders and establish relationships with law enforcement.”
Sims-Moten said the roles and expectations need to be clarified.
“School is a place where all have to go,” Sims-Moten said. “We don’t always want to go there, but we certainly don’t want it to be place where you are fearing to go there so it is really important that we minimize that fear.”
The decision to remove the San Marcos school resource deputy came after a San Marcos campus group, Cops Off Campus! SB Student Coalition, pushed for the removal.
Many students believe that law enforcement on campus unfairly target students of color and other underrepresented groups, and contribute to students feeling unsafe. The group wants to work with the district administration to find alternatives to officers to help provide services for students and support their needs.
Sims-Moten and other board members stressed the importance of establishing mental health services on the campuses, rather than having law enforcement.
An armed resource deputy, George Hedricks, is currently assigned to Dos Pueblos High School. The position is funded by the city of Goleta. Santa Barbara High School does not have a school resources deputy.
Since the removal of the San Marcos deputy, the school district has moved to approve the hiring of a clinical social worker and two campus safety assistant positions.
As for the future of DP and Santa Barbara High, the board is looking to make changes and establish consistency on the campuses.
One idea is to boost funding for mental health health counselors and assign Hedricks to both Dos Pueblos and San Marcos high schools so that the position is more of a “community resources deputy,” rather than at just one campus.
Sims-Moten compared the situation to pulling a fire alarm on a campus. She said when you pull the fire alarm, the Fire Department will respond, but that in the meantime, there’s education and prevention happening on the campus.
“When you see a law enforcement officer, it’s because they are there to enforce the law, because some behavior has been elevated to that, but we want that to be the exception, and not the rule,” Sims-Moten said.
Chief Deputy Craig Bonner of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office spoke at the meeting, and disagreed with the approach of responding after the fact.
“I really hate the idea of moving away from community policing and moving toward an after-the-fact response,” Bonner said.
He said that type of an approach would be “going backwards.”
“If we get to the point of where we are handling something as a crime, we kind of failed as a team, between all of us,” Bonner said. “If you ask me, the most valuable thing that a school resources deputy does is avoiding things that turn into crimes, avoiding situations that spin out of control and become lockdowns.”
Bonner said there is value in law enforcement on campuses alongside strong mental health services.
“It should not be an either/or situation,” Bonner said.
He added that the Sheriff’s Office is “absolutely willing to come to the table to discuss alternative viewpoints.
He urged the board not to rush into a decision,and to understand that the deputies are not “school safety officers,” but are “community policing specialists.”
“Having somebody who is known to the faculty, who is known to the students, who is an expert as it relates to that form of community policing, is completely different than when you have just a generalized patrol response, when basically the school calls for help and we send the first available deputy that is on patrol.”
Board member Virginia Alvarez said she wants to see more mental health services and an improved effort to inform students of the services that are currently available.
“One thing that came up consistently was the need for mental health services,” Alvarez said of her conversations and meetings on the topic.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
