Los Angeles School District Will Cut 39 Percent of School Police Force and Replace Those Jobs with 'Climate Coaches'
The Los Angeles Unified School District is bending the knee to left-wing mobs by defunding the police who protect its students and replacing them with “climate coaches.”
The move has fueled a backlash from critics, who say getting rid of police will endanger children by making schools less safe.
The LA Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States.
In an 85-page report, the school board proposed cutting $25 million from its budget for school police officers. The plan was approved Tuesday.
News Release: Board Cuts School Police to Improve Black Student Achievement
https://t.co/uOgxvJJztn pic.twitter.com/nq9isQzdF7— Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools) February 17, 2021
This will result in the elimination of 133 jobs from the LA School Police Department, leaving just 211 officers to safeguard a school district with 650,000 students — one officer for every 3,080 students.
The school district unanimously decided to defund the police after leftist activists and students who support the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement pressured it for months.
The catalyst for the past nine months of anti-police riots and protests in LA and nationwide was the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
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The $25 million diverted from police will be coupled with an additional $11.5 million to create a $36.5 million fund for the new “Black Student Achievement Plan.” The program is designed to help 53 predominantly black local schools with below-average proficiency in math and English.
An additional $9.9 million will be used to hire “climate coaches” for all secondary schools in the L.A. school district.
The school board said the climate coaches “will provide students with an advocate on campus who is trained and focused on implementing positive school culture … eliminating racial disproportionality in school discipline practices, and understanding and addressing implicit bias.”
On Wednesday, the LA School Police Management Association reacted by issuing a statement warning that getting rid of police will make schools less safe for students and teachers.
“Make no mistake, this will impact student and staff safety,” Rob Taylor, president of the LASPMA, said.
?Press release: #LASPMA
Today the @LASchools board moved forward with 25 million dollars in cuts from the @LASchoolPolice. These cuts will result in the loss of 133 positions cutting nearly 28% of the department staff. Make no mistake, this will impact student and staff safety. pic.twitter.com/7JusORoH88
— L.A. School Police Mgmt Assoc (@LASchoolPMA) February 17, 2021
Taylor said the board showed “a blatant disregard” for the majority of parents, who want police protecting the schools their children attend.
He also warned that the decision will open up the school district to numerous lawsuits when violence inevitably skyrockets.
“This is likely to create a liability for the district when the inevitable tragedy occurs that could have been prevented or mitigated,” Taylor said.
Jackie Goldberg, a member of the LA Unified School District board, said it was important to defund the police because some black students had complained that they were being targeted.
“I have heard the concerns of black students who have felt targeted by school police,” Goldberg said, according to The New York Times.
Democrats and the establishment media have been recklessly pushing the false narrative that white cops are randomly hunting down black people because they’re “racist.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley said the BLM race riots in Democrat-run cities are based on a lie recklessly stoked by the left-wing media.
He said the “blanket media coverage” of these racially charged incidents — and the nonstop amplification they get on social media — have brainwashed people into believing this race-hustling trope.
“What I’m a little concerned about is that a lot people out there protesting are doing so because they’re convinced that this happens all the time to black people every day, that we walk around in fear of law enforcement treating us like this,” Riley told Fox News last year.
“I don’t think that what I saw is representative of either police behavior or what black people go through on a daily basis.”
He warned that the media’s hyping of this false narrative could cause a surge in crime — especially in black neighborhoods — and hurt the very people the patronizing left claims it’s trying to help.
“My concern is that there’s going to be a pullback on the part of police in some of these communities in the aftermath of events like this,” Riley said. “And then these communities will not get the policing that they need and they deserve going forward. And then you’ll see more black lives lost as a result.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
