At Framingham School Policing Forum, Students Say 'Just Listen'

FRAMINGHAM, MA — A forum held Wednesday on police in Framingham schools drew dozens of attendees, including local elected officials, experts and students who say the presence of officers in schools is harmful to their education.

The forum was a collaboration between the group Framingham Families for Racial Equity in Education (FFREE) and Framingham State University. FFREE has since last summer advocated for the removal school resource officers (SROs) from Framingham High School and Keefe Tech. The group collected hundreds of signatures on a petition for the removal effort last year.

Wednesday's event featured Framingham State University sociology professor Zeynep Gonen, who has studied policing in the U.S. and in other nations. She said police forces in the U.S. were originally intended "to control particular populations," including immigrants and the poor. Today, the police presence in schools has led to higher student arrest rates, and little evidence of increased security.

"For some people [police are] a sign of feeling secure, but for some, mostly racially disadvantaged populations, BIPOC people, students with disabilities, they definitely are at the center of being negatively impacted by the criminalizing impact of the SROs," she said.

Matthew Cregor, an attorney with the Boston-based Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, described how SROs have evolved in Massachusetts. A 2014 state law in response to the Sandy Hook shooting required districts to maintain SROs. In 2018, state law changed to require districts to reform relationships between school districts and police — that included a requirement to report the number of school-based arrests.

During the 2018-19 school year, Framingham reported six arrests, the highest in the state tied with Chicopee. Cregor said that was likely an under count: that same year, Boston reported four school-based arrests to state officials, but the actual number was over 100.

In December, Gov. Charlie Baker signed a police reform bill that ended the 2014 requirement that school districts station police in schools. That gives districts the option to keep or remove SROs. Worcester recently announced SROs will no longer patrol buildings by the beginning of 2022. The Northampton School Committee banned SROs last summer.

Framingham High School Black Student Union president Gaina Jean Pierre talked about her experiences with SROs. She said officers always seem to appear wherever there's a discipline problem, putting Black and brown students at higher risk of ending up in criminal trouble.

"When we're in school, they're usually used as discipline," she said. "If someone got in trouble, they were always there. If any fights went down, they were there. If it was just a conversation, they were there."

The overarching message from the adults and students: if students say SROs are harming them, school officials should listen. Jean Pierre said she would want SROs replaced with mental health counselors and other professionals who could deal with problems without putting students at risk of arrest.

The Framingham School Committee in March approved the district's fiscal 2022 budget request — and that included a line for $241,000 to pay for the SROs, although that money is technically part of the city's budget, not the school department.

"It's nothing personal, it's just the system," Jean Pierre said. "Your students are talking, and if they feel this type of way and are trying to achieve something, it would be great if you would just listen."