The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Split vote ratifies pacts for school resource officers

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 voted 6-1, board member Eva Porter voting no, on contracts for School Resource Officers (SRO) at secondary schools at its meeting on Monday, Sept. 27.
  The contracts total $1 million with four municipalities (Bartlett, Elgin, South Elgin, Streamwood) and were set for approval on Sept. 19, but that vote was deferred as U-46 demanded all SROs comply with Gov. JB Pritzker’s mandate that school employees submit to a COVID-19 shot or follow strict testing protocols.
  Pritzker made that mandate in August without any legislation giving him authority.
  U-46 Superintendent Tony Sanders said the municipalities “promptly got on this to make sure we got the compliance documents necessary.”
  Porter said she was voting no because she wants the district to mandate “more training in diversity and inclusion for the officers” that’s “not just left up to the police department.” The contracts do include new U-46 mandated training, Crisis Prevention Institute and Student Special Needs Awareness in Autism and Special Education.
  “I think the district SROs in schools play a very important role in our district safety and protection,” Porter said, but she added the data “shows a large disproportion of arrests in a certain population of students at this time.”
  However, Sanders has noted SROs only step in “if it rises to the level of criminal offense of some sort that must be reported.”
  Board member Veronica Noland, who voted yes this year, voted no last year as the board admitted they had no evidence of wrongdoing from U-46 SROs but decried the police in general as systematically racist. Noland said last year that “we have wonderful SROs,” but “I can’t have my vote be part of that systemic racism.”