With schools opening this week, Boston needs to finish safety plan and resolve questions about role of police – The Boston Globe

Until the pandemic closures, school leaders generally relied on school resource officers, a euphemism for school police, who had arrest powers and carried handcuffs but not weapons. However, these officers were not part of the Boston Police Department. That was a flawed system, and when a change in state law in late 2020 meant the city would have had to train those officers to obtain a special certification, the district chose to get rid of them instead.

The problem is that getting rid of police in schools didn’t eliminate problems that have required a police response.

And so, in the absence of a clear policy, principals, teachers, and other staff members just deal with fights, drugs, or even weapons themselves — or call 911 and hope that the officers who respond understand how to deal with teens in a nuanced manner.

Principals need more concrete guidance than that — and they should get it. For months, the district and the Boston police have been working on a new agreement on how to structure their relationship. Recent large fights in the city involving youth, including a chaotic scene at a downtown movie theater, are naturally raising fresh concerns among school leaders about safety once school opens this week. City officials owe it to the community to finalize the agreement.

The agreement should spell out when principals are expected to call police — and under what circumstances it is appropriate for officers to be present in schools. More importantly, it should mark a fresh beginning between the school department and the police.

To critics, the old system did more harm than good, creating an oppressive atmosphere of overpolicing at schools that criminalized conduct issues and perpetuated the school-to-prison pipeline. And the way school resource officers shared information with the BPD and the regional gang database, for instance, isn’t something the city should go back to.

But it shows a real lack of imagination to portray the old school police system and the current improvised, school-by-school approach as the only two choices. The city should learn from its past mistakes and improve school safety protocols — and not leave it up to school leaders to figure out how to deal with a 13-year-old who is found carrying a knife.

The city could, for instance, reinstate some form of school resource officer to deal with immediate safety issues but restrict them from sharing information with other law enforcement by establishing clear and narrow processes to do so.

None of these suggestions are groundbreaking or new. In fact, they’re overdue. That the negotiations are happening at all is the result of state intervention. As part of a deal struck last year to avert a state takeover, the district promised to produce a new safety plan and it hired a consultant who then issued a series of recommendations. They included that the school system should codify the role of police in its schools and create a task force of stakeholders to study whether or not the district “should form an internal, sworn police department,” among other policy recommendations.

The Wu administration has been touchy about the talks (asked this week for an update, city spokesperson Ricardo Patrón said the district is working to finalize a memorandum of understanding that will establish clear processes for BPD to partner with school leaders).

Earlier this year, the mayor’s spokesperson said that the new agreement will not result in police going back into schools. But that ship has sailed. Police are back in schools — just on an ad hoc basis with no transparency or districtwide rules.

Students deserve a safe learning environment; teachers deserve a safe workplace. It’s on the district to provide clear guidelines about what role police should play in providing it.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.