School Resource Officers Nixed At San Mateo District: Report

SAN MATEO, CA — The presence of law enforcement on the middle school campuses at a Peninsula district will be no more.

The San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District ended a contract with the San Mateo Police Department that provided officers at local schools, The San Mateo Daily Journal reports.

The move follows a 4-1 vote by the Board of Trustees on Thursday in favor of terminating the school resource officer program, the report said.

The district’s move follows similar decisions made by others nationwide amid a reckoning over racial justice and policing in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in police custody when Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck for over eight minutes in May, The New York Times reports.

A 2013 study conducted by the Congressional Research Service on the effectiveness SROs indicated there was no hard evidence indicating they played a role in crime reduction, The New York Times report said.

Trustee Shara Watkins and Board President Noelia Corzo led the effort to consider whether the $260,000 spent annually on the program could be put to better use elsewhere, the report said.

“This to me doesn’t make the cut in terms of something we should be funding,” Watkins said according to the report.

Said Corzo: “We are taking away dollars from other things we could give to our students.”
San Mateo Police Officers’ Association President Rory McMilton said in a prepared statement before the board that the SRO program plays an important role in promoting safety and raising awareness among youth students of the risks of gang affiliation, the report said.

“The reality is that gangs do exist in this school district, SROs work daily to minimize the impact the gangs have on disrupting the learning environment,” McMilton said.

Read more in The San Mateo Daily Journal