Seattle School Board Foiled City’s Covert Plan To Pay Cops With Education Dollars

Last week, the Seattle School Board voted 5-2 against reviving the School Resource Officer program at Garfield High School, which would have overturned one of the few, lasting policies won during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. And the vote didn’t just prevent one temporary contract for one officer. According to public records, it may have stopped the City’s plan to use dollars designated for education to put 15 cops in schools around the City. 

In March, Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington sent out the “approved” primer on the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy renewel for council members, according to public records obtained by education advocates from the Keep Your Promise Coalition. In the section breaking down the FEPP levy proposal for 2026-2032, the presentation read, “Adds 15 FTEs (SRO-type presence) in or around schools and sustains current supports at schools impacted by violence.” 

No mention of 15 FTEs in “SRO-type” positions ever appeared in the public slideshows — the City does not have the power to overturn the moratorium on cops at schools. Still, education advocates expressed concern for the last several months that the City was plotting to use FEPP for cops.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has been quietly pushing for the return of cops to school campuses as early as August 2022, according to Notes from the Emerald City. But the conversation really started to heat up in Spring of 2024 when Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes publicly advocated for SROs in an interview with KIRO7.

Around the same time, City Hall began negotiating the renewal of Harrell’s FEPP levy — a $1.3 billion package that, tellingly, carves out $235 million for “safety.” That word — “safety” — is the Mayor’s favorite euphemism for policing. Advocates immediately sounded the alarm: There’s little to no evidence that cops make schools safer, and plenty that they criminalize students, especially Black and brown youth. Harrell brushed off their concern, telling Capitol Hill Seattle Blog his investments would not violate the 2020-era moratorium — again, he doesn’t have the power to change that policy.

Still, advocates worried that the City dedicated such a large sum to “safety” in hopes that the School Board would vote to overturn their moratorium and then the City could allocate that money to cops in the implementation process after it (likely) passes in November. 

That concern grew deeper after the council snubbed Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s amendment that gave“high level” guidance for levy dollars to address the root causes of violence and implement non-punitive solutions that do not contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. Her council colleagues took that as a direct attack on the campaign to put cops back on school campuses — even though it would not prevent a SRO revival, it would just force the City to pay for it out of SPD's existing budget.

“Unlike every other amendment put forth, which builds upon the levy, adds to, supplements, I think this particular amendment is extremely limiting, extremely restrictive,” said Council Member Rob Saka. “And I’m not prepared to tell the families of parents at Garfield, for example, “no,” that they don’t get, that they don’t deserve, nor should they be funded school resource officers or SEOs.”

The council passed her amendment but with a verbal amendment that stripped the specific language around interrupting school-to-prison pipeline as it may "discourage" paying for cops with levy dollars, which like, lol. 

But that’s in the past! Last week’s vote confirmed that cops will not be returning to Seattle schools, even if the City seemed ready to pay for it with education levy dollars. And according to KUOW, it doesn’t look the board has any near-term plans to revisit the issue. Board President Gina Topp said  they'll "continue listening and learning from the feedback we've received."