As the Education Omnibus Bill, SB 451, went through second reading in the House of Delegates this week, dozens of amendments both good and bad were offered, accepted, and rejected.

One which came seemingly out of nowhere and was swiftly adopted was an amendment which would put a police officer in every school in West Virginia.

This apparently innocuous amendment makes this bill perhaps more damaging to students than the original bill which came from the Senate. While it seems like a good idea at first, study after study has shown that rather than increasing safety for students, having police officers in schools instead leads to increased criminalization of standard disciplinary offenses.

For a breakdown of this, here is a video from WV ACLU Policy Director Eli Baumwell.

Known as the school-to-prison pipeline, this impact lands most heavily on black and brown students, as well as those from low income househoulds.

The Advancement Project had this to say about the effect of police on minority students: "Safety does not exist when Black and Brown young people are forced to interact with a system of policing that views them as a threat and not as students. For many Black and Brown youth, the presence of police in their schools disrupts their learning environments. There is a culture clash that exists between law enforcement and the learning environment: police enforce criminal laws, while schools are supposed to nurture students. "

You can read more in a report on the subject found here.

Students are much safer, much healthier, and experience much better long-term benefits when they're provided with counseling in schools, rather than criminalization.

Please sign the petition below to ask the Conference Committee who will decide the fate of this bill to remove police from our schools.