PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Public Schools board has suggested creating a new partnership with Portland police to help address recent violence in and around schools.
It was one of several recommendations made during a school board meeting Tuesday night.
The district appointed a safety and security task force aimed at finding solutions to tackle the issue of increasing violence and shootings on and near school properties.
The task force presented its suggestions at Tuesday's meeting, including its proposal to collaborate with police to reestablish the Youth Services Division.
To be clear, school resource officers, or SROs, would not be in Portland schools. The district disbanded its SRO program in 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Last night, the task force suggested having police officers stationed near schools rather than inside them. The task force said that move would help deter crime and would allow police officers to respond quickly. The police officers would be in communication with school leaders.
"Our students, for the most part, don't really want to see armed, uniformed officers in the school, but they do want to know that they're back somehow," said school board member Amy Kohnstamm during the meeting.
The graphic below lists other suggestions including the following: expanding safety and youth violence prevention teams, creating a walking patrol to ensure students safely get to and from school, instituting a rapid response system for staff, and requiring that middle and high school students wear ID badges at all times.
The school board had questions on how the different programs would work. They also stressed during the meeting that what could work in one school may not work in another.
The task force hopes to start a pilot program this fall to outline exactly what police officer's roles would be.
There have been multiple shootings near Portland high schools in the past few months. In December 2022, a Cleveland High School student was shot outside the school in what detectives said was not a random act. In January 2023, shots were fired outside of Franklin High School as a basketball game was happening in the gym. A juvenile had minor injuries and a 15-year-old boy was detained.