The Pittsburgh Public Schools board on Wednesday night voted 4-3 to eliminate a section of a grant proposal that would have sent four security guards to the police academy.
District administrators said they’ve had difficulty filling four school police vacancies but that 16 of their security guards are interested in becoming officers.
The administration outlined a proposal during the board meeting for a nearly $500,000 state grant to be used for school mental health, safety and security measures. The proposal included a $27,000 line item to fund police academy training for four security guards.
They proposed to use two-thirds of the money to install exterior lighting and visitor management systems in schools.
Chief operations officer Mike McNamara advocated for filling four school police vacancies with security guards who would work alongside an officer as they train at the academy. He said he wanted to have board approval before negotiating the details with the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, which represents district security guards and police officers.
But four board members took issue with using grant funds in that way.
Pam Harbin, Jamie Piotrowski, Tracey Reed and Devon Taliaferro voted to remove the police academy from the proposal.
Harbin raised concerns during last week’s board meeting to review the agenda. When she asked McNamara on Wednesday if he had produced alternatives to replace the police academy, he said he had not.
Taliaferro said she did not see the police academy as professional development in the way the administration described. She said she wanted that money to pay for practices that repair harm and “get to the root cause” of student issues.
School police officers have arresting authority while guards don’t, Taliaferro said, as she referenced a 2022 ACLU report that found students in Allegheny County encounter the juvenile and criminal justice systems more often than do students in all other Pennsylvania counties.
Black students were found to be much more likely than their white peers to be arrested. A report from Gwen’s Girls found Pittsburgh Public Schools police are the largest source of juvenile justice referrals for Black girls in Allegheny County.
According to the report, the district’s police refer students to law enforcement at rates higher than that of students in 95 percent of similarly sized U.S. cities.
Reed said the grant proposal was a good example of sticking to the status quo rather than envisioning what environments the district wants to create for students, noting “it’s not more police.”
“Part of what we’ve created in our schools is a climate where students are making really bad decisions. Instead of focusing on how do we change what we as a board, central office, what we’re doing in schools, we’re just doing business as usual and we’re doing things in the way that we’ve done them for the last 30 years,” she said. “We need to think about how we’re addressing student behavior … until we get to that point where we as adults have those hard conversations, we will continue to just sort of spin our wheels.”
The board did not approve a line item to replace the academy proposal, but members noted the grant would also cover peer support and mentoring programs. Gene Walker, Sylvia Wilson and Sala Udin voted against removing the police academy training. Kevin Carter and Bill Gallagher were both absent.
Wilson supported the police academy proposal because she said it was preferable to hiring someone without experience in the schools. Walker said he was frustrated the board wasn’t trusting administrators to do their jobs.
He asked that the board come up with solutions.
Harbin and Piotrowski suggested guards are interested in becoming officers because of the better pay. They asked the administration to focus on increasing wages for the guards rather than using grant funds to train them for different positions.
The board approved the amended grant proposal, though administrators suggested they may come back for another vote next month. The approved proposal calls for using nearly two-thirds of the grant on exterior lighting at 17 sites and installing visitor management systems at 55 sites.
The system would enable schools to scan identification cards to screen visitors against watch lists and track them throughout the building, according to the proposal.
An adjoining grant proposal seeks nearly $500,000 for mental health support. The administration proposed that money expand existing programs that train staff to identify children in need of behavioral health support.
