Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Rekia Jibrin
Education
School Safety in Police-free Schools
School safety in the United States primarily relies on policing and surveillance. Mounting evidence shows these measures disproportionately harm Black, Brown, and disabled students through increased disciplinary actions, criminalization, and trauma. Since May 2020, 50 school districts nationally have eliminated or reduced their school policing programs, creating an urgent need to understand how these policy changes affect student experiences with discipline and safety (Riser-Kositsky et al. 2021; Warren 2021). Despite this critical moment, education research examining the impact of school police abolition policies remains virtually nonexistent. Even less studied is how disabled students fare in police-free schools (Annamma 2017). My research will be the first to examine empirically how school police abolition policy impacts discipline and school safety for high school students, with particular attention to how race, gender, and disability shape these experiences. Using critical ethnography, I will study the Oakland Unified School District's (OUSD) June 2020 “George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate School Police” (GFR) which disbanded the district’s police department and established alternative school safety interventions. I will conduct intensive fieldwork collecting participant observation, interview, and focus group data. This research will produce foundational empirical evidence about school police abolition policy, filling a critical gap in education scholarship. The award will enable me to produce three foundational journal articles that will form the basis for a book project after promotion, positioning me as a leading scholar in this emerging field.