Public deserves more detailed information about school resource officers in Cedar Rapids schools

After making changes to the school resource program early in the school year, charges against students in the Cedar Rapids Community School District are down significantly over the past few months.

That is good news — charging students should be a last resort — but there are still outstanding concerns about police in local schools.

The racial disparities that led the school district to reevaluate its partnership with Cedar Rapids police still exist. Black students are still several times more likely to face legal action in school than white students. The arrest rate for white students decreased more than for Black students, exacerbating the disparity.

Another issue is transparency. At a School Board meeting this month, administrators presented some figures from August through November this year compared to previous years. We appreciated the update but it left us with at least as many questions as answers.

Representatives for schools and the police spoke in generalities about diversions and the charges brought against students but they didn’t publish fine-grain figures for members of the public to examine.

Cedar Rapids schools should be publishing detailed reports on a monthly or quarterly basis. There should be a uniform report that includes types of charges, demographic information and how often officers initiated contact compared to being called in by educators.

To build on that, the district should consider developing long-term metrics that would track outcomes among students who have contact with police over a number of years.

A PowerPoint presentation with a select few highlights isn’t going to suffice.

Given the dearth of information about the school resource officer program until now, it understandably might take some time to work out the kinks. School district and police department officials are reviewing the figures to make sure they align between the entities and they are discussing the best terminology to use — arrests versus charges, for instance. They should act with urgency.

As officials were finalizing changes to the school resource officer agreement this fall, The Gazette editorial board said the coming months would put the program to the test. We wrote at the time, “Officials need to regularly publish detailed figures about police work inside our public schools, which they say they plan to do.”

So far, we give them a C-minus.There is significant room for improvement.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com