photo by: Richard Gwin/Lawrence Journal World

A Lawrence police car is seen parked in front of Lawrence High School in 2014.

The Lawrence school district’s use of police officers in schools aligns with a recent report of a state racial justice commission, Superintendent Anthony Lewis told the Journal-World recently.

That’s partly because the district only uses a handful of school resource officers, or SROs, while it also employs dozens of behavioral health professionals, he said.

In December, Gov. Laura Kelly’s Commission on Racial Equity and Justice provided its initial report, giving many recommendations to improve racial equity in different aspects of the state’s criminal justice system.

As the Journal-World reported, one of the recommendations focused on the use of SROs, suggesting Kansas schools should consider alternatives like using counselors and social workers to help address conflicts in schools rather than using police officers.

Lewis told the Journal-World recently that the school district did just that, with dozens of employees focused on the behavioral health of students. He said he believed it was rare to see a district the size of Lawrence’s have so many counselors and social workers, and that this wasn’t the case in his former district in Kansas City, Mo.

“Coming from Kansas City, it was a large urban district with a high (low-income population), we had maybe three or four social workers in the entire district,” said Lewis, who moved to Lawrence in 2018. “When I came here and saw the investment that is put into counseling, mental health and social workers, I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing.'”

According to data provided to the Journal-World, there are far more behavioral health professionals working in Lawrence schools than there are SROs.

The school district employs 52 guidance counselors, mental health professionals and social workers. It also has 13 school psychologists who support its special education services. Additionally, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center assigns 11 specialists for the WRAP program, in which clinicians work in the schools to assist with the behavioral, emotional, familial and psychological needs of students, District spokeswoman Julie Boyle said.

Meanwhile, the district uses four officers from the Lawrence Police Department to serve as SROs for the district’s secondary school buildings.

photo by: Dylan Lysen

Superintendent Anthony Lewis is pictured here at a Lawrence school board meeting on Monday, Jan. 27, 2020.

Lewis was one of the three Lawrence residents who served on the commission that published the racial equity report. He said he told the other members of that commission that he felt Lawrence had a “leg up” because the Lawrence community regularly pushed leaders to examine those types of issues.

“That recommendation is in there for the school districts that may not be there yet, in terms of hiring more social workers and counselors,” he said.

However, the question of whether SROs should be in Lawrence schools at all has become a topic of conversation in recent years. In 2019, when the city of Lawrence proposed that the school district begin paying for some of the costs to use police officers in schools, board members Kelly Jones and Melissa Johnson expressed concerns about the effect that a police presence in schools might have on marginalized groups such as female students and students of color.

In 2020, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minn., led to civil unrest across the country, the district said it would continue to use its SRO program, despite the fact that some large school districts in other states were removing their programs. Subsequently, a local protest called for SROs to be removed from Lawrence schools.

While Lewis acknowledged that the environment around police in schools had changed significantly in the last year, he said he still believed the district benefited from using SROs. He said the district was working to improve the program and address possible issues of racial inequity. One example he cited was that the district had begun requiring SROs to go through diversity training, which did not occur in the past.

Lewis said the district was also looking to continue discussions with district staff and families to gauge their feelings on the matter and find further ways to improve.

“The climate caused me to look at things differently, but (we’re) making sure we have the right individuals in those positions and they are getting the right amount of training,” he said. “I’m really pleased with the direction we’re going with our SROs.”