A new proposed Memorandum of Understanding between PAUSD and school resource officers has faced heavy pushback after adequately addressing community concerns with sufficient clarity.

In her letter to the board, Parent Advocates for Student Success co-Chair Woodham-Johnsson expressed concerns with the new MOU such as  whether or not an SRO should be able to interact with younger students without notifying the parents and having an administrator present.

“We’ve seen several responses to middle school situations that were unnecessarily escalated and harsh relative to the age of the students,” Woodham-Johnsson said. “Accountability measures are vague and minimal.”

Woodham-Johnsson refers to a list of MOU improvement recommendations created by the American Civil Liberties Union on how to improve the MOU in order to ensure transparency. This includes requiring potential school resource officers to engage in at least 40 hours of training as well as collecting and making public all data on SROs and their interactions with students.

“I trust that the District will be attentive to the MOU details and in so doing, potentially avoid some of the ugly interactions we’ve [students and SROs] had in the past,” said Woodham-Johnsson.

In her letter to the board, Parent Advocates for Student Success co-Chair Woodham-Johnsson expressed concerns with the new MOU such as whether or not an SRO should be able to interact with younger students without notifying the parents and having an administrator present.