Denver’s school board voted unanimously Thursday to put armed police back in the city’s high schools, a decision that comes a day after two administrators were shot at East High and nearly three years after the board decided to remove police officers from district buildings.

The Board of Education emerged from a five-hour closed session to approve a memo to Superintendent Alex Marrero that suspends, through June, the board’s policy barring school resource officers — or SROs — in Denver schools.

Acknowledging the cost burden on DPS, the memo directs Marrero to work with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock to “externally fund” the placement of two armed police officers and up to two mental health workers at every district high school for the rest of the academic year.

Beyond that, the school board directed Marrero to host community meetings to gather feedback from students, parents, teachers and school leaders before developing a long-term “safety operational plan.” That proposal must be submitted to the board by June 30.

“There’s been a societal failure here locally in our city government, statewide and nationwide, and for us to incur deaths of students is not OK,” DPS board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán said at a news conference, referring to the East student who died after being shot outside the school in February and the suicide of the student who wounded the two administrators this week.

“It is not OK,” she continued, “and it really weighs heavily on each of us. And so this was a very emotional day. I know because I saw it in the faces of my colleagues, that we wanted to make sure that we were thoughtful and careful when giving the directives that we gave in the memo.”

The school board voted in 2020 to remove the Denver Police Department’s resource officers following the protests over the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Board members have argued that police officers in schools are harmful to students of color and contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.

On Thursday, Gaytán insisted the school board is not “flip-flopping” on the 2020 decision to remove Denver police officers from the city’s schools.

“What there is is additional community engagement with communities across the district so we can come back with a long-term safety plan for students across the district,” she said.

In a statement following the board’s vote Thursday, Hancock said, “I  appreciate this change in direction by the DPS school board, and believe it is the right decision. As I made clear to Superintendent Marrero yesterday, we stand ready to help him bring SROs back to our schools.”

The DPS board’s memo also states:

The school board will ask the Denver Police Department to “ensure every armed police officer is appropriately trained in the use of firearms, de-escalation techniques, policing in a school environment, knowledgeable of the school community they intend to serve and skilled in community policing”
The school board directs Marrero to report monthly, disaggregated data on ticketing and arrests of students at schools “to ensure armed officers are only there for safety purposes”
The board also directs Marrero to ensure DPS principals, teachers and staff members are “not using armed police officers for discipline issues that arise on campus or in classrooms”

On Wednesday, following the shooting at East High School, Marrero said he would station two armed officers from the Denver Police Department at East for the rest of the academic year. He also said in a letter to the school board that he was “committing” to have an armed officer at each of Denver’s comprehensive high schools despite the fact that doing so “likely violates” school board policy.

The superintendent’s decision came after police say a 17-year-old East student, Austin Lyle, shot and wounded two administrators inside the school Wednesday morning as they performed a daily search of Lyle for weapons, as required by his student safety plan.

Lyle, who previously had been “removed” from Overland High School in Aurora for rules violations, was on probation for a prior weapons charge.

Park County Coroner David A. Kintz Jr. confirmed Thursday that Lyle’s body was found near Bailey and that preliminary autopsy findings show he died by suicide.

The wounded administrators were hospitalized following the shooting Wednesday. On Thursday, Denver Health Medical Center spokeswoman Heather Burke said Dean of Culture Eric Sinclair was “still listed in serious condition.” The other, East High’s restorative justice director Jerald Mason, was “in good condition and was discharged” Wednesday, Burke said.

“They build a lot of value”

Junior Luis Garcia,16, died earlier this month after he was shot outside of the high school in February. Ever since then, East students and parents have called for tighter security.

East students and parents have asked for officers in school, as well as for the district to find other ways to improve safety, such as investing in community programs or adding metal detectors. Students have advocated for more gun legislation.

“Why have we charged underpaid educators with pat-downs?” said parent Lynsee Hudson Lang, who has a son who attends East and attended Thursday’s school board meeting.

“I am grateful they are looking towards meaningful steps,” she said, adding that she was looking for more information about the decision.

In the news conference, Marrero said that police officers would not take over pat-downs and searches of students and their belongings because they would need probable cause to do so. A teacher or school administrator can perform that function under a caretaker exemption, he said.

The rules require parent or student consent and that another person observe the pat-down, Marrero said.

Michael Eaton, the former head of DPS’s Department of Safety, said he disagreed with the board’s 2020 vote and supported the decision to add police back to schools.

“We just can’t quantify the deterrent and the effectiveness an armed officer has in preventing these type of incidents,” said Eaton, who served as chief of the department for more a decade and left in November.

“They are not there for punitive measures,” he said. “They build relationships. They build a lot of value when it comes to intelligence-gathering, mentorship, to being a positive role model during crisis.”

“Really missing the mark”

But Apryl Alexander, a forensic psychologist who studies the school-to-prison pipeline, said data does not show that school resource officers stop school violence. However, data does prove they funnel children from the school system into the juvenile justice system.

“School measures like SROs, like metal detectors, all the things people are starting to suggest again, aren’t just effective at addressing the core issue,” said Alexander, who is an affiliate faculty member with the University of Denver and was involved in the 2020 discussions to eliminate resource officers in the city’s schools.

Alexander cautioned Denver school administrators and parents against having a knee-jerk reaction of placing police back in the buildings. People need to have a more complete picture of what happened with Wednesday’s shooter before jumping to conclusions, she said.

School violence is much more complex than this one student’s story, she said.

“If we’re thinking that reinstating school resource officers is going to be the solution to school violence, we’re really missing the mark,” Alexander said. “We have to have some reflections on why we made these decisions in 2020 to begin with.”

Denver Post reporter Bruce Finley contributed to this report.

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