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Toledo City Council approves funding for school resource officers

6 officers will be working with Toledo Public Schools and 1 will be with Washington Local Schools.

TOLEDO, Ohio — School resource officer programs will remain in both Toledo Public Schools and Washington Local Schools.

Meanwhile in other school districts around the country, we are seeing those officers removed from schools. 

Dr. Cecelia Adams worked her way up from teacher, to assistant principal, to working in the Toledo Public Schools administration and then serving as president of the school board. 

Now, she sits on Toledo City Council, where her vote helped pass the approval of funding for school resource officers.

"It was nice to have a presence whether it was their car sitting out front of the school or them walking through if they needed to," Dr. Adams said.

She says in her decades of experience at TPS, they have been useful in providing a sense of security and making sure any major issues from the streets stay out of the classroom.

"I always felt that we should be very, very careful about involving the police officers, because we had - and they still do have - a discipline code for the district," Dr. Adams said.

This year, more than $217,000 will go toward six officers assigned to TPS and just over $36,000 for one officer at Washington Local.

Since the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed, large districts like Minneapolis, Denver, Milwaukee and Portland have removed policing from schools after seeing higher arrest rates of Black students, according to NPR. 

Dr. Adams says that's not something she's personally been reached out to about locally.

"For the most part, schools can handle disciplinary issues or activities that would be disruptive to the educational process, but if it becomes criminal in nature, it's nice to know you have someone very close by or right there in the building," Dr. Adams said.

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