Please sign our sister petition to increase Duluth Police accountability here!

As Duluth residents watch the senseless murder of another Black man by police, and as peaceful protesters across our nation continue to be brutalized by police departments, we must work in our community to help change the culture of violence police have created across our nation. The death of George Floyd is not an isolated incident. Neither is the death of Breonna Taylor, of Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, or any of the thousands of Black people who have lost their lives at the hands of police in our country. It has become painfully clear that what is needed now is not more training for police, not community policing measures, but real structural change in how we protect our communities. Based on the work of Minneapolis organizations including Reclaim the Block and Black
Visions Collective, and based on the recent resolution proposed to the Minneapolis School Board we demand that all the Duluth School Board pledge to commit to the following actions:

1. Immediately sever ties with the Duluth Police Department for School Resource officers, as it has been shown that School Resource Officers facilitate a school to prison pipeline that results in schools with SROs referring  students to the juvenile court system for the reason of “disorderly conduct” almost five times more than schools without SROs. As recently as 2018 it was found that Duluth Schools disproportionately punish students of color.
2. Reinvest funding for school resource officers into funding for more school counselors, therapists, and social workers, specifically those trained to work on the specific needs of BIPOC students. The status quo for supporting mental health needs before this crisis was
   already unacceptable. School systems could barely support the needs of students before the pandemic, where it was estimated that 1 out of 5 students struggled with mental health issues. Coupled with the fact that there is a nationwide shortage of school counselors, counselor-to-student ratios well above the recommended limits and alarming cuts to school counselor
   budgets lead to a clear conclusion that we are not prioritizing the social-emotional health of our students.
3. Immediately begin the process of adopting a district-wide curriculum that centers the stories, histories, and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. The district should commit to working with and funding outside community entities developing anti-racist curriculum, to diminish the likelihood that those resources will be corrupted by the institutional commitments.