‘Students shouldn’t be policed in our schools.’ Rally demands change in Fayette schools.

While some students were graduating Wednesday from Fayette schools at Lexington’s Rupp Arena, at least two dozen students and adults were also downtown protesting the overpolicing of schools.

“I’m here because I think students shouldn’t be policed in our schools,” Rick O’Neill, a graduating senior at Bryan Station High School, said at the Counselors Over Cops protest in front of the district’s old Central Office on East Main Street.

O’Neill said that Bryan Station High is one of the most ethnically diverse schools in the district and one of the most policed.

“We’re not getting what we need in terms of counselors and school psychologists,” O’Neill said.

Micheline Karenga, a leader in Counselors over Cops and a graduating senior at Lafayette High School, said Wednesday was a day of action for the group.

“Our goal today is to show the district that we’ve got a lot of people behind us and we need them to listen to our demands of putting more counselors and less cops in schools,” Karenga said.

In a March Op-Ed piece for the Herald-Leader, Karenga said Fayette County had five police officers in every high school.

“Why do we need police in our schools instead of the people trained to meet the emotional, social, and academic needs of students?” she said.

District officials have listened to the demands, she said, but the group wants the district to act on them.

The demands include:

• Reduce the number of police officers to one officer per school.
• Limit the role police officers play in schools.
• Invest money in mental health supports and after-school programs that lead to positive long-term outcomes.
• Hire a lobbyist to work on repealing the provision of the School Safety and Resiliency Act that requires one armed officer per school.
• Release any and all records and data related to interactions between students and police officers in the district.
• Review and revise the district’s 10-Point Safety Plan.

The rally is not the first time recently that groups have asked for more equitable school practices.

In April, Acting Fayette County Schools Superintendent Marlene Helm agreed to a pilot program that the church based group BUILD hopes will reduce disparities in the rate of disciplinary action taken against Black students as opposed to whites.

The Grassroots Law Project, the NAACP of Lexington and the Institute for Compassion in Justice have contended that the Fayette County Public School district is policing, criminalizing, and punishing students of color at disproportionate rates.

District officials did not immediately comment Wednesday.

But they have said they are working on the issues .

The district has disputed that it spends more on law enforcement than it does on mental health and student support services combined.

“The assertion that Fayette County Public Schools spends more on law enforcement than it does on mental health and student support services combined is absolutely untrue. In fact, the district’s current budget includes $5.7 million for law enforcement and $18.7 million for mental health and student support services,” the district said in a recent statement.

This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 5:34 PM.