Sponsors (11)
The bill shifts federal support and funding away from school‑based policing toward trauma‑informed mental health, restorative practices, and community‑based supports—benefiting marginalized students and student privacy while imposing short‑term costs, administrative burdens, and potential safety and staffing trade‑offs for some districts and communities.
Students—especially Black, Native American, Latino, disabled, LGBTQI+, homeless, foster-involved, and low‑income students—will gain substantial new access to trauma‑informed counselors, psychologists, nurses, social workers, and other student support personnel funded by a proposed $5 billion authorization, improving school climate and academic outcomes.
Federal grants and guidance would be redirected away from hiring/training certain school‑based or covered law‑enforcement officers, reducing federal subsidies for school policing and encouraging funds to be used for non‑police safety and community programs.
Students and families will have stronger privacy protections because grant funds are prohibited from buying surveillance technologies such as facial recognition, metal detectors, and social‑media monitoring, limiting school surveillance.
Students, parents, and school staff in districts that remove or terminate contracts with school‑based officers may face reduced immediate deterrence and slower emergency/rapid‑response capacity, creating perceived or real safety gaps during and after transitions.
Local districts and taxpayers may incur substantial short‑term and ongoing costs to replace police with support staff and programs (including training and implementation), and requirements to supplement rather than supplant local funds can strain budgets and fiscal capacity after federal grants end.
Prohibiting the use of certain federal grants to hire or train covered law‑enforcement officers could reduce police staffing or training in communities that relied on those grants, potentially limiting local public safety services.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits federal funding for school‑based law enforcement and creates Education Dept. grants to replace officers with counselors, mental‑health staff, and trauma‑informed services.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Ayanna Pressley · Last progress April 8, 2025
Prohibits the use of federal funds to hire, maintain, or train law enforcement officers assigned to K–12 schools and requires recipients of certain Justice Department grants to stop using grant money for school-based officers. Establishes a competitive Education Department grant program to help local school districts replace school police with counselors, psychologists, nurses, social workers, credible messengers, trauma‑informed staff, restorative practices, and other evidence‑based mental‑health and positive‑behavior supports. Grantees must show they have ended or will end school policing contracts and create ongoing community oversight to reduce exclusionary discipline and support marginalized students.