Sponsors (11)
Official title: To divert Federal funding away from supporting the presence of police in schools and toward evidence-based and trauma-informed services that address the needs of marginalized students and improve academic outcomes, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Ayanna Pressley · Last progress April 8, 2025
The bill shifts federal support away from placing officers in schools and toward trauma‑informed counselors, restorative practices, and community‑driven supports to reduce punitive discipline and advance equity, but it creates tradeoffs in immediate on‑campus security, local fiscal and administrative burdens, and reduced flexibility for districts that prefer school‑based policing.
Students (especially low-income and marginalized youth) will gain substantially increased access to counselors, psychologists, social workers, and trauma‑informed staff funded by new grants, expanding non‑law‑enforcement supports available on campus.
Federal resources and policy are redirected away from placing officers in schools toward evidence‑based, restorative practices and non‑law‑enforcement safety programs, backed by an authorized $5 billion to implement reforms at scale.
High‑need districts get priority and the bill requires community and stakeholder engagement (including disproportionately affected students and families), increasing equity and local voice in designing school safety and support programs.
Students, teachers, and school staff in some districts may face reduced on‑site law enforcement presence, creating perceived or real gaps in immediate incident response and safety—especially in higher‑crime communities where alternatives are not yet in place.
Local governments, school districts, and taxpayers may incur new recurring costs to hire counselors and clinicians or to replace lost federal COPS funding, potentially requiring budget tradeoffs or service cuts at the local level.
School districts that want to receive grant funds will often be required to terminate or dissolve existing school‑based law enforcement and those that refuse the grant rules will be ineligible, reducing local flexibility and forcing some districts to choose between funding and preserving mixed safety approaches.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Bars federal funds for school‑based law enforcement and creates Education Department grants to replace officers with counselors, mental‑health and trauma‑informed staff.
Prohibits use of federal funds to hire, maintain, or train school-based law enforcement officers and amends the COPS grant statute to bar grant funds for officers in K–12 settings. Creates a competitive Department of Education grant program to help local school districts terminate contracts with school police and replace officers with counselors, social workers, nurses, credible messengers, trauma‑informed staff, restorative programs, and other school‑based supportive services.