Mayor O’Leary appointed a police officer to our board of education this week.  We understand several parents of color who are active in our community offered their time, intellect, and expertise to become a board of education commissioner. Their offers were ignored.  

As an organization we advocate for police free schools.  Adding a police officer to our board of education is very problematic and signals to us that the mayor is planning to increase police presence and policing in our schools.  Our schools already arrest more students every year than New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport combined.  We are an Alliance District and our students, especially our Black and Brown students are severely under-resourced and without culturally sustaining classrooms and schools. Despite this Mayor O’Leary continues to drag our schools backwards by increasing racist school policing tactics.

We object to this appointment of Officer Devan because:

• Officer Devan’s social media shows she supports conspiracy theories, offensive post about Vice President Elect Kamala Harris, commentary that devalues the 1st Amendment and Black Life
• Officer Devan supports Blue Lives Matter movements that provide cover and support for White Supremacists.
• Officer Devan lacks contextualized experience as an educator or parent of color
• Officer Devan has close ties to Mayor O’Leary and this uniquely compromises Officer Devan and leads us to believe she will not be an independent voice for BIPOC students
• We need police free schools and that means no police on our board of education as well

SIGN OUR PETITION DEMANDING COMMISSIONER DEVAN RESIGN

Organizational Endorsements

Categories: Current Issues