When Rayna Acha hears a cop car rush through her neighborhood, her stomach drops.
"I see a lot of police where I live, and it's scary. I get scared for my neighbors because they're Black," she says. This constant anxiety around the police doesn't end when she goes to school. She's a senior at South High.
Minneapolis Public Schools has had a formal contract with the MPD since 1980. In 2017, MPS renewed a contract with the Minneapolis Police Department that employs 16 police officers in schools, who are called Student Resource Officers (SROs). MPS currently budgets over $1 million for the program.
Kenneth Eban, who works for Our Turn, an organization that works with public school students to promote equity in schools nationally, echoed Acha's sentiment. "It is deeply frustrating that the MPS board needed to see a Minneapolis police officer brutally murder George Floyd in order to finally make the change that students have been demanding for years," he said in a statement.
