ARRESTS

supportive of SROs. But he said the bigger issue is DPS’ rules for when educators can suspend or expel students or call the police. ose rules are spelled out in a chart known as the discipline matrix, which DPS amended in 2021 to limit calls to police.

“ e elephant in the room is that the discipline matrix says educators cannot refer to [the Denver Police Department],” Katsaros said. Given the changes to the discipline matrix and other factors, such as the e ects of the pandemic on students’ behavior, Katsaros said it’s hard to draw conclusions by comparing data from before and after remote learning. “ e data can be twisted,” he said.

Elsa Bañuelos-Lindsay is also skeptical of the data. She is the executive director of Movimiento Poder, an advocacy organization that strongly opposed the return of SROs.

“Our worry as an organization is we will see an increase … in the criminalization of [Black, Indigenous, people of color] working-class young people,” Bañuelos-Lindsay said, and “a lot of schools relying on policing to deal with issues that should be dealt and equity. Prices are going down for most riders and the fare structure is simpli ed to four price options. e district must still provide yellow bus service for high school students with disabilities, recent refugees who attend the district’s “newcomer centers,” and English-learning high schoolers in the district’s bilingual programs.

In Denver, most high school students are ineligible for yellow bus service, limiting transportation options for them to get to school. Denver Public Schools pays for passes to ride public RTD buses to and from school, but students must live more than 2.5 miles from their school.

Facing driver shortages and rising costs, the Denver schools have cut bus service for some middle and elementary schools for the next school year and are o ering limited service to the Denver School of the Arts.

For free rides,drivers may ask kids to show a school- or government-issued ID, according to Bill Sirois, RTD with in schools, like mental health.”

Seventeen-year-old Skye O’Toole is a student at Denver School of the Arts, which doesn’t have an SRO. At a closed-door school board meeting held the day after the East High shooting, Superintendent Alex Marrero said DSA had turned down the o er of an SRO this past spring, a recently released recording revealed.

But that’s no guarantee DSA won’t get an SRO sometime in the future. It’s an outcome that O’Toole, who is an active member of Marrero’s student cabinet, opposes.

Even though the recent data does not show a spike in tickets and arrests after SROs were reintroduced this past spring, O’Toole said she still fears that could happen.

“We can’t jump to any conclusions based on two months of data,” O’Toole said. “ e rst few months or the rst few years, [the SROs are] likely going to be on their best behavior. ey were being brought back with a lot of caution and concern around them.

“We can start judging the data more when we’re one or two years into the process. I have a feeling that arrests will go up. I’ll be watching very closely.” senior manager of transit oriented communities.

RTD plans to collect ride data two ways: transportation operators will key in information on their keypads, and surveys will be sent out throughout the school year. RTD wants to know if riders are taking advantage of the opportunity and if their opinions have changed on using more public transportation.

“We’re excited and we’re hoping for big success. We’ve reached out to a lot of the school districts and got some good feedback in terms of contacts to work with to collect data and hopefully see some good results,” Sirois said.

RTD has projected that it will cost the system $3.5 to $4 million in the next year to o er free youth fares. e youth fare program ends Aug. 31, 2024. To continue the program, RTD o cials want other organizations to help fund a part of the project.

DPS did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Last fall, RTD initiated the CollegePass program which provided unlimited free rides to all students whose universities opted into the program. Colleges paid for it in di erent ways. Some included a fee into a student’s tuition; other schools footed the bill. e college program was renewed for another year with the addition of semester passes for higher education institutions that didn’t participate in the CollegePass program. e SemesterPass will be an opt-in program for individual students who use public transportation rather than the institutions paying for the entire student body. e pass costs $75 per student each month.

Chalkbeat is a nonpro t news site covering educational change in public schools.