Chicago pulled many of its school resource officers out of high schools, braced for chaos, and then... nothing like the meltdown critics predicted. Instead, a new study says the district’s community-led Whole School Safety process may offer a roadmap for districts across the country trying to rethink what safety in school actually looks like.
Researchers say the key was not just taking police out, but rebuilding safety with students and families at the center, prioritizing equity, and pouring money into mental-health services and restorative practices. Early numbers, they note, do not show the spike in serious discipline problems that opponents warned about.
WTTW first highlighted the findings from a study by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research and the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital. The researchers argue that the process Chicago Public Schools used to build its Whole School Safety framework, rather than the single act of removing officers, is what other districts should really pay attention to.
What the research measured
The study team dug into several years of Chicago Public Schools discipline data and school climate surveys, comparing high schools that removed their school resource officers with those that kept them.
According to a research brief from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, schools that fully cut SROs did not see the same rise in serious disciplinary infractions that showed up across the district overall. The brief also reports no evidence that students or teachers felt less physically safe after officers left the building.
How the plan was built
The quieter discipline numbers did not happen by accident. CPS set up a Whole School Safety Steering Committee and brought in community partners to run intensive listening sessions with students, families, and school staff.
Civic Consulting Alliance and other partners report that the committee, which included VOYCE, Mikva Challenge, COFI (POWER-PAC IL), BUILD, and the ARK of St. Sabina, convened sessions that drew hundreds of Chicagoans. Out of those meetings came a menu of trauma-informed alternatives to police, designed with students’ day-to-day realities in mind.
Money and staffing behind the model
District leaders have been clear that values alone would not carry this overhaul; it took cash and staff.
CPS said it was “reinvesting an approximate $3.3 million” into resources for the Whole School Safety initiative and has steered additional funding into behavioral health teams, mentorship programs, and mental-health partnerships. The district’s safety blueprint also calls for restorative justice coordinators, climate coordinators, and more school-based behavioral health staff, according to Chicago Public Schools.
Limits and local pushback
The researchers are not claiming they have discovered a magic switch.
The consortium brief explicitly warns that its analysis “does not establish causation” and says the observed results likely come from a combination of removing SROs and rolling out alternative supports at the same time.
On the ground, some principals and school staff are still wrestling with what safety looks like without officers in the hallway. They have raised concerns about day-to-day logistics and called for clearer response protocols in the new model, as reported by Chalkbeat.
What other districts can learn
For districts watching from afar, the big exportable idea is not a specific checklist of programs but the process Chicago used: real, sustained co-design with the people inside the schools.
Study authors and CPS officials told reporters that community-centered design, built around student and family voice, is the piece other systems can most plausibly copy. “When students, families, staff and community partners all have a seat at the table, safety becomes a shared responsibility,” CPS Chief of Safety and Security Ronan Shableski said in a statement quoted by WTTW. One of the researchers noted that when co-design is genuine, it can open the door to more innovative, equity-focused policy choices.
The study does not offer quick fixes or overnight turnarounds. What it does provide is a tested process for shifting resources and power back toward communities, and a reminder that anyone trying to follow Chicago’s lead will need long-term funding, sufficient staffing, and sturdy channels for student and family input. Policymakers elsewhere will have to track implementation closely and prepare for a multi-year project, not a one-semester experiment.
