Police in Schools

SPLOs in Greater Victoria

The School Police Liaison Officer (SPLO) program is returning to Greater Victoria schools despite recommendations against the program by the SD61 Board of Trustees, the Greater Victoria Teacher’s Union (GVTA), The BC Federation of Teachers (BCTF), the BC Human Rights Commissioner, and resistance from local caregivers and community members.

Even though the program is being reinstated, there are still opportunities to resist police presence and involvement in schools.

We are hearing from caregivers and teachers in the district that police are visiting schools in uniform, introducing themselves to administrators and responding to calls.

What is not clear, however, is:

  1. The exact parameters of the SPLO program,
  2. What is being documented about these visits and who is documenting these visits, and
  3. How police presence will be communicated to students and caregivers.

As details of the program are being sorted, now is the time to act. We have an opportunity to voice concerns and centre a harm-reduction approach that minimizes copaganda and prioritizes student rights and safety.

Read on to learn more about the history of the SPLO program and ideas for actions to take. Most actions are under 10-minute commitments and will probably make you feel better than doom scrolling.

A Brief “Need to Know” Overview of SPLOs in SD61

There is so much that could be said about the SPLO program, and oh are we happy to talk about it, but here are some of the important points and a refresher for those who’ve been following along:

  • In 2018, VicPD voluntarily pulled SPLOs out of schools citing budgetary constraints.
    • This is an example of police using children (who are seen as innocent and in need of protection) as a strategy to grow police budgets and hire more officers.
  • The decision to end the SPLO program in May 2023 was made deliberately following a three-year review and consultation process by the Ad Hoc School Police Liaison Officer Program Review Committee established by the Board of Trustees.
    • Some of the factors which led to the review included that the program lacked:
      • Defined objectives from each of the four police departments involve.
      • Description of roles or responsibilities.
      • Clarity regarding service levels.
      • Reporting requirements or School District oversight.
      • Guidance regarding the protection of students’ rights.
      • Complaint or concern reporting.
      • An ongoing review or assessment mechanism.
  • There is no evidence that SPLO programs are effective or benefit student safety. The BC Human Rights Commissioner has repeatedly emphasized the importance of prioritizing evidence-based policy. This is especially important considering we do have research evidence of racial disparities in BC policing systems that primarily affect Indigenous, Black, West Asian, and Arab people. Data released by VicPD also shows that Indigenous and Black people experience disproportionate force at the hands of VicPD.
  • The GVTA, representing teachers who work closest with students on a day-to-day basis, supported the Board of Trustees decision to not reinstate the SPLO program. Instead, the GVTA recommends that the district provides “fully funded academic, social, health, and emotional support services in schools.”
  • In January 2025, the Ministry of Education made the undemocratic decision to fire the elected SD61 Board of Trustees and appointed a single “Official Trustee,” Sherri Bell. This decision was made after a letter sent by Police Board to the Ministry of Education requested that the Ministry require a safety review to be conducted by the Board of Trustees. This was soon after tasked to the Board with an unreasonably short turn-around time, and at a cost of $55,000 to the School District who were required to work with a special Ministry-appointed advisor, to review the School Board’s Safety Plan.
  • The SPLO program was quietly reinstated in May of this year and has been officially re-launched this September 2025. The Vic PD has hired 2 officers, constables Gord Magee and Stacey Fuller, in the SPLO role for SD61 schools within their jurisdiction.  
A Timeline of How We Got Here

This page on the Greater Victoria School District website goes over in detail what and why decisions were made to officially end the program in 2023. This article also does a great job at breaking down the events leading up to the firing of the SD61 Board of Trustees. We wanted to provide a brief timeline to show all that’s happened in the past 7 years:

2018:VicPD ends SPLO program. VicPD ended its School Liaison program over a budget dispute with city council, when they didn’t receive as big a budget increase as they wanted. Other programs (Oak Bay, Saanich, West Shore) continued.

2020 to 2023: The Board of Trustees set up the Ad Hoc School Police Liaison Officer Program Review Committee to review and consult on the SPLO program, to listen to any concerns and make recommendations.

  • The Committee was tasked with reviewing the SPLO Program and were guided by research and data-driven assessments and informed by stakeholder lived experiences. Through this review process and community consultation process, the motion to end the SPLO program was approved, citing the need for empirically sound research on the impacts of SPLOs on all K-12 students, with a particular focus on the impacts on marginalized students.

October 2022: The new Board of Trustees are elected. The SPLO program was a key issue of voter concern, and most of the Trustees voted in were not in favour of the SPLO program.

November 2022: B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner recommended that school boards end SPLO programs until there was data demonstrating their effects. The Commissioner points out that government still hasn’t done that research.

March 2023: GVTA writes a letter recommending ending the SPLO program and “in addition to ending the SPLO program, our district needs to provide fully funded academic, social, health, and emotional support services in schools, enhance the rights of students and have clear and significant policy to govern any interaction schools may have with police.”

May 2023: The Board of Trustees passes a motion to official end the SPLO program. The Board reaches out to police to set up protocols for police involvement going forward.

  • The decision was reached based on data collected through survey and community consultation with dozens of stakeholders. Survey results include:
    • Some students reporting negative experiences with SPLOs and police.
    • Over 100 students said they were uncomfortable with SPLOs.
    • Dozens of people reported negative interactions with SPLOs, including BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ students (2SLGBTQIA+ people made up the largest portion of students who reported feeing unsafe with SPLOs).
  • Most parents surveyed were in favour of the program, but the majority of those in favour identified as white people with elementary school aged children, none of which had interacted with an SPLO officer before.

May 2024: The Police Board passes a motion to write to the Minister of Education to request a safety review. Police cite that there is increased gang recruiting happening at schools.

  • Three Police Board members voted against the motion, because it would damage their relationship with SD61. One police board member called it a “slap in the face” to SD61.

2024, Spring and Summer: SD61 asked VicPD to provide data on gang activity in schools. VicPD said it wouldn’t provide data in the format SD61 wanted.

September 2024: Minister ordered SD61 to draft a safety plan in two months. SD61 reports that police had not been interested in collaborating on the plan when approached.

December 2024: Minister orders plan rewrite. This time with oversight of Ministry appointed special adviser, Kevin Godden, to help the Board revise and improve its previously submitted safety plan. The cost for the Special Advisor is $55,000 and the School District is required to pay for it. 

December 2024: No 2 SPLOs SD61, a grassroot group made up of parents and concerned community members emerged to organize letter writing campaign to the Ministry over the holidays. At least 80 letters were sent by community  members between Dec 31-Jan 29 expressing their concern and disappointment.

  • The template letter outlined that there is no evidence to support the idea that police-in-schools make schools safer, but there is ample evidence highlighting the negative impacts of police-in-schools on students – particularly for Indigenous, Black, racialized, immigrant, queer, trans, disabled and neurodiverse students.
  • Main talking points of the letter included:
    • Jurisdictional Overreach: The Ministry’s intervention in an elected School Board’s decision to discontinue the SPLO program is concerning. There is no precedent for the government targeting a specific School Board in this manner in B.C. history. 
    • Timeline of Ministerial Order: Oct 1-Nov 15 timeline was unachievable, and didn’t leave any time to meaningfully engage with key partners (as done by the 2020-2023 Adhoc Review Committee).
      • Additionally, the Ministry’s requirement to include “crime prevention” as part of the Safety Plan misrepresents the roles and responsibilities of the Board of Education, as this is not a requirement of School Boards under the School Act.
    • SPLO Programs are not evidence-based and do not increase student safety.
    • Budgetary Concerns: The City of Victoria committed nearly a quarter (23%) of its total 2025 budget to policing. The decision to reinstate the SPLO program by the Ministry did not have budgetary implications provincially, but it would have significant budgetary implications for the municipalities.
    • January 6, 2025: Board of Trustees issues three safety plan options: The first plan, included a revamped, liaison-type program. All three safety plans are rejected.
  • Notably, VicPD and other municipal police departments, along with Songhees and Esquimalt First Nation are opposed to safety plans without the SPLO program. Now, a pro-police talking point becomes that being opposed to the SPLO program is “anti-Indigenous”.

January 10, 2025: Rally held outside of Ministry of Education office in downtown Victoria, opposed to the rumoured firing of the Board of Trustees and the reinstatement of the SPLO program.

January 30, 2025: Ministry fires the democratically elected SD61 board. SD61 to be led by government-appointed trustee, Sherri Bell, until the October 2026 election.

March 2025: Victoria City council votes in favour of giving VicPD a 10% budget increase (~$7 million). With this increase VicPD will have seen its budget grow by $22 million – 38% – in 5 years.

April 2025: All 9 former SD61 Trustees initiate Judicial Review of the decision to dismiss them, maintaining that no evidence has been provided to show that the SD61 Board acted in a way that warranted or permitted dismissal. They launch a fundraising campaign.

May 2025: The SPLO program is quietly reinstated in some schools.

September 2025: The SPLO program is officially re-launched in schools across the district. Despite the three-year review and community consultation the Adhoc Review Committee underwent to officially end the program, VicPD were able to undo all of this in just over a year with no meaningful community consultation process.

What do SPLOs do in Schools?

Fostering relationships as community helpers?

One of the main arguments made in favour of the SPLO program is that police involvement in schools fosters a sense of relationship and community connection with police.

According to District Superintendent Deb Whitten and Official Trustee Sherri Bell, the goal of the program is to create “a safe and trauma-informed environment for each student and staff member in our schools.” This echoes the language but ignores the findings from the Ad Hoc School Police Liaison Officer Program Review Committee who stated that “The findings of the survey conducted by SD61 revealed concerns around police officers in uniform and carrying weapons and students feeling uncomfortable and uncomfortable around police. Creating a trauma informed, inclusive and supportive environment for all students is a priority for the Board of Education”

Most of the local media reporting on the SPLO program has perpetuated a widely held belief that police are positive role models, well suited for building relationships, trust, and preventing harm towards students (Media links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Although very little has been communicated directly with SD61 families about the specific details of the SPLO program, media reports and VicPD social media suggest that SPLOs will make presentations on topics such as bullying prevention, online safety and drug awareness, as well as having “informal conversations with students.”

While presentations on topics of interest and importance to students may not cause direct harm, the underlying question is why do presentations like these need to be done by police? In a recent Op Ed to the Times Colonist, previous School Board Trustee Ryan Painter argues in support of the SPLO program that  “our educators deserve support from professionals trained in prevention and relationship building.”

We wholeheartedly agree, educators do deserve support!  But not from police. Police do not have specialized training in working with children, youth, and families, and they are not trained in relationship building. Why not invest in professionals who have the training and experience specific to trauma-informed, decolonial, anti-racist, queer and trans affirming, and youth-centred approaches to support?

Using youth and children to bolster police optics

While VicPD presents the SPLO program as the best option for enhancing student safety through relationships of trust and support, VicPD also uses students to promote their image as engaged community helpers. For years, including during the years that the SPLO program had ended, VicPD’s PR strategy has included photo-ops with students, and posting identifying photos of youth onto social media (we have chosen not to link to examples out of respect for the confidentiality of students). This decision is baffling considering the importance of protecting children’s safety and privacy online – a topic that SPLOs are reportedly equipped to be teaching students about. Additionally, it is unclear if VicPD verifies with schools that children’s parents have consented to the SD61 Broadcast Media Consent Form before publicizing photos of children on their social media accounts. It is alarming that police have violated children’s online safety and privacy to promote their own image.

Using the SPLO program to bolster the image of police as “protecting” children is a longstanding strategy towards increasing police presence and funding. Positioning VicPD as a “community helpers” creates further justification for police requesting substantial funding increases, and distracts from the increase of harsher policing tactics used on other communities, including unhoused and street involved people. Since July 2024, bylaw and VicPD officers have been devastating unhoused communities, increasing outdoor camping sweeps, harassing, and disappearing people. VicPD has also used unhoused community as a rationale to increase police presence in schools, so police can “protect” innocent children from street involved people, or people “on drugs”.

These funding increases do not happen in a vacuum. Police budget increases take money away from other public services. Community Grant funding has been facing substantial budget cuts in the past few years. Examples of programs who depend on this funding include after-school youth programs, arts and culture programs, direct supports to street involved people, and community supports for numerous marginalized communities.

Police to fill the gap of support for school staff

Beyond the SPLO responsibilities that are couched in serving “educational purposes” and “relationship building,” the purpose of the SPLO program is for schools to have a direct access line to designated constables for when teachers, counsellors, or admin staff are needing additional support. It speaks volumes to the level of trauma, behavioural challenges, and violence that schools are having to respond to that schools would feel the need for police support at all.

While VicPD has repeatedly emphasized a rise in gang violence in schools as a key factor in reinstating the SPLO program, the social context that results in students being unsafe and at risk of being recruited by gangs is rarely named as the root cause of what schools are coming up against. Many students are living within social and family contexts shaped by domestic violence, poverty, colonialism, racism and xenophobia, navigating new cultural and language environments, grief and loss, involvement with foster care systems, family rejection for their sexuality and/or gender, ableism, etc. For students living these realities, there is a higher chance of having existing involvement with police and traumatic associations with police and policing systems.

Even if individual officers have good intentions, at the end of the day, police uphold the law, and policing systems are designed to respond to these social issues through punishment and surveillance. Despite the predominant narrative from VicPD that their aim is to create relationships with students, it is not possible for SPLOs to create the conditions of safety and relationship building necessary to repair the harm, often intergenerational, that many students and their families have experienced with police. Neither should we continue to invest more public funding to repair that harm through police reform.

What if instead of putting more money into policing…

What if we prioritized adequately resourcing school counsellors, community youth workers and outreach workers, local neighborhood houses, and members of student faith and cultural communities, to lead in building supportive relationships that wholistically support students and families within and outside of school? What if instead, we prioritized poverty reduction programs, mental health supports, and universal basic income programs?

Actions

While the SPLO program is in the early stages of rolling out, we have an opportunity to put pressure on school and District administrators to:

  1. Clarify the role of SPLOs in schools.
  2. Ensure that students and families are informed of their rights.
  3. Ensure clear communication processes around police presence in schools.

For this reason, caregivers, teachers, and school staff play an important role in raising concerns and minimizing the potential of harm through the SPLO program. Below are recommendations for how to put pressure on the District and schools to minimize the potential harm of the SPLO program.

Communication!

1) Connect with School administrators to ensure clear communication about SPLO involvement in schools.

Historically, police presence in schools has not been communicated widely with families. Caregivers and school staff can put pressure on the District to ensure that:

  • Families are informed when police are coming for pre-scheduled presentations.
  • Policy and procedures are agreed upon for determining how to communicate unscheduled SPLO visits and police responses to crisis situations, prioritizing student confidentiality.
  • In instances of crisis situations, VicPD collaborates with the District to ensure media statements are not released before schools can communicate with student families.
  • Information about the SPLO program is shared with families beyond email communication. Consideration should be taken to address language barriers.

2) Talk to each other

Many of the narratives about the SPLO program highlight police as “community helpers.” Challenging these narratives and educating each other about racial discrimination in policing systems, including VicPD, helps to keep SPLOs accountable.

During the 10 minutes at drop off and pick up, standing on the sidelines at your child’s sports games, meeting parents at school events and PAC meetings, are all opportunities to talk to other families about the SPLO program. Likewise, teachers can have conversations with colleagues, and even their students.

These conversations can be opportunities for relationship and coalition building if we approach them with curiosity and care. You don’t need to be an expert on SPLOs or police to talk about police, to ask questions, and to commit to learning more.

3) Keep up the pressure

It is not too late to voice dissent to this program. Writing Op-Eds (this website is full of stats, information, and resources), sharing this campaign, making social media posts, bringing this issue up every month at PAC meetings, at GVTA and CUPE meetings, are all ways we can ensure that VicPD and other police jurisdictions, the School District, and the Ministry of Education know that we are closely watching how the SPLO program will be rolled out.  

Advocate!
  • Parents & Caregivers – Attend PAC meetings and ask questions to administrators. Voice your concerns about student safety. This is an excellent opportunity for families with privilege to educate themselves and others further about policing in schools.
  • Teachers – Ask questions at staff meetings and to your admin about the SPLO program. Voice your concerns about student safety.
  • Teachers – Participate in the GVTA social justice committee

Voice concern about gaps in the District’s Safety Plan about the role out of the SPLO program. Specifically, advocate to ensure that SPLOs not attend schools in uniform or with weapons.

Protect Your Rights!
  • Parents – Review your SD61 Broadcast Media Consent Form each year. These can be accessed via the Student Learning Portal. Email administrators to ensure that SPLOs do not take or post photos of children onto VicPD social media.
  • Teachers, Parents, Youth Workers –  Print out and make available to students the BC Civil Liberties Associations Know Your Rights cards. Talk to and educate youth about their rights when interacting with police.

Download the Know Your Rights cards here!

Stay involved

Parents & School Staff – Contact us! Tell us what you’re seeing at your school: what are SPLOs are doing in your schools? Are SPLOs coming in uniforms? Are presentations scheduled, and have these been communicated to parents? 

Students – If you are interested in getting involved in and help us to shape this campaign, we would love to hear from you. 

Everyone – Stay connected through our Newsletter, to get updates to take actions to Defund the VicPD during the next municipal budget cycle.

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