911 Usage by Boston Public Schools: A Researcher–Practitioner Partnership

To reduce police presence in schools, School Resource Officer programmes are being eliminated across the USA. However, police also become involved in schools through other routes—namely, in response to school calls to 911. This type of police involvement has generally been overlooked in prior studies of school use of police services. In addition, prior research has primarily relied on interview and survey data of school administrators. We describe a researcher–practitioner partnership created to address the limitations of this prior research and to answer foundational questions from one urban school district—Boston Public Schools (BPS)—about police involvement in schools through calls to 911. First, we discuss ongoing collaborative work conducted among the Boston Police Department (BPD), BPS, and academic partners. Next, we provide an example of how this partnership can address pressing questions identified by BPS by providing the results of an analysis of 911 calls. In particular, we examine the ways in which elementary versus secondary schools in the BPS system differ in their patterns of 911 usage across schools when requesting assistance from the BPD. This work provides an example of how researcher–practitioner partnerships can inform policy and practice in schools, and guide decision-making about school-based police services.